How To Find HOT Stock Picks!

Finding those stock picks can be a tough task.

I am very familiar with the frustrated feeling that you can get when starting your trading/investing career, that feeling of being clueless when it comes to finding those stocks that are skyrocketing and on the move, and not just sticking with the boring ones we all know, ie:Google, yahoo, Walmart ect…

So how do you find those stocks that have had huge gains, breaking out or coming across those good momentum plays or finding stocks that have been on the run for several days? I will show you one small simple tool that you can check on a regular basis that is free and is pretty darn handy! It is right here at yahoo’s finance page, Located in a small section called “Market Movers”.

Go to Yahoo’s Finance page.

Scroll down and on the left hand side of the screen you should see this-

Click the Most Price % Change link, which i highlighted in the picture.

You are then taken to a screen that looks like this one below (this is a sample and not real time).

The List!!!

Presented here is list of the top market movers through out the market day. As you can see it creates a list with 6 columns, to me the most important columns to pay attention to are, they ticker symbol(the company), the percentage change, and most important the volume. They key to using this list is paying attention to how many shares have been traded and the gains the stock made that day. Let’s pick one from the list as an example, i will choose “Zygo Corporation (ZIGO)”. ZIGO made a huge 45% gain or $3.34 “dollar gainer” move today. Now as i mentioned earlier the most important factor to look at is the volume or the amount of shares traded in that day. In this case ZIGO traded 1,381,709 shares which indicates this stock is liquid and can be easily traded in and out of if you wish. If you take a close look at “Community Central Bank Corp (CCBD)” they made a 38% gain BUT only on 2,097 shares traded, that is way to low to trade in and out of and not a popular stock to get in on unless you like to watch your money sit there and do nothing.

How can this make you money?

These high percent gainers did not make there huge gains from thin air, they obviously had something happen for this to take place. This list is the starting point in the research process. Take those tickers and plug them into your favorite charting software and do some technical analysis on them, or plug that ticker right back into yahoo finance and do some fundamental research and find out what others think looking at there message boards, all this to determine if it is worth trading or not. Before you know it you will have a nice watch list for the next day with stocks you know will be moving.

This tool is one of the ways i find my stocks and build my pre market watch list, this could be very helpful with yours. Stay tuned for more tips and tools you can use when searching for stocks.  :).

How To Find The Short Interest In a Stock

Have you ever wondered how many shares are short in a particular stock?

Maybe you did not even know this information exists, well it does and can be useful stuff! Finding out how many shares are short of a company can be vital information when looking to trade a stock, pretty much this information will tell you how many people are betting against this stock and want’s to see it drop like a rock. On the other hand this information can let you know how much the stock price can squeeze higher if all those individuals suddenly want to cover those short positions, which will make the stock price spike very rapidly. Some instances for those who short the stock want to cover will be, a positive P/R, Good earnings news, a big buyer coming in and pushing the price higher ect… All of which will force shorts to cover and in turn spike the stock price and if you have a long position when it spikes you could see a significant jump in your percentage gain, it might be in your interest to sell into that spike to hold on to those profits!

In this article i will tell you places to find this information as well as show you some chart examples of a blatant short squeeze!

lets get to it!

1.)The first place i will show you is of course yahoo finance. So open up a new tab or browser window and head on over there.

Once there enter in the company or ticker symbol in the “Get Quote” text box located on the top right hand side.  get qoute box

2.)For this rundown i will use a familiar company “Amazon (AMZN)”. Once you enter in your ticker or the company name a new screen will appear with the stock quote information. What we are looking for is a small link under “Company” section called “Key Statistics”, which will be in the left hand column next to the quote information. I underlined this link with a red line in the picture.

Key statistics

3.)Now that you are at this screen, wonder over to the right side and scroll down some untill you see a section Called “Share Statistics” this is what we want!

Share statistics

This is were you will find the short interest in a stock at that given time. Notice in the picture i highlighted the key areas that will be of most use, Shares Outstanding, Float, Shares short ect… In this example you can see that amazon has 13.68 million shares short of the float which is 332.18million shares. If don’t know what the float is, well it is the number of shares that is publicly traded. So 4.90% of the float is short this stock. And you can see that this number has risen since the prior month which was 17.5 million shares short. This will let you know that a lot of people are betting against this stock and think it has gone up to much, only you can decide if they are wrong or wright and go against them or join them.

Alternative way of getting this information.

Now remember i mentioned this is one of many ways to get this type of information. The second way is a little bit easier to get to and has a tiny bit more information on the short interest.

1.) go to the ShortSqueeze website.

And as before enter the ticker symbol into the text box and hit “short quote”.

short quote text box

2.) Now it will bring up the short interest in this stock with a lot of extra information. This site also has some proprietary information regarding the short intrest, like there “Short Squeeze Ranking” ect.. which they have other things as well but you have to be a premium member to get a hold of that stuff, which in my opinion is unnecessary info.

This is all the info you need here.

short intrest

Conclusion

Both of these sites are free and provides useful information. I just wanted to present more than one option so that you can decide which one you like better. Now you know how to get short interest information on a particular stock and use it to your advantage! Good luck! :)

Examples of some Short Squeeze’s

Stay tuned for more Tutorials, if you have questions or want to give feedback please comment below! :)

ATLAS PIPELNE HLDING (AHD) Failed Breakout

ATLAS PIPELNE HLDING (AHD) Failed Breakout

So, I was watching this stock pretty closely today ATLAS PIPELNE HLDING (AHD) because it was on the verge or breaking out from it’s previous high at $7.00. As you can see from the chart when it was gaining on a breakout point of $4.50ish the first time it broke and shoot way up. I was expecting it to do the same here at $7.00, but from not a very strong market it was having trouble holding on to that point mid day. I bought in at $7.41 with a bad fill i was aiming for around $7.35ish, but i thought w.e i this thing will take off soon. It shot up to a high of $7.45 and headed down from there. I have a tight stop in at $6.93 which is slightly below the breakout point. I will give this thing one more day, if i get stopped out then so be it and i cut my losses quickly,learn and move on! I have a small position since it was a risky play, but hopefully the market will open up strong tomorrow and this thing will breakout for which i expect it to. This was a total breakout speculation trade, this company is not doing well with a horrible balance sheet with over 1billion that’s right a billion dollars in debt, it is has a current market cap of $194million dollars which is pathetic compared to what it use to be. Tomorrow will be the test, lets hope it goes to the moon and squeezes out some shorts :) .

Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, Inc. (MDRX) Analysis

Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, Inc. (MDRX) – This company offers software, services, information, and connectivity solutions that enable physicians and other health care providers to deliver patient safety and clinical outcomes primarily in the United States. The company operates through two segments, Clinical Solutions and Health Solutions. The Clinical Solutions segment includes enterprise business for large physician practices and integrated delivery networks, and professional business for smaller or independent physician practices. It provides clinical and practice management software solutions and related services. The company is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, Inc. is a subsidiary of Misys plc.

IT in the health care industry is booming right now and Allscripts-Misys Healthcare is just one of the leading companies providing IT infrastructure to the health care industry. This company is a diamond in the ruff with a current trading price of less than $20/share(1-7-2010) and a growth multiple of 82! Allscripts has huge potential for growth and inovation in health care, with it gaining new customers from all over the country. It’s most recent news came from Mountain States Health Alliance (MSHA) when it “Selected the Allscripts Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Practice Management (PM) solutions for 300 employed and affiliated physicians and mid-level providers to enhance the quality of patient care, improve patient communications, and better manage the cost of care delivery.” and will provide this service across a Four-Sate area. Read the full P/R here. This goes to show how in demand these services are especially with how the country is turning over to an entire electronic health care record database.

The companies CEO Glen E. Tullman is really taking this company to new levels, he has been with the company since 1997 and has a wealth of knowledge in the industry. Glen has been on Jim Cramer’s Tv show “Mad Money” several times describing what his company does and were it is going. Although Jim recently gave MDRX the “Sell Sell Sell” When he said “I’m saying ka-ching, ka-ching… let’s ring the register and bring home some profits. Healthcare reform may very well be history.” he made this statement on 12-1-09. I really could disagree with Jim here, with it’s trading price at $19.60(exatcly as i write this) is down from it’s 52 week high of $22.21/share this could be a nice place to start getting in. I would wait to see were it starts to level off, and see the first qtr report of 2010 and make my decision.

Technical Analysis.

MDRX_Chart

As you can see from the chart this stock has been on the steady rise since it’s low of $7.61 in February and hit a 52 week high in October at $22.21. It looks as if that $22 mark is resistance and as you can see it tested that mark at the end of October and failed to break it. It does have some good support around the $18ish area were it most likely will hit and bounce off of. The volume is pretty low with an Average Volume (3 month) 905,897 shares traded. I did get a MA(4.9) cross to the down side with an ADX below 20 signaling that it is selling off and headed lower. This needs a good momentum push to the upside with a good amount of volume to break the resistance barrier.

Overall

I like Allscripts Fundamentally but Technically it needs to improve. Although this would be a great opportunity to pick up some shares for cheap.

Quick Glance at Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, Inc. (MDRX) Fundies….

Market Cap – $2.86B

EPS – 0.24

Growth Multiple – 82 (current market price / eps = M)

P/E ratio – 83.22

Total Cash – $84.85M

Debt – $41.19M

Qtrly Revenue Growth (yoy): 77.70%

Shares Outstanding – 145.13M

Float – 61.94M shares

Recent Analyst Coverage.

18-Dec-09 Maxim Group Initiated Buy

18-Sep-09 Caris & Company Initiated Above Average

18-Sep-09 Piper Jaffray Upgrade Neutral

References: yahoo Finance, Finviz.