Leading momentum plays in stock markets
Comment of the Day

July 05 2011

Commentary by David Fuller

Leading momentum plays in stock markets

David Fuller's view A premise of mine over many decades, which veteran subscribers will recall, is that when a multi-month stock market correction is nearing completion, many of the best performing stocks over the next few months to follow will be those which reach new highs before the main indices.

To view these today, I used the Library's 'Filter' function for the UK stock market, selected the FTSE All Share constituents for broad coverage of both big and medium-cap companies including investment trusts, and set the parameters for 'All-Time Highs' in the last 5 days. It took less than a minute and produced this list of 39 new all-time highs for UK shares (access requires subscription registration) from Aberdeen Asian Income Fund Ltd to Weir Group.


You can easily do this yourself by logging on to the Fullermoney Chart Library and using the 'Filter' function in the toolbar. Having clicked on 'Filter', you will then see 'Select Filter' in the turquoise bar. Click on 'High/Low Filter', then select your 'Market Section' of interest. Moving to the right, I opted for the 'All Time' period and 'High' in the next box, and then clicked on 'Run'. The list will appear and you can click through the shares of interest.

If you do not want to use the Filter, just click on the Library's dropdown menu and select 'International Equity Library' which is the second listing down. You will then see a page of 51 stock market indices. Click on any of those and you will see a list of constituents, which you can scroll through.

Returning to the UK list of All-Time Highs above, inevitably, many of these stocks or ITs will look at least temporarily overextended. Yes, because they have momentum and are outperforming. However their overall trends will also be consistent relative to most underperformers. Consequently, many of them are likely remain fashionable for some time.

They could also easily experience temporary pullbacks if/when the overall market reacts, creating potential entry points. In that event, I would continue to give the upside the benefit of the doubt, provided in this instance that the June lows, or any other logical technical level of interest to you continues to hold. Otherwise, I would only be fearful of these momentum shares if their uptrends have gone parabolic, as that would indicate a Type-1 trend ending as taught at The Chart Seminar.

Investors interested in the UK stock market can quickly click through charts for the 39 companies in the list above. Just click on a share's name and the chart will pop up. For overall perspective, I prefer to look at weekly candlesticks with a 200-day moving average which you can also select.

Using the same Filter procedure above, I have also produced links to lists of all-time highs for the S&P 500 Index. Coincidentally, it too has produced a list of 39 companies, from Allergan to Yum! Brands.

Subscribers who have not previously used the Library's Filter, but would like to, may wish see if they can reconstruct the two lists above, following my instructions above or Eoin's separate notes which can be accessed in the Library. Once you are able to do this, you can experiment with filters created to your specifications for any of the 51 separate index constituents provided


A similar filter for Australia's AS51 produced only 1 new all-time high in the last few days - Invocare (I hope there is not a message in that) which happens to yield over 5 percent.

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