How to Trade the Market's Most Active Stocks

BALTIMORE (Stockpickr) -- Put down the 10-K filings and the stock screeners. It's time to take a break from the traditional methods of generating investment ideas. Instead, let the crowd do it for you.

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From hedge funds to individual investors, scores of market participants are turning to social media to figure out which stocks are worth watching. It's a concept that's known as "crowdsourcing," and it uses the masses to identify emerging trends in the market.

Crowdsourcing has long been a popular tool for the advertising industry, but it also makes a lot of sense as an investment tool. After all, the market is completely driven by the supply and demand, so it can be valuable to see what names are trending among the crowd.

While some fund managers are already trying to leverage social media resources like Twitter to find algorithmic trading opportunities, for most investors, crowdsourcing works best as a starting point for investors who want a starting point in their analysis. Today, we'll leverage the power of the crowd to take a look at some of the most active stocks on the market today.

Must Read: 10 Stocks George Soros Is Buying

BlackBerry

Nearest Resistance: $11

Nearest Support: $9

Catalyst: Acquisition Rumors

Handset maker BlackBerry (BBRY) is seeing a 6.5% pop this afternoon, rallying on speculation that Chinese PC maker Lenovo might be ready to make an acquisition offer for the long-suffering cell phone stock. While an anonymous source at Sina.com has said that there's no truth to the rumors, it's not stopping BBRY from moving up over the course of today's session.

The price action in BBRY still looks very attractive long-term. Shares have been forming an inverse head and shoulders setup all year long, with a breakout level at $11. Put simply, if BlackBerry manages to catch a bid above $11, it becomes a buy.

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NCR

Nearest Resistance: $28

Nearest Support: N/A

Catalyst: Forecast Cut

Shares of NCR (NCR) are getting shellacked this afternoon, down more than 20% following a cut in the firm's full year 2014 outlook due to expected challenges in the retail environment. The firm reported preliminary third quarter earnings of 67 cents per share, falling a few pennies shy of the 71-cent analyst consensus, but it's that forecast cut that's really taking shares to task this afternoon.

Technically speaking NCR's chart has looked ugly for a while now, but today's big gap down means that it's only getting uglier. With support at $38 now broken, there's still more downside risk in shares. NCR is a name that's best avoided in the near-term.

Must Read: 7 Stocks Warren Buffett Is Selling in 2014

Delta Air Lines

Nearest Resistance: $40

Nearest Support: $32

Catalyst: Passenger Data
Delta Air Lines (DAL) is catching a bid today, after getting knocked lower with its peers following concerns of travel reductions over Ebola fears. Shares of DAL are up more than 3% this afternoon, up following positive passenger data that saw yield growth in the firm's lucrative trans-Atlantic routes.

Shares managed to stage a textbook bounce off of intermediate-term support at $32, an indication that now is a pretty attractive time to build a position in DAL from a risk/reward standpoint. If you decide to buy here, I'd recommend putting a protective stop underneath last week's lows.

Must Read: 10 Stocks Billionaire John Paulson Loves in 2014

-- Written by Jonas Elmerraji in Baltimore.

Follow Stockpickr on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

At the time of publication, author had no positions in the names mentioned.

Jonas Elmerraji, CMT, is a senior market analyst at Agora Financial in Baltimore and a contributor to

TheStreet. Before that, he managed a portfolio of stocks for an investment advisory returned 15% in 2008. He has been featured in Forbes , Investor's Business Daily, and on CNBC.com. Jonas holds a degree in financial economics from UMBC and the Chartered Market Technician designation.

Follow Jonas on Twitter @JonasElmerraji

Will High Price Hurt Gilead Sciences’ New Hep-C Drug?

Last week, Gilead Sciences (GILD) finally got the go-ahead on Hepatitis-C treatment Harvoni, which combines Solvaldi with Ledipsavir, and is supposed to cure from 94% to 99% of patients. And as with Sovaldi, critics are finding reasons to downplay the news, as issues around use and cost are making headlines.

RBC Capital Markets’ Michael Yee and team assess the headwinds to Harvoni’s uptake and find them wanting:

We’ve looked at new Harvoni patient authorization forms from Anthem (Express Scripts (ESRX) is the pharmacy benefit provider) and UnitedHealth (UNH) that just came out… We note they have headline language “approval criteria” that reads and attempts to limit/restrict coverage to only the sicker highest risk F3-4 patients. The forms do support 8-12 weeks of Harvoni therapy. Separately, (2) Senator Bernard Sanders is planning a hearing before year end to examine HCV costs to the Dept of Veterans Affairs (VA=10% max HCV volume) which could add some headline risk to be aware of that reminds us of Waxman…

7 key points: (1) this is expected and nearly reads identical to the Sovaldi forms last year…(2) AASLD guidelines do suggest to prioritize but don’t say don’t treat – guideline committee spoke publicly on this in Sep and recently issued a written public statement adamantly disagreeing with denying coverage and recognizing a need to treat all.., (3) this is one way payors will try to limit approvals (United Health doesn’t want to cover new drugs for 6 months like Biogen Idec’s (BIIB) Eloctate) — and docs typically use a written request letter then it gets approved (docs told us that many times), (4) payors were paying $130k for Sovaldi + Olysio — for $94k they can treat patients and by our math, treat 30% more for the same dollars, (5) payors would want to pay $64k for the 8-week because this is even cheaper….., (6) Q2 earnings calls for managed care all suggested they were better budgeted for ’15 and took the brunt in ’14 and weren’t prepared, (7) we think limiting prescriptions would be a short-term negative if it impedes hitting consensus – but most investors understand this just makes the market more “sustainable” and the HCV tail better.

Of course, concerns around Sovaldi’s costs did little keep Gilead’s stock from going higher–it’s gained 36% so far this yeat–and Yee doesn’t think concerns about Harvoni will derail Gilead. “…we think Gilead goes higher because consensus still needs to rise and investors already expect flattening of sales into 2016 and competition,” Yee says.

Shares of Gilead Sciences have gained 1.3% to $102.06 at 2:45 p.m., while Biogen Idec has risen 1.4% to $311.12, Express Scripts has advanced 0.7% to $71.21 and United Health is up 0.3% at $88.46.

Corrections & Amplifications: This post originally misspelled the name of Gilead’s new drug. It’s Harvoni, not Horvani.