Finance Trends Letter

Gold stocks ( GDX , NUGT ) have been firming up and moving higher in recent days.  This trend is especially evident if we pull up the chart of one of the world's leading gold miners, Franco Nevada ( FNV ). Sporting a $14.8 billion market cap, FNV is the 3rd-largest US-listed gold miner by market cap , behind $20 billion Barrick and Newmont Mining. FNV just made a new all-time high above $81.16, the prior high from August 2016. You can see these price points on the updated chart below (the stock was just below the ATH price when I shared the FNV chart on Twitter ). The stock has cleared resistance and has only "blue skies" above. So the recent strength in gold mining stocks and utilities is reminiscent of early 2016 , when these two industries were among the best-performing groups in the market. The gold miners and utilities enjoyed a strong run through the summer of 2016, then pulled back sharply into early 2017. While utility stocks ( XLU ) have already gon...

McDonald's ( MCD ) is trading near an all-time high, even as the broader market has stumbled in recent weeks. Quick chart update on McDonald's ( MCD ), a stock that was last highlighted in our "new all time highs" stock report from April 2017. At that time, MCD was hitting new highs as the Nasdaq made a record high above the 6,000 point mark.  Today, MCD is trading just below a new all-time high, even as the overall market has suffered through some late-summer gyrations/shakeouts and pullbacks. This is a sign of the stock's relative strength compared to the broader market. MCD is a stock to watch here. See the performance chart below: MCD vs. SPY , QQQ .   MCD has outperformed the S&P 500 ETF ( SPY ) and the Nasdaq 100 ETF ( QQQ ) during the August correction. The stock has moved higher from its July low, even as the indexes lost a bit of ground since late July.  MCD (+31% YTD) has also outperformed SPY (+10% YTD), of which it is a com...

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...

Welcome, new readers! Signup for our free email updates at the Finance Trends Newsletter . The Globe and Mail interviewed me about my trading process and recent trades for their weekend investing column, "Me and My Money". It was a pleasure to be highlighted (thanks again to columnist Larry MacDonald) .  You'll find some background on my trading philosophy and a n update on some of my personal investments and recent trades. Plus, a few words of advice to investors and new traders on controlling your risk, informe d by my own experiences and setbacks in trading. Since newspaper columns must be edited for space, some crucial details regarding my recent trades ( along with ticker symbols) and investing history were left out.   Next week, I'll publish a n interview transcript that will offer a fuller, more detailed view of my written responses. Email subscribers will get a first look at th is exclusive content. Thank you for read in g ...

The latest edition of the Finance Trends Newsletter was sent out to subscribers on Thursday. If you would like to join our free email list and receive new updates, please subscribe via the title link. Our latest email report, " Going Outside Your Investing Comfort Zone " provides a brief update to this week's Amazon ( AMZN ) and Google ( GOOGL ) post. Namely, the question of how to step up to the plate and buy such high-priced stocks as they cross the $100, $200, or even the rarefied $1,000 per share mark. Here is an excerpt from our latest email update:  "... 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..."  "...While writing today's update, I had a chance to look back on a prior AMZN post and a big mi...

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 ...