AMGN ready for breakout?

HGR - announced it would sell 13.6M additional shares. Price has stabilized lower around 16. Interesting to see where the Friday price will be.

AMGN - the FDA has finally approved its blood disorder drug Nplate. The price is in a tight oscillation around 64, Bollinger bands have gotten really narrow. Ready for a breakout?
Changing buy trigger to 65.2 .

MITI - coming down to Earth, consolidating around 6.3 . Buy trigger lowered to 6.9 .

Screening: 52-week Highs for HGR & MITI

From 8/24

Slope of the line (Rise in one month) for 52-week high-fliers:
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LSR: 1.8 out of 35 [5.15 %] { Max: 2.0 out of 35 = 5.71% }
HGR: 1.2 out of 18 [6.66 %] { Max: 1.6 out of 18 = 8.9% }
HNZ: 1.4 out of 52 [2.69 %]
TMO: 1.4 out of 61 [2.30 %]
AMGN: 3.5 out of 64 [5.47 %] { Max: 3.5 out of 64 = 5.47% }



HGR - 17.75
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Recent 52-week high. Support at 16.6, 15.2, Resistance: 18.4, avg volume: 300K; market cap: 400M, P/E: 26.57
Announcements/Headlines: Beat earnings estimate 4 quaters in a row, next announce: October
Clear uptrend for the last three months, 50-day EMA significantly higher than 200-day EMA and leading.
2-yr weekly chart:
Advancing volume is clearly higher than declining volume. Long uptrends with small corrections.
Weekly MACD leading.
1-yr daily chart: Advancing volume higher than declining; MACD lagging; 50-day EMA significantly leads 50-day.
3-mo candle daily chart: Lots of testing of lower bound; support seems to prevail.
5-day chart: Has gone lower all week, but stabilized by EOW.

====> Pick it up above 18.2; dump below 16.5; pyramid-in and stop-out; max line ~500


First-pass Screening
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HGR, LSR, AMGN, VRX, MITI, NWY

Second-pass Screening
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Comparing returns for 1-yr [MITI, LSR, HGR, NWY], then 3-mo [MITI, AMGN, NWY, HGR], 1-mo [MITI, AMGN, NWY, VRX]

Buy orders set for MITI (7.5), HGR (18.2) and AMGN (66.2).

Back to the Markets

This is the online journal of a reasonably knowledgeable amateur trader.

I have a little bit of background in trading. A few years ago I read every trading book I could get my hands on, including Dr. Alexander Elder, Edwin Lefevre, MacMillan (Options), Jack Schwager, Schaffer, the Turtles and so on. I then traded options for a couple of years with moderate success - profitable, but not enough to make a significant lifestyle difference. My main focus, of course, is on Technical Trading.

For the last two years, I have been out of the market, and am now getting back in!

I like several strategies, but the one I intend to pursue first is the "plunger" strategy. This is a simple strategy of pyramid-in, stop-out, as detailed roughly in the book Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre. Many believe that the protagonist for this book was modeled after the legendary trader, Jesse Livermore.

I'm planning to publish a detailed account of my trading here - not actual numbers, but a blow-by-blow description of general market and sector trends and their impact on general stocks. I'll be listing predictions of the future, and then looking back at those after their time period has passed to gauge their effectiveness.

Feel free to follow along with me, and to add comments if you agree or disagree. I'm primarily writing this for myself, not for generating a readership; if it helps anyone else, then that's a big bonus.

Happy Trading!