TradingMarkets Monday Stock Movers: ALO, BUD, CPSI, FDRY, JOSB

A strong performance by the pre-market index futures has spilled over into the first few hours of trading on Monday, with the Dow industrials, Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 all up more than 4% early.

Here's a Monday morning pop quiz. When stocks are soaring, should swing traders be looking to buy or looking to sell?

If you've read even a few of our Short Term PowerRatings articles, then you know the answer to that question. The time to accumulate shares is as they move lower, not as they move higher.

This is our opinion, of course, but it is backed up by more than a decades-worth of testing involving millions of simulated short term stock trades. In the long run, the road to consistent profits, low drawdowns and high per-trade win rates is paved with strategies that call for buying stocks after they have pulled back and selling them into strength as they recover.

Whether stocks fall 1% or 10%, our approach to short term trading remains the same. We may be more or less aggressive, take on larger or smaller position sizes due to market conditions, volatility or our own personal risk tolerance. But the gameplan remains the same.

Following the gameplan can be difficult. As I mentioned in my last Short Term PowerRatings article, "Volatility, PowerRatings and Swing Trading", the past several days have been a momentum trader's dream (many momentum traders, for example, got short signals on September 30th and have been trailing highs as the markets move lower ever since). And this may have been cause for some swing traders to consider selling as stocks moved lower or- conversely, buying the strength we are seeing in Monday's market.

In our opinion, swing traders do well to avoid these temptations. Instead, consider taking this opportunity of the market's strength to sell positions that have been in the portfolio over the past few days. Not only will this allow traders to take profits in stocks at higher levels, but also it lets traders "reset" themselves for the next round of buying when stocks inevitably pull back again.

Alpharma Inc. (ALO | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) Short Term PowerRating 9. RSI(2): 2.58

Anheuser-Busch (BUD | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) Short Term PowerRating 8. RSI(2): 1.09

Computer Programming & Systems (CPSI | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) Short Term PowerRating 8. RSI(2): 0.993

Foundry Networks Inc. (FDRY | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) Short Term PowerRating 9. RSI(2): 9.11

Jos A. Bank Clothiers (JOSB | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) Short Term PowerRating 8. RSI(2): 6.10

All the stocks in today's report have pulled back by 10% or more over the past few days. Our research into short term stock price behavior indicates that stocks that have lost 10% or more over five days – and are trading above their 200-day moving average – have produced positive returns in one-day, two-day and one-week timeframes.

To learn more about our research into stocks that have been down by 10% or more after five days, click here.

Whether you have a trading strategy of your own that could use a boost or are looking for a way to tell the stocks that will move higher in the short term from the stocks that are more likely to disappoint, our Short Term PowerRatings are based on more than a decade of quantified, backtested simulated stock trades involving millions of stocks between 1995 and 2007. Click the link above or call us at 888-484-8220, extension 1, and start your free trial today.

David Penn is Editor in Chief at TradingMarkets.com.