USA Auto Insurance

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

5 Breakout Trades to Buy This Week

BALTIMORE (Stockpickr) -- U.S. stocks bounced hard yesterday, the S&P 500 making its way a full percentage point higher by the time the closing bell rang. That's adding quite a bit of support for the market picture I shared on Thursday.

Yes indeed, stocks are bouncing in September, and that's creating tradable opportunities for investors right now.

That's why we're taking a technical look at five stock trades to take this week.

For the unfamiliar, technical analysis is a way for investors to quantify qualitative factors, such as investor psychology, based on a stock's price action and trends. Once the domain of cloistered trading teams on Wall Street, technicals can help top traders make consistently profitable trades and can aid fundamental investors in better planning their stock execution.

So, without further ado, let's take a look at five technical setups worth trading now.

CGG Veritas

First up is French oil service firm CGG Veritas (CGG)
. The Eurozone-based energy stock hasn't exactly posted blockbuster performance in 2013, but investors who ignore CGG for the final stretch of the year could be making a big mistake. That's because of a bullish technical pattern that's emerging in shares right now.

CGG spent most of the last eight months looking anything but bullish. But an ascending triangle pattern is changing that. The pattern is formed by horizontal resistance to the upside at $26, and uptrending support to the below shares. Basically, as CGG bounces in between those two technical levels, it's getting squeezed closer and closer to a breakout above $26. When that happens, traders have a buy signal.

The ascending triangle pattern in CGG Veritas isn't exactly textbook. That's because the setup is forming at the bottom of a downtrend, rather than in the middle of an uptrend – but it's a mistake to get caught up on the textbook pictures of what trading patterns are supposed to look like. On a move through $26, the trading implications are just as actionable.

Hasbro

We're seeing the exact same setup in shares of toymaker Hasbro (HAS) right now. Like CGG, Hasbro has a horizontal resistance level above shares – at $48 in this case – and uptrending support to the downside. The key difference here is that Hasbro's triangle is more conventional than the one in the French oil stock. A breakout above $48 is the signal to become a buyer.

Whenever you're looking at any technical price pattern, it's critical to think in terms of buyers and sellers. Triangles and other price pattern names are a good quick way to explain what's going on in this stock, but they're not the reason it's tradable – instead, it all comes down to supply and demand for shares.

That resistance line at $48 is a price where there's an excess of supply of shares; in other words, it's a place where sellers have been more eager to take recent gains and sell their shares than buyers have been to buy. That's what makes the move above it so significant – a breakout indicates that buyers are finally strong enough to absorb all of the excess supply above that price level. Wait for that signal to happen before you jump into this stock, then it makes sense to put a protective stop in place at the 50-day moving average.

Bank of New York Mellon

You don't have to be an expert technical analyst to figure out what's going on in shares of Bank of New York Mellon (BK) -- the $35 billion financial services firm is in a textbook uptrend. That's about as simple as a technical pattern gets...

BNY Mellon has had its price action bounded by trendline support to the downside, bouncing higher each of the last seven times it's been tested. That uptrending channel provides a high-probability range for price action on the way up -- and while you want to be a buyer in an uptrend, the ideal time to buy comes on a bounce off of support.

Buying off a support bounce makes sense for two big reasons: it's the spot where shares have the furthest to move up before they hit resistance, and it's the spot where the risk is the least (because shares have the least room to move lower before you know you're wrong). If you decide to buy BK on today's bounce, keep a protective stop on the other side of the trendline.

Lincoln National

Lincoln National (LNC) is a financial stock that's forming a channel of its own... But with a twist.

That's because the $12 billion wealth management firm is moving sideways in a range-bound trade called a rectangle. The setup gets its name because price action is essentially "boxed-in" by resistance above shares at $45, and support to the downside at $42. Instead of buying within the channel, rectangles are breakout trades – you want to trade this name when it breaks outside of the box.

That means that a move through the $45 level is a buy signal, and a move through support at $42 is an indicator that it's time to sell (or short) LNC. Right now, there's some extra bias to the upside – typically, rectangles are continuation patterns, and since Lincoln's preceding price action was up, it's likely next move is up as well. Still, it doesn't become a high probability trade until the breakout happens, so wait to get your direction from the market.

BHP Billiton

Last up is BHP Billiton (BHP), the ore giant from down under. BHP has been selling off over the course of 2013, down 15% at the same time that the broad market has managed to rally around 17% in the other direction. For portfolio managers whose performance is based on a benchmark, BHP has been a portfolio drag all year long. But that could be about to change...

Right now, BHP Billiton is forming an inverse head and shoulders setup, a bullish reversal pattern that indicates exhaustion among sellers. The inverse head and shoulders is formed by two swing lows that bottom out at approximately the same price level (the shoulders), separated by a deeper swing low (the head). The buy signal comes when shares push through the neckline that's acted as resistance over the course of the pattern. Since this setup has been forming in the long-term, the upside implications are long-term once it triggers...

Momentum adds some confirmation to this trade – 14-day RSI has been in an uptrend since the middle of the summer when BHP's price action was still chugging lower. A move through the neckline in September means that upside looks likely...

To see this week's trades in action, check out the Technical Setups for the Week portfolio on Stockpickr.

-- Written by Jonas Elmerraji in Baltimore.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

The All-American "Short Squeeze" No One Else Sees

Everyone knows the U.S. housing "recovery" has been resurrected on slippery ground. But now that we're finally about to slip - big time - no one sees it coming...

Then again, how could they?

The numbers are incredibly misleading...

According to the Commerce Department, new residential home sales in July fell a whopping 13.4% from their June sales pace. And sales in April, May, and June were all revised significantly lower.

Yet according to the National Association of Realtors, existing home sales (completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums, and co-ops) increased 6.5%... to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.39 million in July, from a downwardly revised 5.06 million in June.

On the surface, the divergence is confusing. But not when you look below the surface, where the real money gets made.

As you'll see (before anyone else), the housing "recovery" is just one giant "short squeeze."

And you can make a flat-out killing the moment it ends...

Meet America's Biggest Home Buyers

The divergence in sales of new homes vs. existing homes can be explained as a function of three factors: investor interest, pricing, and potential appreciation.

In just the last two years, institutional investors, hedge funds, private equity firms, and real estate investment trusts have raised more than $18 billion and bought more than 100,000 single-family homes.

Blackstone Group L.P.'s Invitation Homes unit has spent over $5 billion buying more than 32,000 single-family homes. They are the largest owner of homes in the United States.

American Homes 4 Rent, which went public last month and is the second-largest single-family homeowner in the United States, has spent $3.4 billion buying up almost 20,000 single-family homes and said in their August earnings call that they're spending $100 million a month buying more homes.

These institutional buyers aren't buying new homes in bulk; they're buying existing homes in bulk... and one at a time.

New homes, built by giant national builders like Pulte, Lennar, and Toll Brothers, as well as new homes built by small regional and local builders, are priced according to their cost to build, with hoped-for profit margins added on. Generally, there isn't a lot of negotiating room on prices.

Additionally, new homes are financed by builders' banks who build cushions into their loans. And since loans are "new," they can remain outstanding a lot longer than old loans before banks have to classify them as "non-performing."

That gives builders of new homes greater pricing and staying power. In other words, builders aren't readily discounting their inventories to make them attractive to new home buyers.

On the existing homes' side of the street, there's a lot more room to negotiate...

A Crowd of Highly Motivated Sellers... Who Love Cash

Distressed property owners - banks holding foreclosures, beleaguered individual owners, and short-selling owners (those selling homes for less than their mortgaged loan values) - have all been eager to sell... especially for cash, which institutional buyers readily dangle in front of them.

While institutional investors often pay cash, they are in fact financing the cash they're laying out. With interest rates as low as they are, especially for corporate borrowers able to float their I.O.U.s in the bond market, amassing cash hoards against their stock-based equity collateral (via covenant-lite bond offerings) adds to their massive buying power.

New homes tend to appreciate based on "at-the-market" trends, while existing homes are often perceived as having inherently more room to appreciate. That's because many existing homes were previously valued significantly above current market prices. Homes in neighborhoods that once enjoyed solid appreciation rates but have been deeply discounted are desirable purchases on account of the "bounce-back in price" perception.

That's why existing home sales have held up better than new home sales.

Now let's look at house price appreciation trends, which have been robust to say the least.

Just keep in mind the impact the billions of dollars being applied to the market by institutions is having on pricing trends in the existing home market...

A Dangerous Double Dip Looms

The national median existing home price for all housing types was $213,500 in July, which is 13.7% above July 2012 and marks 17 consecutive months of year-over-year price increases, which last occurred from January 2005 to May 2006.

The median price rose at double-digit rates for the past eight months and is only 7.3% below the all-time record of $230,400, posted in July 2006. Two years ago, the median price was 25.7% below the peak.

New home prices haven't risen as quickly. In 2009, after falling 6.6% from faltering 2008 prices, the median new home price was $216,700. As of July 2013 the median new home price is $257,200, which is an 18% increase over the 2009 price level.

In spite of the recent divergence in the pace of sales and rates of change in sales trends between existing and new homes sales, prices on both streets have risen steadily.

Given the rapid appreciation rates of both new and existing home prices and the outsized impact institutional buying has had on existing home sales price appreciation, unless inventories of new and existing homes drop precipitously, it's not only unlikely that the recovery in housing will continue, but it's likely to peter out and result in a double-dip backward slide.

Why? Housing has risen too far too fast off its floor given trends in economic growth, employment, interest rates, lending standards, mortgage money availability, and consumer confidence.

We're already seeing a back-up in pending sale contracts, refinancings, and new money purchase loans on account of the tick up in rates. Which, on a historic basis, are still very low. If rates continue to climb on the long end of the yield curve, buyers will balk. If rates tick up on the short end of the yield curve, banks will balk at lending. In other words, if the Fed does not continue to engineer a steep yield curve, then purchase money will become tighter and tighter.

There can't be any meaningful recovery in housing beyond the bounce we've seen unless lenders loosen underwriting standards and make loans plentiful.

The back-office mechanics that previously facilitated the robust velocity of mortgage money availability, meaning the ability of lenders to package, securitize, and offload loans from their balance sheets, are still clogged up.

Risk-retention rules pertaining to how much lenders have to retain on their balance sheets against loans they make, in the form of the as-yet unfinished qualified residential mortgage (QRM or QM) rules, will be an impediment to robust lending.

U.S. regulations and Basel rules are still being written, rewritten, and challenged by banks who argue that more stringent reserve ratios, leverage ratios, and risk-asset definitions will be too restrictive and will result in credit tightening. So far, the net result is that banks aren't inclined to flush mortgage conduits with money if they don't know how those loans will be accounted for by regulators.

The bottom line, again:

You can't sustain a robust housing recovery without banks' willing participation.

Then there's the economy, unemployment, and home purchaser confidence.

None of those metrics are encouraging.

While second-quarter GDP growth was revised to 2.5% from 1.7%, the pace of growth remains well below the expected 3% rate economists had projected for 2013.

Unemployment is still stubbornly high and may remain above 7% as the new structural level of unemployment becomes harder and harder to bring down.

Technology and productivity gains have eviscerated middle-management jobs, and Obamacare threatens to reduce the ranks of the fully employed in the future as companies opt for more part-time workers to reduce their mandated contributions under the new healthcare regime rules.

This Is a Classic Short Squeeze 5 Ways to Short the "Recovery" Capital Wave Forecast readers will have a chance to play housing's "double dip" in a number of ways.

But here are a few of the recommendations Shah will consider when it's time to move:

1. Shorting homebuilders like Pulte (PHM), Lennar (LEN), and Toll Brothers (TOL).

2. Selling short one or two majors while selling calls on homebuilder ETFs.

3. Buying puts on discretionary-based ETFs, especially the one that equally weights the stocks that make up its underlying portfolio -Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight Consumer Discretionary ETF (RCD).

4. Buying puts on leveraged REITS that bet on mortgage-backed portfolios.

5. Shorting banks that haven't cleaned up the mortgage-backed securities bets on their balance sheets.

Last, but certainly not least, future homebuyers are witnessing the evaporation of their own potential equity build-up as rapidly rising prices are squeezing any cushion new buyers would have hoped to enjoy. As that appreciation gets ratcheted out of the market for new buyers, banks will increasingly demand more skin in the game on account of expected or hoped-for equity cushion build-up rapidly disappearing.

The rapid rise in home prics looks to me like a classic short squeeze.

Investors have bid up home prices off the floor so as to make rentals more expensive and force individual homebuyers to pay full price for whatever inventory is on the market.

Once the trade is fully priced and at new highs, on a relative time and appreciation basis, the buying power represented by the bottom-feeding institutional money will dry up, and only homebuyers in a solidly growing economy with greater employment opportunities and bankable confidence will be left to take prices higher and provide forward momentum for the recovery in housing.

As a trader, I say: "Good luck with that."

I'll be watching the trend rollover and will look to short the housing recovery in the not too distant future.

I'll let you know...

The full article is reserved for Money Morning subscribers.
To continue reading, sign up now. It's absolutely free.

(After you submit your email address, we'll return you to the full article.
You'll get a "welcome" email that explains the benefits of your subscription.
You can cancel at any time.)