Past week recap: Some institutional investors – those who had not already bought stocks recently – did so last week, sending prices of already risen stocks even higher. Some are attributing this to good earnings reports from banks, as well as companies in the industrial, energy and consumer discretionary sectors. Not all stocks rose, however, with utilities, telecom, real estate and semiconductor stocks generally falling.
Buying pressure increased the price of many stocks we already bought within the past 10 weeks, extending our long gains, some by the most of any recent week. Some shorts continued to rise or remain flat, however, so that short positions in general are not particularly productive at the moment. Once again many new weekly highs, very few new weekly lows.
Will be interesting to see what event/news will eventually bring this very long-running, very large market uptrend to a halt and when that might be, but in the meantime it remains profitable for buy-and-holders and – because of stock selection – even more so for us.
Highlights: 7 new weekly highs in long positions. 11 stocks with double-digit long gains:
- BXC +19%
- CECO +26%
- FMSA +30%
- PES +60%
- LPSN +78%
- FOLD +11%
- FTK +26%
- URBN +60%
- HNRG +11%
- NCI +24%
- NGL +18%
No new weekly lows among short positions. 1 stock with double-digit short gain:
- TRUE +23%
Analytics: By now we have cycled through, or exited, or discontinued almost all positions that an analytic revision last summer indicated were contrary – a special circumstance that in hindsight should have been addressed immediately. The only ones remaining in Level 1 are CYBE and NPTN, which are improving slowly but still represent rare significant losses. Barring an occasional price explosion or implosion on abrupt news counter to our position, significant losses should simply not appear on our list.