tradethepoolpool ads

For TWTR, BBRY, and the S&P 500, Price Matters Most

In this article recent calls on TWTR and BBRY are updated, these have moved very fast, and specific market comments are offered.  On January 3, 2014 Stock Traders Daily issued public comments to sell  Twitter (NASDAQ:TWTR)and buy BlackBerry (NASDAQ:BBRY), each of those were met with harsh criticisms from the public and the media, but sometimes making money in the stock market is not about being popular.  Instead, those calls were based on what we consider a very important thing, they were based on price, and using the performance of these recent calls as an example we will prove in this article why price matters, and define what the market is telling us based on price.

First, I recommended that anyone holding Twitter sell their position, and although I recommended this to private clients when the stock was above $70.00, when I made this public statement the stock was testing $70.00.  Since I made that call the stock is down, it has been as low as $56.00, and at the time I wrote this article it was trading at about $61.00.  Thus far, the stock has declined between 10 and 20%, but the rationale was not because of Twitter's product, it had nothing to do with management, it was solely based on price.  Twitter ran up, very aggressively I might add, and triggered sell signals.  Those sell signals prompted my recommendation to sell Twitter when the stock was above $70.00.

At almost that same time, I issued a recommendation to buy BlackBerry.  The stock was about $7.40 when I issued this call publicly, but the stock was lower than that when I issued it to clients privately.  Still, BlackBerry rallied to test $9.00 after the public call was made, and it was currently trading at about $8.50 at the time I wrote this.  The price of BlackBerry increased between 10 and 20% since the time of the public announcement of this call, but again this call was made based on price.

For each of the above calls the targets that I have conveyed to private clients are also based on price that should prove that price matters, but this article is about the market too, and a price evaluation of the market tells us that the market, not unlike many of the stocks that we know, has run up aggressively.

Purposefully, I will use very generic terms to convey my message in this article, but keep in mind that my specific science is technical analysis, one that believes that the most important thing to making money in the stock market is price, and therefore the arguments that many may have about the fundamental aspects of a company, the economy, or the stock market itself will do little to influence my decision to buy and sell when those buy and sell decisions are based on price.

In calendar 2013 the market moved straight up so individual investors could have almost bought anything and made money.  In environments like that, the concept of paying attention to price seems to play a diminished role, but this always matters, and eventually it will matter much more than many people think right now.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that the market thus far in calendar 2014 is showing signs of being extremely vulnerable after an aggressive run, and based on price it is set up for a decline.  I have been warning about the risks in the market for quite some time, and those risks have not gone away, but they certainly have been brushed under the rug.  When the house cleaner comes those germs and allergens that would otherwise be affecting this economy will need to be dealt with, but the house cleaner is not exactly at our front door.

Arguably, the call has been made, the cleaner is coming, but it will take more than a moderate decline to dislodge the sentiment on the street today.  The market indeed is set up for a moderate decline in the near term, but based on what we have seen from the NASDAQ and the Russell 2000 in recent days those investors looking for high beta place are still aggressive and active on the heels of market declines.  The S&P 500 and Dow Jones industrial average paint a completely different picture, and the difference between these two sets of markets is the definition of fast money.  Fast money likes the NASDAQ and the Russell 2000, but fast money cells just as fast as they buy so anyone betting on follow-through needs to watch the S&P 500 specifically.  Those December 31 levels will make all of the difference.

Currently, based on price alone, the Markets are set up for a moderate pullback because thus far the S&P is holding.  Anything more than that would require the dust from under the rug to come out.

Stock Traders Daily offers a number of Strategies that are based exclusively on correlated price action.  One of those is called the Stock of the Week.

Triggers may have already come
Support and Resistance Plot Chart for

Blue = Current Price
Red= Resistance
Green = Support

Real Time Updates for Repeat Institutional Readers:

Factset: Request User/Pass

Bloomberg, Reuters, Refinitiv, Zacks, or IB users: Access Here.

Our Market Crash Leading Indicator is Evitar Corte.
  • Evitar Corte warned of market crash risk four times since 2000.

  • It identified the Internet Debacle before it happened.

  • It identified the Credit Crisis before it happened.

  • It identified the Corona Crash too.

  • See what Evitar Corte is Saying Now.

Get Notified When our Ratings Change: Take a Trial