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Reversal From Lows Today May Prove Important - Monday, April 10, 2006
Monitoring a stock's daily and weekly price and volume patterns should be a continuous exercise once you own any stock. It is important to watch carefully for any possible ailments that may develop. Every so often, even a healthy leader will go through substantial price correction and violate certain early technical support levels. After witnessing a few ominous technical signals, prudent investors have learned to identify key turning points where the stock finally encounters meaningful support. One of these technical signals is called a positive reversal, which occurs when a stock opens the session heading lower, then reverses and ultimately closes higher. Volume is directly correlated with the severity as well in most instances.Aetna Inc. (AET -0.06%) reversed from session lows today where it had traded -$1.83 to ultimately end the session just three cents shy of unchanged. That is not quite a perfect "positive reversal", however the technical action still clearly suggests that meaningful buying demand arrived to lift the stock from its earlier lows for a strong finish. That is an an encouraging sign, as was the fact that buying demand kept it well above its 200-day moving average (DMA) line. However this stock still faces some overhead supply in the short-term, whereas a fresh breakout would normally be considered a far more promising buy candidate.
Prior notes published (see archive of all notes) included mention of some earlier sell signals as the stock slipped under support of a long term upward trendline, and breached its 50 DMA line. As previously mentioned, "price needs to convincingly move higher or this issue will be dropped from the CANSLIM.net Featured Stocks List." Also, its Relative Strength rank has fallen to a mediocre 56, one more sign that there are stronger leaders in the market that are demonstrating more promising action. Keep in mind that the company has 567.1 million shares outstanding, which is a rather large supply by CAN SLIM(TM) standards. Still, AET did trade up as much as +25.07% since it was first featured on 09/08/05 at $41.96 (2/1 split adjusted) in CANSLIM.net Mid-day BreakOuts report (see here).
