Update (3): Financials Breakout After 3-mo. Consolidation

The following is another updated look at the setups that were highlighted in the August 3rd post "Financials Attempting to Breakout After 3-mo. Consolidation." (They are no long attempting a breakout; a full blown breakout has taken place.)

Over the intervening 3 weeks or so, the financial stocks have chopped around a fair amount, but have moving in an upward trend. While all of the setups have pulled off decent gains over the period, a couple have shown pretty outstanding gains that traders who participated in the setups would be quite pleased with.

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Update (2): Financials Attempting to Breakout After 3-mo. Consolidation

In this post, we take another look at the setups that were highlighted in last Monday's post "Financials Attempt to Breakout After 3-mo. Consolidation."

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Updated: Financials Attempting to Breakout After 3-mo. Consolidation

In this post, we give you an updated look at the setups that were highlighted in yesterday's post "Financials Attempt to Breakout After 3-mo. Consolidation."

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Financials Attempting to Breakout After 3-mo. Consolidation

The financial sector has, by and large, consolidated for the past 3 months or so. Over the past week or two, several stocks from the sector have started to show a willingness to make a push through resistance.

In many cases, the bollinger bands have started to expand sharply and that is a sign that volatility is going to increase and a new trend should soon take foot. Whether such a trending move is to the upside or the downside remains to be seen.

Our research over the weekend has left us with a handful of decent setups from the sector.

We're not quite ready to add them to the Long Stock Picks list, at the moment (for two reasons: the fact that there is already a good collection of winning picks on the list and we'd rather concentrate on managing that group, and the fact that there is a 50-50 chance that any upside breakout in the sector could prove to be a false one), but we'd like to share them here on our stock blog.

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Nightly Commentary - Feb 23, 2009

The following is the nightly commentary piece that was provided to members of TheMarketMessenger.com, on Monday evening.

The major indices each lost just under 4% today. Many have also incidentally closed below long-term lows.

Aside from the Nasdaq indices, most indices are now in oversold territory, which as we'd mentioned in the weekly commentary piece does not mean that a bottom is already in place but rather that the slightest instigation could soon (as in time, not necessarily price level) bring about at least a dead cat bounce that ends up killing a good number of short positions.

Let's take a look at the charts.

S&P-500 Index - Daily Chart...

SPX closed below its November '08 lows today. At 743, today's close fell just short of breaking the intraday lows from November, but it happens to be at an 11-year closing low nevertheless. Volumes were above-average again today, which is a good sign for those of us looking for signs of capitulation.

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