4 Stocks To Buy Now – Q3 Stock Results

Hard to believe the 3rd quarter of 2009 is already up, but it is and my 4 stocks to buy in 2009 have kept rising; however, the million dollar question… have the 4 stocks already peaked and are they still good buys?

Remember that the goal of this competition, between a few financial bloggers (rankings below), was to pick 4 stocks that we thought would perform the best over the ENTIRE year. Considering what we were looking at pre-2009, that was obviously a daunting task in itself.

Before getting into the nitty gritty of it all, lets first look at the results…

Ticker	Initial Price ($)	Price End 9/30/09 ($)	Q2-Q3 Change (%)	YTD Change (%)
AKS	9.32	19.73	2.81	110.7
SLB	42.33	59.60	10.15	40.8
BAC	14.08	16.92	28.18	20.17
NFLX	29.89	46.17	11.68	54.47
Total			13.21	56.78

YTD Market Change: Dow 10.66% | S&P 500 17.03% | Nasdaq 34.58%

All data is taken as of market close on September 30, 2009. Total calculated by taking average of all 4 returns.

My portfolio alone proves why patience is so important to trading stocks. Remember that after the 1st quarter my 4 stocks were down 9%. Had we gotten scared and sold, we would have completely missed the 65% gain since. You need to give you stocks time to run their course, especially if your time frame is 1 year.

How I pick these stocks: We’ll get into these analysis soon enough, but many people ask me how I pick my stocks. To keep it as short as possible, its really just a combination of technical analysis and common sense. Through keeping track of the news I see what sectors could be getting a boost, and then perform technical analysis on those individual stocks. You can learn all about it though my technical analysis course. I teach you step by step how to find and analyze stocks to buy and even when to sell.

Now that we got all those stats out of the way, lets get to the analysis part…

I’m not a huge fan of analyzing the overall market has a whole because I just don’t think it is as important as before; however, it is a good indicator of determining what are some good sectors and indexes to pay attention to.

Basically here’s what has happened so far… Q1 was a dump, Q2 and Q3 was a mixture of securities being just so low that any run higher is emphasized more than normal (hence many of the record gains and runs we have seen).

Here’s the problem though…

Nothing has really changed. Instead many items have just subsided, kind of been forgotten about, or leading companies and execs have manipulated the power of words. Heading into this holiday season will tell us a lot, as people will start to see how evident the economy is still struggling, especially with no improvement in unemployment.

While big picture, the market should continue to head higher, it just can’t be done without some sort of pullback coming, and you got to believe if its going to happen its going to happen in the 4 quarter.

AK Steel (AKS)

AK Steel being up over 110% is great, but consider that just a year and half ago this stock was at $75. To put that into perspective, another 110% move from its current level would still leave the stock some 30 points below that high. An amazing deal if you ask me.

While the upside is great, it won’t come that easy. We’ll definitely have to go through some peaks and valleys before we can break through. Taking a look at a long-term chart, we can see that AKS is still trading within the lower level trading zone of the fibonacci numbers. This means that we can’t be sure the bottom is behind us until we can break that resistance of $28.

All that being said, leads me into my next point: the short-term outlook of AKS. Any stock that has already experienced a 100% move in less than a year should be hanging by a thread and the chart doesn’t try to disprove that theory as well.

A combination of horrible signs are taking place above. Both the relative strength index and MACD have dipped into bearish zones, while the stock itself looks to be dipping below the 50-day simple moving average; however, remember that these indicators are short-term and pullback were bound to happen.

Overall, short-term this stock is bound for a pullback. Possibly all the way down to the 200 SMA. If you own shares, considering taking some if not all shares off table. Depending how low the stock goes, look for entry on break back above 50 SMA. Remember long-term trading zone isn’t broken until move above $28.58.

Schlumberger Limited (SLB)

Schlumberger Limited has interestingly followed the price of oil. Besides that, SLB alone looks like it could be ready to really spike or head lower. I personally believe the former to hold true. If oil prices head higher, all the better.

Based on the last major trend, SLB looks to have broken above the 38% retracement, and we could quickly move beyond the 62% if all cards are played right. First we need to clear the resistance at $63.

So I feel confident to see support at around $57, and believe this stock has a lot of room to still head higher.

Bank of America (BAC)

If patience has ever paid off, it definitely did with this stock. At the end of the first quarter, it was at $7, and thankfully I told you to buy more. Hopefully you listened and are being rewarded now. I recently did an analysis on BAC, so I won’t get too much into it; however, just note that there is much upside left in this stock and a trading level between $16.50 and $18. React accordingly.

Netflix (NFLX)

While most of these stocks experienced their gains through the 2nd and 3rd quarter, Netflix did most of its growth during the 1st quarter and even prior to that. Coincidently that was when the market was not in such good condition as well. If we are to experience a pullback here, then look for potential growth here.

It doesn’t hurt to have Blockbuster (BBI) close down more stores as well.

Take a look at the current trading zone between $40 and $47. Obviously, we want a break higher.

Summary

Overall, I am pretty thrilled with the results thus far; however, remain cautious. Will the rally continue into the 4th quarter or will we experience a minor set back? If we can make it through October roughly unharmed, then I feel confident that the full year results should be even higher. Remember, there is no harm in taking profits.

Competing Blogger Rankings

Rank	Site	YTD Return (%)
1	Intelligent Speculator	73.05
2	The Wild Investor	56.78
3	Four Pillars	44.26
4	Where Does All My Money Go	43.01
5	The Financial Blogger	24.49
6	Dividend Growth Investor	11.51
7	Million Dollar Journey	8.49
8	My Traders Journal	-3.16
9	Zack Stocks	-13.17

All data is taken as of market close on September 30, 2009. Total calculated by taking average of all 4 returns.

What to do now?

A lot has been thrown at you, so what to do now?

1. Learn how use technical analysis.
2. Get a free trend analysis of these stocks or any stock.
3. Leave a comment below. What do you think about these stocks? Any other good stocks to round out 2009?

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