Option Trading: What is Delta? Option trading is a nuanced art; option prices don't always move in a consistent, predictable manner. The so-called "Greeks" of option trading, however, explain how a put or a call option should change in price over time, and in relation to changes in the pricing of the underlying stock or index. And, perhaps one of...
Candlestick Trading: What is a Hammer Pattern? What is a Dragonfly Doji? Although no trader has a perfect crystal ball, there are certain chart shapes and cues that are reliable indications of what's apt to happen next. One of the more reliable, and more comment, patterns any trader should recognize is the so-called hammer pattern… and its cousin, the dragonfly...
Stephen Curry Makes Under Armour (UA) Soar, & Cam Newton Is On Deck Under Armour (UA) shareholders owe NBA star Stephen Curry a big thank-you today. His star-power name helped Under Armour nearly twice as many shoes last quarter as it did in the same quarter a year earlier, contributing to yet-another earnings beat for the sports apparel maker, and...
Facebook Earnings Leave Nothing to be Desired There's no two ways about it… Facebook (FB) is a money-making monster, and is well-positioned to remain a monster indefinitely (as far as that term can be used with the technology sector). The social networking company posted results this week that simply blew away estimates, and left its year-ago numbers in the dust....
Apple Is Still Great, But Clearly Not Infallible Whether or not Apple (AAPL) did well or did poorly last quarter is largely a matter of perspective. Its earnings rolled in higher than anticipated, but revenue fell short of analysts' estimates. Perhaps more important, sales of iPhones and iPads came up short of estimates, sending the stock down roughly 6% on...
Home Sales, Home Prices Continue to Say Real Estate Market is Strong Any brewing concerns that the U.S. housing market is headed over a cliff were at least partially wiped away on the heels of a spectacular New Home Sales report this week. All told, new houses sold at an annualized pace of 544,000 units in December. That's second only to...
Existing Home Sales Rebound, and Could Have Been Even Better If… Last month, when November's pace of existing home sales fell to a multi-year low of 4.76 million, investors were understandably worried a brewing collapse in the housing market was a sign of an economic recession, which in turn would lead to a bear market for stocks. Those worries were...
Housing Starts & Building Permits Better Than Headlines Imply Yes, December's housing starts and building permits were down… from November's annualized pace. There's a proverbial "rest of the story" though. That is, November's permits were impressively and abnormally strong, and November's starts weren't too shabby either. And, both data sets remain in long-term uptrends. The specifics: The annualized pace of...
William O'Neil's CANSLIM Method The CANSLIM approach to stock-picking was developed by William J. O’Neil, the founder of market-oriented publication Investors Business Daily. Designed primarily to find undervalued growth stocks, this multi-faceted strategy is simply the strict use of seven criteria; "CANSLIM" is an acronym for those seven rules. C: Current earnings performance. Is the company in question doing well...
The Basics Of Bollinger Bands Bollinger Bands are a technical analysis tool that envelop a chart of a stock or an index as a means of defining a plausible volatility boundary for the instrument in question. Plotted above and below the chart of the index or stock in question, Bollinger Bands are more responsive than a moving average envelope, but...
