The Canadian Technician

SCTR - Have You Discovered The SCTR? The Introduction.

Greg Schnell

Greg Schnell

Chief Technical Analyst, Osprey Strategic

I expect to change some the blog content over the next while to be part of a series. I will be working through a complete process using the SCTR from the StockCharts website to help use the power within. My examples will be for the $TSX, but the system will be for every market, not just Toronto.

There are multiple ways to look at the market. The more I use the SCTR rankings, the better the quality of trades that are coming to the fore. Here is a screen shot of the top Canadian stocks by  StockCharts Technical Rank. (SCTR). You can see it is a mixed bag in terms of sector currently. 

Screen Shot 2013-10-21 at 8.23.59 AM


Even though Royal Bank is breaking to new highs and BNN continues to discuss the group over and over, there are lots of interesting stocks that are performing better technically. Royal is still a great stock. But what about the other unknowns? The SCTR ranking is one way to demonstrate that. In the SCTR list above, the Industrials appear to have 4 in the top 10, but Air Transat and Air Canada have both their A and B shares showing up. Still, there are quite a few industrials in the snapshot at the top of the list. Interestingly, a few financials are farther down the list. Rock and Surge Energy both popped up on my scans a while back. Badger Daylighting has been pumping through to new highs for a while now. This stock has been surging higher for years. The stock gives the occasional buy point on pullbacks to the 50 DMA, but currently is soaring above every moving average. So how can we find these as they break out, keep track of them, find times to pick them up at a better price and stay with the trade? That will be the blog series.

I want to spend some time demonstrating the SCTR rankings and how to use this tool in November. The SCTR's are very valuable.

If you do not know how to find the table above, follow these steps.

Go to the home page. Scroll down to the six large boxes listing the NY Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, TSX, S&P 500 SCTR, ETF SCTR and Toronto SCTR. 

Find this area on your home screen.

Screen Shot 2013-10-21 at 8.41.12 AM

In the bottom right, you will see a link titled " Complete SCTR Rankings ". It should take you to a page with the top SP500 SCTR rankings.

Screen Shot 2013-10-21 at 8.51.12 AM

Up at the top use the drop down box to find the SCTR grouping you would like. In this case, we want to get to the Canadian stocks. So we will select the Toronto stocks as shown below.

Screen Shot 2013-10-21 at 8.57.38 AM

You can see there are 5 different groupings so far. I have highlighted Toronto. Clicking on it will take you to the page that starts the top of this blog posting. Notice how it now says Toronto in the dropdown list. I have shown a shorter version at the bottom.

Screen Shot 2013-10-21 at 9.00.45 AM

Once strong stocks get support from institutional investors, it can be very powerful. BNK.TO just moved on this list a few months ago. August was the month.   It is up 30% since then. In a future blog, I'll discuss the scan I use to bring those charts to my attention in a timely fashion.

If you enjoyed this blog, feel free to forward it. To subscribe, click on the email button or RSS button on the Canadian Technicians Blog. The link is here. "The Canadian Technician". You can see the subscribe buttons in the top right corner. Again, I expect to change some of the blog content to be more of a series. Working through a complete process using the SCTR from the StockCharts website to help use the power within. My examples will be for the $TSX, but the system will be for every market, not just Toronto.

We are holding a course in Dallas  on November 8,9, and 10 2013 which is a nice place to visit when our Canadian temperatures start chilling us but we still can't ski in the mountains to enjoy the upside of cooler temperatures. 

We also have Vancouver on our StockCharts University list for January 17 & 18, 2014. CFA's can get Canadian CE credits at the SCU courses. 5 points for each one. CMT's can get credit for SCU courses as well. It is coincidentally timed to be a few days before the Vancouver Mining Show so you could visit both on the same trip!

Good Trading,

Greg Schnell, CMT

 

 

 

Greg Schnell
About the author: , CMT, MFTA is Chief Technical Analyst at Osprey Strategic specializing in intermarket and commodities analysis. He is also the co-author of Stock Charts For Dummies (Wiley, 2018). Based in Calgary, Greg is a board member of the Canadian Society of Technical Analysts (CSTA) and the chairman of the CSTA Calgary chapter. He is an active member of both the CMT Association and the International Federation of Technical Analysts (IFTA). Learn More