Finance Trends Letter

If you follow Finance Trends on Twitter , then you've probably heard me talk about our favorite social media company and its stock ( TWTR ) quite a bit over the past couple years.  However, this will be our first (!) post on Twitter's stock performance here on the website. Now that Twitter has reported 3Q earnings , it's a great time to look at the charts and see where TWTR has been in 2014, and where it may go from here. Let's cut to the chase. Here is a newly updated chart ( click to enlarge ), showing today's price action post-earnings.  TWTR gapped lower after last night's disappointing EPS report, opening near $42 today. Although TWTR managed to move higher during the day, the price action, as viewed from the daily chart, is rather bearish. The stock is now trading below its 50 and 200 day moving averages and it has moved lower the last 2 days on heavy volume. Update : TWTR is now down 31% year-to-date while its rival, Facebook ( FB , which ...

Quick update on the performance of key US stock indices and futures year-to-date, via Finviz . Coffee (+80%) and Feeder Cattle (+44%) lead the pack YTD, while soybeans (-27%) and cotton (-26%) fare worst. Crude oil is down sharpy from its summer highs, -16% YTD. Natural gas is down 13% YTD.  Here's the data for stock indices year-to-date: Nasdaq 100 (+8%), S&P 500 (+3%), and the small cap Russell 2000 (-6%) YTD.  If you want to dig deeper and check out the performance of individual US stocks, try the Finviz screener and adjust the fields in "performance". You can search stocks for YTD performance and sort the results by volume, percentage gains, stock price or market cap. 

There are some things you just shouldn't do, unless you want to lose a lot of money. Shorting stocks in an uptrend is one of those things. More specifically, shorting low float momentum stocks in a red-hot industry theme is something you should avoid. Unless, of course, you like paying up for the privilege of imposing your views on the market. Even on a day like today, when the major indices (SPY, QQQ, IWM) are dropping, people are panicking, and the VIX (" fear index ") is nearing 2-year highs, we see low-float stocks shooting to the moon. Here are 3 such stocks (APT, IBIO, and LAKE) rocketing higher on the fear-driven Ebola theme .  Note that these Ebola-related stocks were all up 35% or more on a day when the rest of the market was tanking. Still want to step in front of this train?  As I mentioned on Twitter last week, Ebola stocks are the hot momentum theme of the moment. This is a fear-and-greed play that will result in yet another boom-and-bust...

Image via totalprosports.com Hall of Fame NFL quarterback and 4-time Super Bowl champ, Joe Montana, offers his view of the winner's mindset:  "Winners, I am convinced, imagine their dreams first. They want it with all their heart and expect it to come true. There is, I believe, no other way to live." - Joe Montana This positive mindset and the visualization of one's future achievements is, in Montana's view, key to self-actualization.  What is your view? Do you find that a "winning mindset" applies to trading, entrepreneurship, or any endeavor of life where one hopes to excel and reach great heights?