by Market Speculator

From the opening bell to the close stocks were being accumulated in a big way. Volume once again soared showing institutional support is behind stocks. We even saw quality growth stocks bust out and show tremendous strength. It was very important for the stock market to follow through with very nice gains after Friday’s close. The action from stocks today is showing there is more room to run to the upside. Leaders have emerged to show quality is where the action will be at and the time is now to get on board with them. Leadership has taken hold and the overall price and volume action of the market is signalling this market wants to roll higher.

An important occurance happened today and that was the price and volume action following through from Friday’s gains. It would have been …

No matter your trading experience you know that proper portfolio allocation is a crucial element that is often overlooked. It’s overlooked by everyone, from professional to newbie. So don’t feel bad. But what we need to do is nail down what we should be doing and that’s why I invited Blain Reinkensmeyer owner of StockTradingToGo.com to give us some tips and tricks that we can use in our own portfolio. If you have any feedback please leave a comment and he’ll get to you!

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New and experienced investors alike should have a set strategy for portfolio allocation as far as the number of total holdings. The key to determining how many stocks should be held at once lies in knowing how much money is in the portfolio. This guide will breakdown the best rules for portfolio allocation.

Here on StockTradingToGo we support a more focused portfolio versus having a list of

By John Ward (previously published at bigwavetrading.net)

No doubt about it, this market’s price/volume action continues to impress. When we rally, we do so on heavy volume; when we pullback, volume contracts and, more than that, we have gotten into the habit of closing in the upper part of the day’s range. Just what you want to see. Yet don’t be lulled into thinking that all is now hunky-dory (the Put/Call falling to .60 tells me many have). This rally, while impressive given the gains of the past month, still leaves much to be desired.

As it stands now, only the Nasdaq trades above its downtrend line:

Today’s post comes from a guest blog, New Rules of Investing:

Institutional investors have powerful tools at their disposal to screen through reams of data.  Part of the institutional investment process entails screening through thousands of securities looking for a needle in a haystack — stocks that fit certain investment criteria.  From thousands of stocks, analysts can filter through a couple of hundred that fit these so called screens.  With a couple of hundred stocks in hand, analysts set out to do the hard work analyzing these companies, comparing them to one another, speaking to management and whatever else hedge fund and mutual fund analysts do when looking at prospective investments.

If I’m a value investor, I’m probably going to use some metrics that focus on Return on Capital (RoC) or Return on Equity (RoE) and Earnings Yield (E/P).  Growth investors might

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Editor's Note: The following is a roundup of what others are writing about exchange-traded funds, index mutual funds and indexes. This column is updated throughout the day by IndexUniverse.com's staff.  Suggestions are welcome by sending comments or links to: <!-- var prefix = 'ma' + 'il' + 'to'; var path = 'hr' + 'ef' + '='; var addy98263 = 'mcoleman' + '@'; addy98263 = addy98263 + 'indexuniverse' + '.' + 'com'; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy98263 ); document.write( '' ); //-->mcoleman@indexuniverse.com. 

Look Who's Talkin'

You've heard it all before. But for the uninitiated, we're providing a link to our own Matt Hougan, who was grilled by reporter Trang Ho for this Q&A appearing in Investor's Business Daily on Tuesday.

Hougan comes through, providing what IU.com readers have become accustomed to -- unblinking analysis and fiercely independent commentary on everything relating to ETFs.

You can see