Digital Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: DLR)

Digital Realty Trust, Inc., a real estate investment trust (REIT), through its controlling interest in Digital Realty Trust, L.P., engages in the ownership, acquisition, development, redevelopment, and management of technology-related real estate. It focuses on strategically located properties containing applications and operations critical to the day-to-day operations of technology industry tenants and corporate enterprise datacenter users, including the information technology departments of Fortune 1000 companies, and financial services companies. The company’s property portfolio consists of Internet gateway properties, corporate datacenter properties, technology manufacturing properties, and regional or national offices of technology companies.
To review Digital’s stock, please take a look at the 1-year chart of DLR (Digital Realty Trust, Inc.) below with my added notations:

DLR has formed a very clear down-channel chart pattern over the last (10) months. A channel is simply formed through the combination of a trend line support that runs parallel to a trend line resistance. When it comes to channels, remember that any (3) points can start the channel, but a 4th point or more confirms it. You can see that DLR has several points of channel resistance (red) and support (blue). If you look back in October you can see that the stock has already failed to breakout once before.

The Tale of the Tape: DLR has formed a common pattern known as a channel, in this case a down channel, and has broken through its resistance. A long trade can be entered on a pullback to the previous channel resistance, which currently sits near $50. A short trade should be considered if the stock falls back inside its channel like what occurred in October.
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Three stock picks for 2014

It looks like we could be entering a true stock-picker's market.

The CBOE Correlation Index is at its lowest levels in years. That means stocks are not moving as one so, if you want to beat the market, you will have to find the right stock.
Enter Bob Doll, the veteran investor who has made money all types of markets. The Chief Equity Strategist and Senior Portfolio Manager at Nuveen Asset Management has three stocks he thinks everyone should own.

Those three stocks are among the 25 he has selected in a unit investment trust called the Nuveen 2014 Equity Outlook Portfolio. That portfolio was developed to profit from Doll's ten predictions for this year.

Common factors among these mostly cyclical stocks are decent free cash flow and a generally low price-to-earnings bias, according to Doll. Energy and utilities stocks are underweighted while aerospace/defense, health care, and big technology are overweighted.  (more)

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3D Printing Stocks May Look Scary, but This Stock is Definitely a 'Buy': DDD

Last week, 3D printing stocks, one of the latest go-go sectors, traded in a volatile fashion after some of the companies issued statements about their sales guidance. The stocks chopped back and forth in the early part of the week, and then stabilized somewhat in the second half.

One of my favorite stocks in the group from a technical perspective is 3D Systems (NYSE: DDD). The stock, albeit sporting an ultra-steep slope from a multiyear perspective, respects its various technical levels. And although it has a volatile day here and there, for the most part it trades in an orderly fashion.

On Thursday, the company announced that it entered into a multiyear joint development agreement with Hershey (NYSE: HSY). The largest producer of quality chocolate in North America is looking to explore using three-dimensional printers in candy making. 

The applications of 3D printing technology are rapidly growing. This has caught traders' attention, and the share prices of the various publicly listed companies in the space have risen sharply in recent years, particularly in 2013. (more)

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Market Outlook: Obscure Indicator Confirms Bullish Outlook for Gold

There will be a number of earnings reports this week, and traders should start focusing on the trend in earnings. That could be bearish for the stock market.
Weak Start to Earnings Season Puts Bull Market at Risk
SPDR S&P 500 (NYSE: SPY) closed down 0.27% last week. Technical indicators are mostly bullish although bearish divergences are forming.
The chart below shows Moving Average Convergence/Divergence (MACD) on a weekly chart of SPY, although a similar pattern can be seen with other indicators such as stochastics or the Relative Strength Index (RSI). Bearish divergences are also visible on daily charts.

A bearish divergence forms when prices move to new highs while an indicator fails to confirm the highs. Many technical analysts believe that divergences are eventually resolved with a decline in prices, but this belief is not confirmed by backtesting. Divergences lead to lower prices only about a third of the time in testing.  (more)
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3 Top Ranked ETFs That Will Crush the Market in 2014: PBE, FXR, QCLN

2013 was obviously a great year for the markets, as a better economic outlook propelled stocks sharply higher. Pretty much every sector was in the green for the time frame, leading to high hopes for the New Year.

However, the start of 2014 hasn’t been too kind to investors, thanks to the weak jobs numbers, earnings worries, and concerns over bond rates. These issues have kept a lid on market returns in the first half of January, and have led some investors to worry if this year will fall flat.

While it is still way too early to tell, it is important to note that a few market segments are still soaring, and appear well positioned for further gains this year as well. That is because they are zeroing in on some of the strongest stories in the current economic environment, and do look to have strength later on in the year too.  (more)

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