The best stock watchlist you will read on this blog this week!

Gosh, I sound like a penny stock promoter with these hyped-up titles. Some interesting stocks, but my trading week will probably finish boringly tomorrow.

TIV – nice breakout, but it is a commodity play.

tiv

PLUG – Nice big volume break. Should be good for more upside. Long on green.

plug

MMG – Yep, another miner. Ignore.

mmg

LIZ – Beautiful breakout above resistance at $6.30. A little over-extended for me to play it long. Also tends to trade choppily.

liz

ENMD – Crappy biotech up 50% on no news? Buy on green, $0.95 is meaningful. Short on red.

enmd

LUNA – Spiked hard on rumors of a contract win. Even stocks with “fat-fingered shorts” charts that are up on rumors usually fade. I thought about shorting, but this would have been a higher-risk trade. No play now.

LUNA

ZMTP – Spinoff or new incarnation of ZOOM or something. Crazy chart, could still have another day of crazy spiking in it. Long on green, but trading it long here would be very risky.

ZMTP

APCVZ – A great history of failing on every single spike. I tried to short today but it was not shortable at IB until it had already dropped to $0.63. It should drop tomorrow but the risk/reward is not great.

apcvz

Disclosure: No positions. I have a disclosure policy.

Understanding engineered breakouts

Video trade recap plus my analysis of what I call an ‘engineered breakout’, when concentrated buying, whether by a single large trader or a trader with a following (such as Superman or the Lionmaster or others) causes a technical breakout after which momentum buyers further push up the stock. Best quote of the video: “This is the best damn trade recap video you will see … today.”

Due to overwhelming demand (most particularly from Tim Bohen aka tbohen), I will be borrowing an iPhone with the “I am T-Pain” app on it while in Vegas so I can auto-tune a trade recap or two. (See Autotune the News if you do not understand.) I have a volunteer who will lend his iPhone to the effort so no need to worry.

Daily profit: ($11.64)

Disclosure: No positions. I have a disclosure policy.

How to trade the upcoming Doubling Stocks pump & dump

Doubling Stocks (along with a number of other stock promoters) pulled off one of the best pump & dumps of the year back in May by pumping UOMO Media Inc. (OTC: UOMO). The pump sent the stock from $0.35 to $1.00 in one day. I was too afraid to make money buying it (I actually bought it in the pre-market on the pump day but sold right after the open … a few minutes later it rose like a rocket), but I did make some money short selling it. All told, I made over $1,100 on it.

Of course, by being unethical losers, Michael Cohen and crew at Doubling Stocks made far more than that. They received only a measly $50,000 from a third party to pump the stock, but they bought 400,000 shares prior to the pump that they then sold into the pump. Tim Sykes had a good post on the pump where he copied the full disclaimer. A very conservative estimate of Doubling Stocks’ trading profit would be $140,000, if they bought at $0.35 and sold at $0.70. A more likely average buy price would be $0.25 as they probably bought over a week or two prior to the pump, with an average sell price right near the top of the pump at $0.90. If that was the case, then they made about $260,000.

uomo

Michael Cohen of Doubling stocks has been sending out emails about his forthcoming pump, which will come on October 30. Here is his description of his previous pump:

About 5 months ago, before
my last stock pick I said:

“If this stock doesn’t triple
within 48 hours I’ll RETIRE
as a stock picker”

What happened?

The stock rocketed from $0.35
to $1.06 in under 48 hours!

But this time he writes that the stock will take a lot longer to rise:

However, this time… I believe my
new pick will steadily climb to
its peak over a span of 14 to 21
days.

What does that mean? Of course, I cannot know for certain, but I bet that means that he is going to gradually sell his holdings into the pump to make sure that it rises slowly. Or, he could be getting paid a lot of money for the pump and whomever is paying him is planning on dumping a huge number of shares into the market, keeping the stock from rising much. If he gets paid enough money for this pump he won’t care if the stock goes up or not. He’ll be happy to screw his followers, because he can always build another pump and dump site. Such is what happened to StockPreacher last summer. No matter what, the risk of going long a pump such as this is high and I will likely not look to buy it. I will, however, look to short it aggressively, something I did not do last time.

Disclosure: No positions. I have a disclosure policy.

SEC standardizes rules for canceling erroneous trades

The SEC has enacted a new rule for busting (canceling) clearly erroneous stock trades. Previously each exchange has made its own rules.

The rules force exchanges to investigate potentially erroneous trades within 30 minutes, and to resolve the matter within 30 minutes thereafter.

As well, exchanges can only consider canceling a trade if the share price exceeds the last public sale price by more than 10 percent for shares priced under $25, by more than 5 percent for shares priced between $25 and $50, and by more than 3 percent for shares priced at more than $50.

See article here. Also, prior to this rule exchanges could take hours to cancel trades.

Disclosure: I have had about four trades busted by the Nasdaq, wiping out over $15,000 in profits. Two were on fat-fingered shorts, one was a buy of Google when the exchange was having computer issues, and one was a buy of GVBP in pre-market trading for half the bid price.

Watchlist for October 6th: Radio Ga-Ga

Investors are going ga-ga for radio stocks. ROIAK, RGCI, CMLS are all radio stocks. It pays to know industry groupings and to know how different industries trade.

ROIAK – This is the most interesting to me due to its big volume big move. Long on strength, short on weakness.

roiak

RGCI – Has a much smaller ADR.

rgci

CMLS – Again, a much smaller ADR.

cmls

MIC – Nice breakout appears imminent at $9.50 – $9.58. Has a history of runs of white candles, although its ADR is not large.

mic

QSFT – Nice breakout. Had an upgrade and a new product notice, not sure if there will be continuation. Long on green, otherwise I’ll ignore.

qsft

Disclosure: No positions. I have a disclosure policy.

Watchlist for October 4th: Not much

Nothing exciting on watch. Seriously. This time I’m not just being lazy; I found no exciting setups.

LVCA has a nice breakout on Friday but I don’t play OTC BB breakouts. It is a pump (see the comments for details).

lvca

DYAI also a pump I think, on short watch, although I think it has another big up day in it. (Thanks to Preston for bringing it up in the comments below. I added it to the watchlist in response to his comments.)

dyai

Here is a chart of GSAE for posterity.

gsae

Disclosure: No positions. I have a disclosure policy.