Past week recap: Another choppy week for stocks – 4 days of downward bias negated by a large rise on Friday’s employment data, resulting in the major market indexes finishing the week flat, again. This is the 13th consecutive week that stocks have whip-sawed back and forth within a narrow price range – that’s a quarter of the year. Simply no consensus or conviction among institutional investors right now.
With these market conditions, passive buy-and-holders are not profiting – major index values remain at the same level as last Thanksgiving – and we are profiting to a lesser degree than normal. We have a few productive short positions, a few more productive long positions, but many others remain flat or negative during this whip-saw period.
Despite an otherwise un-noteworthy week, several Level 1 stocks posted very large price changes – the largest of any week in recent months – primarily on earnings surprises, with CRC and EVTC favorable, but IVAC unfavorable.
For all of our Level 1 stocks to generate profits we need them to trend smoothly for weeks/months at a time, and until institutional investors are comfortable with market conditions and confident of holding their positions for longer periods we will remain stuck in this narrow range, largely unproductive rut.
Highlights: 7 new weekly highs in long positions. 8 stocks with double-digit long gains:
- CVRR +16%
- FMSA +23%
- EVTC +49%
- CRC +79%
- BXC +305%
- EVH +11%
- PES +80%
- URBN +79%
No new weekly low among short positions. No stocks with double-digit short gains at this time.