Many traders and investors are always talking about a story or press releases from a particular company. In fact, if you watch CNBC, Bloomberg or Fox Business News you will always hear why such and such a stock is going to move higher. There always seems to be a catalyst or story behind the coming move higher for the particular equity that is being touted. Rarely, will the talking head in the financial media talk about chart reading or technical analysis.
Let's take a look at a stock which has very good chart support coming up for a potential trade. The name of the company is Jacobs Engineering Group Inc (NYSE:JEC). This stock has been selling off since late January when it traded as high as $63.42 a share. Today, Jacobs Engineering Group Inc stock is trading at $53.48 a share. This is obviously a significant pullback in the share price of JEC stock. So where is the buy level for JEC stock since it has declined so much? Well, this is when we want to look at the weekly chart to see if the there is technical reason for a bounce higher or for the selling to stop. The first thing that traders should note on the weekly chart is that the 200-weekly moving average sits at $50.62 a share. This level also happens to coincide with the November 2016 breakout. Now this is what a technical chart reader would call institutional sponsorship. This trade level is where I would be a buyer of JEC stock. Now, patiently wait for the equity to trade down to the $50.62 area on the chart.
Institutional traders and investors will generally support stocks and markets at these prior breakout levels. This same technique can often be applied on multiple time-frames for day trading, swing trading and investing. Obviously, you will and should test this method first, but with some practice you will find this tactic to be extremely useful when trading all equities.
