Identifying the Fundamentals
Stocks move under the influence various factors that we can use to identify stocks that are likely to move 3-5% in a single day. Even the best technicals seldom give you 5% upward (or downward) movements intraday alone, but combined with fundamental factors, we can find stocks that are likely to make these large daily moves.
To begin to seek that perfect stock or ETF, we first need to look for something that can propel a stock or, in the case ETFs, the represented sector. This 3-5% movement is not from the previous day’s close, but between the market’s open and close. We want to identify a stock that can be bought sometime in the morning to give us that significant movement by the end of the day. The first type of information that is prone to easily move stocks is earnings.
There are multiple ways to play a company’s earnings. One of the most effective ways to invest based on earnings is after a company has already announced their earnings. We are looking for earnings that were surprising, especially ones that say something about a sector.
For example, if one company announces positive earnings because it had a large profit from a lawsuit, this information does not tell us much about the earnings potential of the sector in general. However, if an important company in a sector has positive earnings due to an increase in sales or because it saw higher demand than anticipated, this information is more telling of its sector as a whole, and the news may move many similarly situated stocks.
We like the sector-telling earnings because it suggests something about the sector is most likely bullish (or bearish). For example, if Burger King Holdings Inc. (BKC) reported earnings and noted that they were seeing increased demand for fast food because customers were cutting back on more expensive restaurants, this would suggest a general transferring of food money from high-end restaurants to fast food. This information should propel not only BKC, but also McDonald’s (MCD) and Wendys/Arbys Group (WEN). The positive earnings may benefit companies that are closely related to the reporting company. Typically, we do not want to invest for a single day-trade in the specific company that reported the earnings. The reporting company is likely to gap up the next morning and have less room to run due to the large jump up from the closing…
