Finance Trends Letter

Note: Email subscribers of the Finance Trends Newsletter receive the first look at new articles and market updates, such as the following piece, sent out to our email list on Sunday (2/24). How to Invest, or Reinvest, in a Rising Market The S&P 500 ( SPX ) recently climbed above 2,700 for the first time since last December. The question on many minds is this: are we experiencing the start of a new uptrend or are we in the middle of another "bear market" rally? First, let's dispense with the loaded "bear market" vs. "bull market" terms and simply look at the charts. Here is a daily chart of the SPX, one of the world's most widely watched stock indexes. ...

Well the long knives were certainly out for Tesla ( TSLA ) and its CEO, Elon Musk this week. Wall Street, legal firms, the SEC , and media talking heads were all roused to action (or comment) over Musk's recent proposal to take the company private at $420 per share. After floating the idea (via Twitter) of a private buyout of Tesla on August 7, Musk wrote to Tesla employees and shareholders about his vision for running Tesla as a private firm in a blog post entitled, "Taking Tesla Private" . Among the advantages of operating Tesla as a private firm (as well as the disadvantages of being a publicly traded company), Musk lists the following:  "... First, a final decision has not yet been made, but the reason for doing this is all about creating the environment for Tesla to operate best. As a public company, we are subject to wild swings in our stock price that can be a major distraction for everyone working at Tesla, all of whom are shareholders.  Being...

Welcome, readers. This post was sent out to Finance Trends Newsletter subscribers earlier today. Subscribe now to get all our email updates as soon as they are published. You may have heard of Snapchat (certainly your kids or your younger nieces and nephews have) and its parent company, Snap Inc ( SNAP ). The youth-targeted social messaging and live-streaming app IPO'd in 2017, but quickly disappointed investors with a slow decline from its early highs near $28 into the mid-teens (how appropriate, given their demographic). Well, after a nearly year-long decline, SNAP shares are roaring back in a big way. The stock surged higher this week on its first earnings beat (the company still reported a loss of -13 cents per share) and increased revenue Y-O-Y.   Here is the SNAP chart I shared yesterday on Twitter, with the following note: "There's the high volume, gap up move after earnings. Buyers, Wall St. proving their interest. Powering out of last year...

This post was originally published on September 14, 2017 in the Finance Trends Newsletter . Sign up to join our email list - you'll receive exclusive updates and market insights , plus the best of our website and social media content. Tesla Inc. ( TSLA ) shares, which closed at $377.64 today, are trading just below their 52-week high. A move above $387 would mark a new all-time high for the stock. That means no overhead price resistance, only the potential for blue skies above. Here is a monthly chart (log scale, click to enlarge) that goes back to Tesla's IPO in 2010. It shows the stock's full trading history, including the breakout move from $40 to $290 in 2013 - 2014. The weekly chart below shows Tesla's recent breakout (from a long 3-year trading range) above $300 and the run up to its highs above $386. If TSLA can hold these gains and advance an additional 4%, the stock will be trading at a new all-time high. $387 is the magic number here....

Snapchat parent Snap Inc's stock ( SNAP ) is sliding after a downgrade from Morgan Stanley. The stock is set to close -9% on the day. As the updated price chart shows (see annotations), SNAP has been suffering since its first quarterly earnings report back in May 2017 .  Since then, the downtrend has accelerated. After a brief rebound above $21, SNAP has continued to trade at new lows. Today's gap down put the stock well below its IPO price of $17. From Fortune: " Snapchat's Biggest Underwriter Says It Was 'Wrong' About SNAP Stock " "...Morgan Stanley's downgrade is a particularly hard hit for the company as the bank was an underwriter for Snap's IPO, guiding the company through the process. Typically, such underwriters become cheerleaders of the company after it officially goes public, authoring "buy" or "hold" recommendations. And Morgan Stanley was no exception. Following Snap's IPO, Morgan S...

Amazon ( AMZN ) and Google ( GOOGL ) are set to join the $1000 per share club.  We last spoke of AMZN and GOOGL in our late April roundup of leading tech stocks making new highs .  You can also check our 2013 post, " Amazon: Long-Term AMZN Charts and Thoughts ", and revisit a time earlier in this bull market when the stock was trading near $350 a share.  One of my great errors of omission (failure to act) was in not purchasing AMZN shares after writing this post. The share price continued to climb steadily ( in fact, it has since tripled ) , confirming all the basic factors (retail dominance, AWS growth) laid out at that time.  Now, I am slowly retraining myself to act on my analysis , even when it comes to buying very "high-priced" shares such as AMZN , PCLN , etc. As I remind myself lately, you don't need to take on a very large position, just buy a few shares and participate in the uptrend.

The Nasdaq Composite ( COMPQX , IXIC ) topped 6,000 today, a record high for the tech-heavy index.  Here is an updated monthly chart ( click below ) of the Nasdaq from 1999 - 2017. You'll note that the prior dot com bubble peak of 5,132 in March 2000 was not topped until mid-2015. With this latest surge, the Nasdaq jumped over the 6k mark for the first time ever. Joining the Nasdaq at new all-time highs are many of the most actively traded US tech stocks.  Leading tech names such as Amazon ( AMZN ), Apple ( APPL ), Facebook ( FB ), Netflix ( NFLX) , Microsoft ( MSFT ), and Google ( GOOG, GOOGL ) are trading at, or very near, their all-time highs. See the Finviz charts below. Also joining the new highs parade are Tesla ( TSLA ), a tech company in the guise of a car manufacturer, payments processor Square ( SQ ), Pepsi ( PEP ), and omnipresent burger joint, McDonald's ( MCD ).  So we are seeing a bullish resumption of the upward trend in US stocks. The ...

NVIDIA ( NVDA ) shares have struggled to regain their former highs above $120. Has this new tech leader topped out or is the stock merely catching its breath and consolidating?  NVDA is currently trading around $100 after falling back below its 50 day moving average . The stock is currently down -6% YTD. As you'll note from the chart annotations ( click chart to enlarge ), this is the second time the stock has dipped below the 50 day MA since topping out in early February.  The stock made a short-term top at the end of 2016, with a bearish engulfing bar (the long red bar/candle on December 28, 2016). This down day marked the start of a brief decline, after which NVDA climbed back to challenge its former high. The stock failed to hold above the $120 level and quickly dropped back below its key moving averages. I should note that NVDA pulled back sharply below its 20 and 50 day MAs back in early 2016 . The stock soon bounced back and went on t o make multi-year h...

Semiconductor stocks have been one of the strongest groups in the stock market since mid-2016, when the S & P 500 recovered and started its march to new all-time highs.  You can see this clear uptrend taking shape in the annotated weekly chart ( below) of Semiconductor ETF, SMH . The chip stock rally is now broadening out. While big name stocks like Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ) and Nvidia ( NVDA ) led the charge higher in 2016, lesser-known stocks like Brooks Automation ( BRKS ) and Kulicke and Soffa ( KLIC ) are now coming on strong and moving to multi-year highs. Let's view their charts. NVDA has been a powerful leader to the upside since 2015. After climbing through resistance and making a 5-year high in late 2015, NVDA had a throwback correction down to $25 level. The stock resumed its advance in early 2016, setting a new all-time high above $40 in May of that year. Since then, it has climbed over $100 and become one of the most widely watched and traded tec...