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A quiet day for the markets saw the Trade Ideas scan drift out to 50 minutes for 8 picks. Union Pacific ( UNP ) screamed ahead with 53 appearances on the Trade Ideas scan day after breaking from a declining wedge. Larger resistance lurks at $97.49 with a projected target of $117.49. Stops on a loss of $90. Union Pacific Corporation, through its subsidiary, Union Pacific Railroad Company, provides rail transportation services in North America. The company has approximately 32,426 route miles linking Pacific Coast and Gulf Coast ports with the Midwest and eastern United States gateways, and provides corridors to Mexican gateways. It offers transportation services for agricultural products, automotive, lumber, steel, paper, food, chemicals, coal, and industrial products, as well as for finished vehicles and intermodal containers. The company also provides container and trailer traffic services primarily for shipper agents and consolidators, as well as for truckload carriers. If you wou

The long weekend likely contributed to the lower volume traded on Friday, but all-in-all it was a good week for the bulls. Solid breakouts in the NASDAQ , NASDAQ 100 , Dow , and S&P have reinstated the bull market and put some pressure on the weak technical pictures supporting these indices. Chief of which were the across the board MACD bearish divergences - now pressurized by NASDAQ and NASDAQ 100 MACD trigger 'buy' signals, and resistance test for the Dow . The Russell 2000 was the only index not to break to new highs, but it is moving in the right direction after reversing its break down through the 20-day and 50-day MAs. The semiconductor index also recovered from its unusual one-day reversal in the face of broad gains for the Tech averages [ NASDAQ and NASDAQ 100 ]. Unfortunately, tech market internals [ $NASI , $NAA50 and $BPCOMPQ ] remain weak with a bullish cross of the 5-day EMA in the $NASI and upswing in the $NAA50 the best thing to come o

A relatively quiet week for the Stockcharters - an unusual lack of interest in the technical breakouts of Tech indices/Qs. Ted Burge opened with an interesting chart on United States Oil Fund ( USO ). He has marked support at $43.55 and there was a nice bullish harami at support. Ted has a website: www.tic-tac-dough.com , which has further information. Although Jack Chan sees little love: Matthew Frailey has updated his list and is going with a bearish wedge in the Dow Jones Index. He also notes the bearish divergence in the MACD. but is bullish over the longer term: He also has a long term upside target for the Nasdaq at 2000 spring/summer reaction lows: Robert New has led with the Nasdaq breakout (one of the few to do so): Highlighting the thin level of resistance to the 2,900 area (similar to Frailey's target): Although it hasn't broken yet, there are a couple of negative divergences in the S&P to watch: Interestingly, Robert is looking for Transports to lead in 2007

Tech is having a great day and is pulling the other indices up with it. I took a quick look at Richard Lehman's Trend Channel Stockchart public list and he has the Nasdaq breaking upside from a 3-year rising channel (The S&P did something similar back in October). The Trade Ideas scan was surprisingly limp considering; 8 picks covered a time span of 13 minutes - yesterday's buying was better than today's, even though today marked a significant technical break (i.e. an end to Nov-January sideway channels). Two picks: Gap ( GPS ) and Johnson Controls ( JCI ) made it over the 20 appearance mark at 30 hits and 22 hits apiece. Stocks liks Amvescap ( AVZ ) and Platinum Underwriters Holdings ( PTP ) linger in the high teens on the daily scan hits. As for bullish MA crosses inside the last 2 months: Amvescap ( AVZ ), Gap ( GPS ), Platinum Underwriters ( PTP ), Verizon ( VZ ), and Felcor Lodging Trust ( FCH ) all made the grade. As mentioned recently, Amvescap ( AVZ ) is sha

The market is making another small advance, but nothing so far (with the possible exception of the semi-conductors) to suggest the sideway trading in the markets is about to change. The Trade Ideas scan was more buoyant; 8 picks covered a time span of 2 minutes - healthy buying. Where the enthusiasm was somewhat tempered was in the frequency of this buying. So far, no pick has exceeded 20 appearances, although CRH ( CRH ) at 17 hits looks most likely to do so by days end. A couple of the picks have managed a bullish cross of their 50-day MA by the 20-day MA inside the last 2 months: Mentor Corp ( MNT ) and Northrop Grumman ( NOC ). No pick has made a bearish cross of these averages. The 1-year charts show a potential cup-and-handle in Banco Bradesco ( BBD ), give the stock a few weeks to form a handle as it works it way through $42.00 resistance, but this is good watch list material. Nothrop Grumman ( NOC ) has featured recently in this scan in the past and continues to develop a con

Instead of a list of stocks for today I am instead going to show you the previous years worth of data I have been collecting on the Trade Ideas scan real-time stock picker- using my "Base Scan" similar to the one available in the Trade Ideas widget in my right-hand margin. When I am looking at the market I am not just interested in the stocks which the scan suggests, but also the rate at which these stocks appear (an indication of the level of buying in the market). I use a sample size of 8 different stocks - for no other reason than that is this was the size I could fit 8 charts on my monitor without have to scroll :), but any number (preferably over 5 stocks) should suffice. For the record, to get 8 different picks for Tuesday would have required 10 minutes . I also took the closing value for the Nasdaq on those dates readings were taken and plotted that alongside the time required for the scan took to select 8 different stocks. When I talk of a top or bottom in the Nasdaq