This was not a stock that I loaded up on but it was a stock that I bought a good amount of because it was a “video game” stock and despite the horrible market that we were in this group was running. ATVI was not the only stock I was long in this group at the time. I was also long THQI which was seen as the better of the two companies. However, this stock had a much nicer chart at the time with the max green BOP. THQI was missing that. But since the group was so strong and the stock was setup in such a high reward/low risk area, it was impossible to not buy a lot. By the time the top was put in a solid 75% gain was made in two months and three weeks. Not bad at all, considering the health of the market at the time.
the buy:
the top:
Josh, one of the things that serves as a helpful reminder here is your discussion of ATVI in relation to THQI. As WON tells us in HTMMIS, leading firms in leading industries are the ones we want. As you clearly indicate, ATVI was not the only long you had in this hot sector. Obviously, I don’t know how you found ATVI (came up in your daily scans or you went through all the charts in the industry, etc.) but it underscores the point WON makes: in order to be a “hot sector” or leadign industry, there ought to be at least one other firm doing performing well on the CANSLIM criteria (maybe several more) and that has a good chart.
What is really important about your discussion is that even though THQI was seen as the “better” stock/company at the time, ATVI had the better looking chart. I am going to study THQI over the same time frame so that I understand how and why the ATVI chart looked better.
Did look at THQI over the same time frame. It is clearly a good chart, but as you state, ATVI was better. ATVI broke out on the second tradign day of Feb’ 01 on extremely record volume and for the rest of that month, all of March and the first third of April, it was green BoP everyday, with several days of max green. THQI was much less impressive on this score- having no record volume and no green BoP until the end of Feb. Still it had a lot of green BoP in March (about 7 days of which were max) , a half-green April, and a very May with some max BoP on record and near record volume). All this time (Feb-April) it also moved 50% so it was clearly a great pick too. And it went on to move another +30% before topping at the end of June. For such a bad market, both were really good picks.
Finally, I might note that from the buy date of ATVI, through the sell, it stayed well above the 50 dma except for about one week in early-mid april. But it foundsupport and looks to have bounced of the 50dma and contined moving up. During the same time period, THQI stayed at least 5% above the 50dma, coming close to it only on the day that it had a huge intraday swing and topped (end of June).