Stan Weinstein's Stage Analysis

Stage 2 continuation breakout yesterday on YUM.

i presume as it a continuation pattern the intial stop is below the 52.5 support, say 52.2?

That would be the investor stop position. But if you were short term trading it, I think you could go tighter below the gap low of 55.62 on the 30/11. So under 55 maybe.

The 200 day ATR is 1.21, so from yesterdays closing price, the 2x ATR(200) is: 58.01 - (2 x 1.21) = 55.59. So I'd personally try to get a price below 57.41 if you were using a stop below 55 to keep within my 2x ATR risk limit on a short term trade.

Here's a 60 min point & figure chart that shows the near term support levels the best imo. Good support in the mid 55 area.

thanks for charts..

An interesting week in the markets. Volatility still rules the day at the moment.

I took the stage 2 continuation in YUM yesterday at $58.26 with a stop at $51.98, but that was my only trade this week as I didn't want to put any new positions on until the Euro summit was concluded.

I've been thinking this week about whether I can automate part of the stage identification process. And as the 30 week moving average is the key component I've been trying to think of a way to measure the momentum of it.

I came up with a simple momentum indicator that uses the "Slope" math calculation of the most recent 5 figures of the MA to measure the 30 week MA momentum - which seems to work well if you look at divergences (see the bottom indicator of the attached S&P 500 chart), but I still think that there could be a better way.

So can anyone suggest a way of calculating the speed and angle of the 30 week MA?

I've attached the S&P 500 weekly chart, which has the NYSE Advance Decline momentum indicator mentioned in Chapter 8 of the book and also my indicator which measures the momentum of the 30 week moving average over the previous 5 weeks.

(SPD.L) Sports Direct looks to be close to making a Stage 4 breakdown, after rolling over in the last few months to carve out a Stage 3 top. There's a risk that it'll be dragged up with the market if that decides to have a rally, but it looks like it wants to test lower levels after it's impressive 100% or so Stage 2 rally that began last September.

Relative performance versus the market and industry sector is starting to under perform, but it's slightly outperforming the General retailers UK sub sector still.

Volume is starting to fall off and the 30 week weighted moving average has turned down. Price pushed below the 200 day MA on Thursday and failed on the retest on Friday, so this might be a good hedge as I'm overly long at the moment, but I'm cautious of it putting in a bottom around the 200 level, as that would signal that it's going move back into the Stage 3 range and not break down to Stage 4.

The 200 day ATR is 10.78, so if I short a break of Thursday low at 207.60, then the 2x ATR(200) stop loss would be 229.15. But last weeks high was 232.70 and the 30 week WMA is at 228.06, so it might safer to give the stop a bit more room above 233 and take the position size down a little to compensate.

Gold's move down yesterday confirmed that it's in early Stage 3 now, by making it's first major lower low for a very long time. However, this doesn't mean that the bull run is over, but that it is in a Stage 3 period of consolidation with a range roughly between 1550 and 1900. It also has major trend line support around the 1600 area, so a move down to test that seems likely with the weakening technical picture and would also complete an A-B-C correction from the parabolic move up in the summer. So I'm personally going to be looking to get long again if we get back to to the trend line. But for the time being the bias is negative and looks a good short term short if it fails to recapture the 1700 level quickly.