Screen Of The Week 08/17/2010: A Relative Price Strength Screen For All Markets

By: Kevin Matras

Over the last few weeks, with the market going down, I've found myself screening for stocks that are actually going up or at least doing better than the market. I've talked about this kind of stuff in the past, but think about it – if somebody were to ask you what your best stocks are: your best stocks would be the ones moving up and your worst ones are the ones moving down. Stocks moving higher have a tendency of moving even higher. And the stocks I've been looking at recently are indeed the ones moving higher. Or at the very least, stocks with a relative price strength better than the market.

And if they are performing better, it's likely because there's a good reason for them to be doing so. If not, they probably wouldn't be. Of course, this doesn't mean you should only look at its price change. But by including those kinds of things in your screening, some very interesting stocks will come up.

You'll also notice that I said relative price strength. There are, of course, periods where virtually everything is going down. So screening for absolute positive price changes will often times come up with zero results in these periods, just when you need them the most.

But also, when the market is doing nothing but going up, you want to get into the pacesetters and outperformers, not the laggards that are going up only because the rising tide is raising all the ships.

So using the relative price strength will always put the outperformers on your list in both good times and bad.

In this week's screen, I'm looking for relative price change winners that also have the fundamentals to potentially make these gains continue.

The screen starts off with:

* Relative % Price change – 12 weeks greater than 0
* Relative % Price change – 4 weeks greater than 0
* Relative % Price change – 1 week greater than 0
(I'm looking for stocks that are outperforming the S&P 500 over the last 12 weeks, 4 weeks and 1 week.)

* Projected Growth Rate (F1/F0) greater than the S&P 500's Median Growth Rate
(Not only do I want the price to be responding better than the market. I also want the growth rate to be better than the market.)

* Current Price greater than or equal to 5
(They all have to be trading at a minimum of $5 or higher.)

* Average 20-Day Volume greater than or equal to 100,000 shares
(And have a enough volume to allow easy trading in and out.)

Here are 5 stocks that made it thru this week’s screen:
ARLP - Alliance Resource Partners, L.P.
HMIN - Home Inns & Hotels Management Inc.
LVS - Las Vegas Sands Corp.
MGA - Magna International Inc.
TKR - The Timken Co.

All strong stocks fundamentally, and they are on the move and outperforming the market.

Disclosure: Officers, directors and/or employees of Zacks Investment Research may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material. An affiliated investment advisory firm may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material.

Article Source: http://yourfinance.co.za

About The Author
Kevin Matras is the Research Wizard Product Manager and weekly contributing Editor at Zacks Investment Research who creates and writes the Zacks Commentary Screen of the Week and Know Your Options. For more information, visit www.zacks.com.