As a student of Technical Analysis, I am always amused by anecdotal, if not actionable, oddities. Such as- in the first nine weeks of 2013 the stock market has been UP every Friday and down every Monday. Small sampling, but 100% is noteworthy. With this Friday being the 1st of the month, probabilities are that it is also up - the Traders' Almanac reported years ago that stocks were up more on the first day of each month than all the rest combined.
Stocks seem to digest the Fed head's remarks before Congress quite well after the Monday drop. It will be interesting to see what this week's Sentiment Indicators have to say as we enter March. www.mktsentiment.blogspot.com
In the roaring bull market of the last century, I used to use the Investor's Daily for picking stocks, but have not done so since the sideways market started in 2000 - despite the sugar high cyclical rallies sans price discovery. Just to test the strategy, I picked up a Jan.28 copy and looked at there top picks. With the SPX at 1500, I again revisited these picks, based on RS (Relative Strength), EPS, etc. on February 21 with the SPX again at 1500 .
Of the top tranche of 24 best stocks "on the move"- 5 were up, 4 sideways (less than 1 point + / -; 15 were lower although some had risen briefly. In the top 15 group, 3 were up, 3 unch, and 9 down. Of the second group - 16 through 30, 2 up, 4 unch, and 9 down. So their screens performed thusly - 10 UP, 11 UNCH, and 33 lost money. I shall check again in another month.
It is no wonder that I prefer the current strategy of selling calls in-the-money on dividend-paying stocks (brentleonard.com) for the first two decades of the 21st C. Until the S&P 500 tries to break through the Oct.'07 high (1576 monthly), I would consider March to be a dangerous month to not be at least hedged.
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