Winning stocks need both strong fundamental and technical aspects. The recently rebranded IBD MarketSurge product combines both elements, plus new bells and whistles.
With its launch a month ago, the MarketSurge platform added new features, including the "ants indicator" on daily stock charts, and quarterly earnings line on weekly charts. In addition, a company's next four quarters of FactSet earnings and sales estimates are provided on weekly charts.
These added to an existing arsenal of screens, lists and other research tools that work particularly well for IBD readers. One preset list, for example, shows stocks that meet IBD founder William O'Neil's criteria.
Stock Charts With Blue Dot Show Outperformers
For many years, the MarketSurge RS Line Blue Dot list has been a favorite. It finds stock charts whose relative strength line reached a 52-week high. A stock must also be building a base or breaking out of a base and hitting a proper buy point to trigger the blue dot on a daily or weekly chart.
This combines two of the most important traits in a successful breakout: Superior fundamentals and market-leading performance.
The RS line by default compares a stock's performance to the S&P 500. It can be modified to compare to another index or stock symbol. A rising RS line indicates the stock is outperforming the index, while a down trending line shows relative weakness.
While a sideways trending line may look stagnant, the stock may be outperforming others during a market downturn. In addition, stocks with robust RS lines may be the first to recover from a weak market.
Stock charts identified on a recent RS Line Blue Dot list include Veeco Instruments, Republic Services and AAON. All three were near buy points the past week.
Stock Chart Pattern Recognition
MarketSurge's screens are found in the Reports section or the Open Stock Ideas shortcut button. The weekly MarketSurge Growth 250 list contains leading stocks selected from 30 other screens.
The elite list is the basis for the "Near Pivot" list, which finds leading stocks that are setting up to break out of bases. Other key reports generated from the 250 names are the "Breaking Out Today" and "Recent Breakouts" lists — both excellent for stock ideas.
MarketSurges's proprietary pattern recognition is an add-on feature that finds proper chart patterns such as the cup-with-handle base, flat base and double-bottom. Each base identifies its stage with an optimal buy point.
MarketSurge stock charts also identify buy zones and profit and loss zones using colored shaded areas. The blue area shows the 5% buy zone of the recent base's buy point. Green shading highlights a 20% profit target area from a buy point, and a place where investors may want to take some profits. The red shading highlights a 5% to 8% loss zone from the buy point, and a time to start reducing a position.
The platform identifies other bullish stock chart formations, including a three-weeks tight pattern.
Other technical analysis components include customizable moving averages, and a default 10-week moving average.
Other Notable Stock Chart Features
The collapsible right-side panel provides data including industry information and fund ownership details for each company. Users can set alerts at price levels they choose.
Follow Kimberley Koenig for more stock news on Twitter @IBD_KKoenig.
