Back in the January 16th 2015 Seasonal Forecaster newsletter (the introductory part of it was published here), I introduced a simple way to identify good candidates for stock trades – look for the ‘green' on Briefing.com's Earnings Archive, as well as strong Yr/Yr Revenue increases. The idea is to trade stocks that take off after strong earnings announcements. The example I used was from the night before, January 15th:
Now for the next day's newsletter I looked at the previous day's numbers on Briefing.com. Two companies that easily beat expectations, and had strong Yr/Yr Revenue growth, were Haliburton and Baker-Hughes, two oil services companies:
Wait, isn't everyone fleeing from oil-related stocks because the collapsing price of oil is killing all of these companies?
Certainly some oil producers, especially the high cost drillers, are getting hurt. But some service companies are still doing pretty well. It turns out that Haliburton has proposed a merger with Baker-Hughes. Jim Cramer thinks a lot of the potential combination, as he explains in Jim Cramer Explains Why The Halliburton-Baker Hughes Deal Looks Better Than Ever.
Haliburton (HAL) just-announced earnings were good. The earnings were 8.2% higher than expectations, and revenue was up 14.8% year-over-year. For all the cautions you hear about falling oil stock revenue, Haliburton held ground on both earnings and revenue:
Baker Hughes's earnings were 23% above expectations and revenue was up 3% above expectations.
Incidentally, HAL is trading at a P/E of 10, and BHI at 14 – quite low for their historical ranges. Seasonally, HAL has a strong record of institutional accumulation this time of year. It may be different this year because of the sharp drop in oil prices. But in the past, HAL has averaged a 14.4% gain over the next 15 weeks, with gains in 26 of the past 31 years (84%).
As I pointed out in Wednesday's newsletter, it appears HAL has found support around the 37 level:
So in Wednesday's newsletter I proposed a long stock trade for HAL. That trade is already up 1.5%. I also suggested a January 35 2016 LEAPS call as an alternative trade. That trade is up 4.2% in just 2 days.
With HAL closing above recent resistance yesterday, and the strong potential for the Haliburton/Baker Hughes partnership, these trades could generate very strong returns over the next several months. (At the time of writing, the author had no position in HAL, but may have by the time of publication).
Of course, there's much more you need to know and many more stocks you can capitalize upon each and every day. To find out more, please click on the following link: www.markettamer.com/seasonal
By Gregg Harris, MarketTamer Chief Technical Strategist
Copyright (C) 2015 Stock & Options Training LLC
Unless indicated otherwise, at the time of this writing, the author has no positions in any of the above-mentioned securities.
Gregg Harris is the Chief Technical Strategist at MarketTamer.com with extensive experience in the financial sector.
Gregg started out as an Engineer and brings a rigorous thinking to his financial research. Gregg's passion for finance resulted in the creation of a real-time quote system and his work has been featured nationally in publications, such as the Investment Guide magazine.
As an avid researcher, Gregg concentrates on leveraging what institutional and big money players are doing to move the market and create seasonal trend patterns. Using custom research tools, Gregg identifies stocks that are optimal for stock and options traders to exploit these trends and find the tailwinds that can propel stocks to levels that are hidden to the average trader.
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