A few months ago, we told you about a little-known indicator that’s making a small group of investors a lot of money. #-ad_banner-#We call this indicator the “Alpha Score,” because it consistently beats the market and often with less risk than buy-and-hold investing. It can flag exactly which stocks are about to jump double and triple digits in the coming days… weeks… and months. I’ll tell you more about the Alpha Score in a second, but just know that the indicator can range from 0 to 200. The higher the number, the more potential… Read More

A few months ago, we told you about a little-known indicator that’s making a small group of investors a lot of money. #-ad_banner-#We call this indicator the “Alpha Score,” because it consistently beats the market and often with less risk than buy-and-hold investing. It can flag exactly which stocks are about to jump double and triple digits in the coming days… weeks… and months. I’ll tell you more about the Alpha Score in a second, but just know that the indicator can range from 0 to 200. The higher the number, the more potential the stock has. For example, you may not be familiar with Westmoreland Coal (Nasdaq: WLB). It operates six surface coal mines and two power generating units in the western United States. Westmoreland’s outlook was promising when we recommended shares just over a year ago. It had sold 95% of its future production under long-term contracts, and the market for coal looked stable. But that’s not what attracted us to the stock. What most investors didn’t know about WLB is that it had an Alpha Score of 158. Less than 1% of… Read More

With thousands of publicly traded companies out there, it can be overwhelming trying to figure out which stocks to buy. Now add in a constantly changing market. #-ad_banner-#From tensions in Eastern Europe, Ebola scares, various quantitative easing policies — not to mention quarterly earnings — many factors influence the market on any given day. Between understanding what makes a good stock to buy and when is a good time to buy it, many investors end up frustrated or confused as to what they should do. One way to alleviate this stress — follow some simple rules. It’s worked very well… Read More

With thousands of publicly traded companies out there, it can be overwhelming trying to figure out which stocks to buy. Now add in a constantly changing market. #-ad_banner-#From tensions in Eastern Europe, Ebola scares, various quantitative easing policies — not to mention quarterly earnings — many factors influence the market on any given day. Between understanding what makes a good stock to buy and when is a good time to buy it, many investors end up frustrated or confused as to what they should do. One way to alleviate this stress — follow some simple rules. It’s worked very well for me and readers of my premium newsletter, Alpha Trader. Our system focuses on stocks outperforming the market today, which tend to continue beating the market in the months that follow. That’s been proven in academic journals, and it’s something I’ve talked about several times (here, and here). But that’s only half the story. Below are a handful of closed trades that significantly outpaced the market while we held them. While these stocks performed well, it’s not why I bring them up…   Stock Total Return S&P 500 Return Difference Hi-Crush Partners LP (NYSE: HCLP) 66.1% 22.0% +44.1%… Read More

The past month has been a rollercoaster for the markets. #-ad_banner-#Within one week the Dow Jones Industrial Average completely erased its 2014 gains, only to rebound over the following weeks, leaving it up a measly 1.3%. One of my goals as Chief Investment Strategist of Alpha Trader is to alleviate the emotion that naturally comes with watching your investment portfolio wildly fluctuate up and down. I do this with a rules-based, systematic approach to the market. Throughout the latest bout of market weakness, our Alpha Trader system responded precisely as it was designed to. Since the market began to show… Read More

The past month has been a rollercoaster for the markets. #-ad_banner-#Within one week the Dow Jones Industrial Average completely erased its 2014 gains, only to rebound over the following weeks, leaving it up a measly 1.3%. One of my goals as Chief Investment Strategist of Alpha Trader is to alleviate the emotion that naturally comes with watching your investment portfolio wildly fluctuate up and down. I do this with a rules-based, systematic approach to the market. Throughout the latest bout of market weakness, our Alpha Trader system responded precisely as it was designed to. Since the market began to show weakness in July, we’ve closed out a total of 59 positions while only adding 28 new stocks to our portfolios. During this period, we were able to sell positions well before they moved further to the downside in sympathy with the wider markets. Moreover, our trading rules allowed us to capture some exceptionally large gains since July: Company Holding Period (Days) Return Amkor Technology (Nasdaq: AMKR) 168 57.7% Hi-Crush Partners LP (NYSE: HCLP) 365 66.1% ANI Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ANIP) 252 114.1% Bitauto Holdings (NYSE: BITA) 365 242.2% Closing out winning positions in the face of a crumbling market is… Read More

A year ago, Profitable Trading developed a new indicator based on momentum. Using this indicator, we’ve been able to identify, and recommend to readers, some of 2014’s biggest winners. For example: — Hi-Crush Partners LP (NYSE: HCLP), 66.1% gain — ANI Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ANIP), 114.1% gain — Bitauto Holdings (NYSE: BITA), 242.2% gain — Amkor Technology (Nasdaq: AMKR), 57.7% gain We locked in all of these gains in less than a year. But as you can see, these stocks don’t have much in common. Bitauto Holdings, for example, is a billion-dollar Chinese company focused on providing Internet… Read More

A year ago, Profitable Trading developed a new indicator based on momentum. Using this indicator, we’ve been able to identify, and recommend to readers, some of 2014’s biggest winners. For example: — Hi-Crush Partners LP (NYSE: HCLP), 66.1% gain — ANI Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ANIP), 114.1% gain — Bitauto Holdings (NYSE: BITA), 242.2% gain — Amkor Technology (Nasdaq: AMKR), 57.7% gain We locked in all of these gains in less than a year. But as you can see, these stocks don’t have much in common. Bitauto Holdings, for example, is a billion-dollar Chinese company focused on providing Internet content for the auto industry. ANI Pharmaceuticals develops branded and generic drugs. And Hi-Crush produces a specialized mineral used to increase oil production. #-ad_banner-#Yet they were all identified by the same indicator before they went on to deliver huge gains. It’s a unique indicator that doesn’t rely on just one technical or fundamental tool to identify potential winners. Instead, this indicator is derived by combining two of the market’s most effective “triggers” — a technical trigger and a fundamental trigger. The technical indicator, or “Trigger #1,” has been proven to beat the market by traders and academics alike. You might… Read More

If you are like most Americans, you have the majority of your stock holdings in U.S.-based companies. It’s called “home-country bias,” and it can be a huge mistake. Think about it… The company you work for is likely based in the United States. If you own a home, then you have exposure to the U.S. real estate market. In other words, your entire financial livelihood is based entirely in the United States. It’s not hard to see why this could be a problem. Your income and the value of your home are completely tied… Read More

If you are like most Americans, you have the majority of your stock holdings in U.S.-based companies. It’s called “home-country bias,” and it can be a huge mistake. Think about it… The company you work for is likely based in the United States. If you own a home, then you have exposure to the U.S. real estate market. In other words, your entire financial livelihood is based entirely in the United States. It’s not hard to see why this could be a problem. Your income and the value of your home are completely tied to the United States, so why choose to do the same with your portfolio? Not only is this risky, but it can be extremely limiting when it comes to your portfolio’s performance — especially for retirement accounts and long-term holdings. According to research from Credit Suisse and the London Business School, since 1964, U.S. equities have produced an average annual return of 5.8%. That’s okay, but not as good as the UK market, which posted an average annual return of 6%. The U.S. also lagged far behind South Africa’s 8.2% annual return and Sweden’s… Read More

I wasn’t always a momentum investor. Like many of you, I began my career as a contrarian investor. After all, some of history’s most successful investors have been contrarians. Baron Rothschild, Warren Buffett, George Soros — all made their fortunes in part by betting against prevailing market opinion. Baron Rothschild, often considered to be the father of contrarian investing, was a London-based financier in the 18th century. You probably know him from his most famous piece of investing advice: “Buy when there’s blood in the streets.” #-ad_banner-#Although these days the quote simply means buy when others are… Read More

I wasn’t always a momentum investor. Like many of you, I began my career as a contrarian investor. After all, some of history’s most successful investors have been contrarians. Baron Rothschild, Warren Buffett, George Soros — all made their fortunes in part by betting against prevailing market opinion. Baron Rothschild, often considered to be the father of contrarian investing, was a London-based financier in the 18th century. You probably know him from his most famous piece of investing advice: “Buy when there’s blood in the streets.” #-ad_banner-#Although these days the quote simply means buy when others are fearful, it was more literal when he said it. Rothschild invested in beaten-down British bonds while Britain, and most of Europe, were at war with the French. It was risky. If the British had been defeated, which was a real possibility, the bonds would have been worthless. But Rothschild ended up making a small fortune once the British defeated Napoleon’s army in the Battle of Waterloo. Centuries later, contrarian investors are still finding success. George Soros is best-known for making one of the boldest trades in history, contrarian or otherwise. He infamously sold short about $10 billion in British pounds… Read More

The moment the market opens, my inbox gets flooded with alerts I’ve set up to notify me when a holding makes a big move, hits a stop-loss, releases important news, etc. The other week, I was inundated with messages telling me several of my holdings hit 52-week highs. In fact, in just one day, I received 11 different alerts of stocks hitting new highs. To a huge portion of the investing community, a stock hitting 52-week highs strikes a Pavlovian response… they immediately start thinking about selling. After all, one of the first… Read More

The moment the market opens, my inbox gets flooded with alerts I’ve set up to notify me when a holding makes a big move, hits a stop-loss, releases important news, etc. The other week, I was inundated with messages telling me several of my holdings hit 52-week highs. In fact, in just one day, I received 11 different alerts of stocks hitting new highs. To a huge portion of the investing community, a stock hitting 52-week highs strikes a Pavlovian response… they immediately start thinking about selling. After all, one of the first lessons investors are taught is to “buy low, sell high.” This can turn out to be a huge mistake. #-ad_banner-#Think about this… How many times have you made the mistake of selling a big winner way too early — right before that stock makes another big move in the days and weeks after you’ve sold? If you’re like so many investors, I suspect that the answer is more times than you care to admit. There’s more than just anecdotal evidence that proves the thesis that investors sell too early. A study done in 1997… Read More

There’s a group of stocks currently trouncing the S&P 500. In just a few months, they’ve generated 44.8%, 58.1%, 74.8% and even 137.7%. And I expect this elite club of stocks to continue moving higher for two reasons. For one, each of these stocks sports an abnormally high Alpha Score. #-ad_banner-#Every stock has an Alpha Score, and it can range from 0 to 200. It is derived by combining two of the market’s most effective triggers — relative strength (RS), our technical trigger, and a fundamental trigger. The higher the… Read More

There’s a group of stocks currently trouncing the S&P 500. In just a few months, they’ve generated 44.8%, 58.1%, 74.8% and even 137.7%. And I expect this elite club of stocks to continue moving higher for two reasons. For one, each of these stocks sports an abnormally high Alpha Score. #-ad_banner-#Every stock has an Alpha Score, and it can range from 0 to 200. It is derived by combining two of the market’s most effective triggers — relative strength (RS), our technical trigger, and a fundamental trigger. The higher the score, the more likely a stock is to move higher in the coming weeks and months. On top of having high Alpha Scores, these stocks are also deeply undervalued. In our experience, undervalued stocks with high Alpha Scores outperform the market in a big way. In my premium newsletter, Alpha Trader, we have a section dedicated to finding the market’s most undervalued stocks with high Alpha Scores. It’s called the Half-Priced Stocks Portfolio, and below is snapshot of its performance. (To be fair to my subscribers, I can’t reveal the… Read More

A few months ago, we told you about a little-known indicator that’s making a small group of investors a lot of money. We call this indicator the “Alpha Score”, because it consistently beats the market and often with less risk than buy-and-hold investing. It can flag exactly which stocks are… Read More

Last week, we told you about the Alpha Score, a little-known indicator that can flag exactly which stocks are about to jump 61.5%, 26% or even 118% within weeks and months. #-ad_banner-#On Jan. 14, for example, the Alpha Score triggered a “buy” signal in AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE: AZN), a drug manufacturer with a market cap of nearly $100 billion. At the time, most analysts were extremely bearish on the stock. AZN had been suffering from what one analyst called, “the steepest patent cliff in the industry.” The Alpha Score disagreed with the bearish assessment. It signaled that AZN was one… Read More

Last week, we told you about the Alpha Score, a little-known indicator that can flag exactly which stocks are about to jump 61.5%, 26% or even 118% within weeks and months. #-ad_banner-#On Jan. 14, for example, the Alpha Score triggered a “buy” signal in AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE: AZN), a drug manufacturer with a market cap of nearly $100 billion. At the time, most analysts were extremely bearish on the stock. AZN had been suffering from what one analyst called, “the steepest patent cliff in the industry.” The Alpha Score disagreed with the bearish assessment. It signaled that AZN was one of the stocks most likely to outperform the market in the short term. You see, the day we published our report, AZN sported an Alpha Score of 178. AZN is now up more than 25% since Jan. 14, easily outperforming the S&P 500, which is up less than 3%. What no analyst knew about AZN at the time was that its Alpha Score was one of the highest in the market. Every stock has an Alpha Score, and it can range from 0 to 200. The higher a stock’s Alpha Score, the more potential it has. The Score… Read More