Stocks featured in this article are: American Equity Investment Life Holding Co. (AEL), AMR Corp. (AMR), World Fuel Services, Inc. (INT), Steven Madden Ltd. (SHOO) and S1 Corp. (SONE).

< ?DART(15);?> Over the last few weeks, I've found myself screening for one of the most obvious items in determining whether or not a stock is 'good' - and that's its recent price strength or, more specifically, its recent relative price strength. Is it performing better than the market?

Of course valuations are important. Earnings growth is just as important too. But if a stock is simply not responding - or worse, going down - then something's wrong.

Or at the very least, something is simply not ready to move higher.

I've talked about this kind of stuff in the past – what investors consider to be their best stocks -- and the answer is the ones

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Highlighted stocks include: Align Technology, Inc. (...

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Stocks highlighted in this article are: Alaska Air Group, Inc. (ALK), Dollar Tree, Inc. (DLTR), Granite Construction Corp. (GVA), SXC Health Solutions Corp. (SXCI) and Wausau Paper Corp. (WPP).

< ?DART(15);?> Today's screen is a simple one.

But the idea behind it is pretty powerful.

Unfortunately, it's something that many people overlook.

The strategy is finding stocks that are making new 52-week highs, or at least trading within 10% of their 52-week highs.

Why is this so important?

Because in anybody's portfolio, you're bound to have some great stocks and some not-so-great stocks. (And in today's market, you probably have more of the latter.) Think about it, though, if someone were to ask you about your best holdings, you're likely to name off the stocks in an uptrend or making new highs.

Your worst holdings? The ones going lower.

You'll rarely single out a stock because it has

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The stocks featured in this week's screen are: Albany Molecular Research, Inc. (AMRI), Alliant Techsystems, Inc. (ATK), Quest Diagnostics, Inc. (DGX), Sun Healthcare Group, Inc. (SUNH), and Sybase, Inc. (SY).

< ?DART(15);?> This week's screen explains how using a market sentiment item can help find new stocks in a down market.

The item is called the 'short ratio'.

The short ratio is the number of shares sold short (short interest or bets that the stock will go lower in price) divided by the average daily volume. This is sometimes referred to as the "days to cover" ratio because it tells approximately how many days it will take short-sellers to cover their positions if good news sends the price higher.

The higher the ratio, the longer it would take to buy back the 'sold' (borrowed) shares. And, in theory, the more short positions there are to

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Today's topic is a bit of an extension on this week's Roundtable Review discussion in which we talked about what to do with $100,000 in new cash.

In that video segment, I talked about putting cash in 3 of the top sectors, such as Consumer Staples, Medical/Healthcare and Utilities. I also talked about putting some in 3 of the most beaten down or avoided sectors like Oils & Energy, Transportation and Finance.

Today I want to drill down and talk about how I would go about finding stocks in each of these sectors.

First, Consumer Staples and Utilities are oftentimes called "defensive" stocks. These stocks are usually solid companies that produce solid earnings.

They're called defensive because these are the kinds of companies that will typically perform better than the market when it's going through a difficult period. The caveat is that they will often underperform during boom

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So all that being said, I decided to put together a screen that looks for companies with solid cash positions. Let me note that I'm not doing this in hopes that these companies initiate repurchase programs of their own, even though that could be a benefit. I'm doing this because, as the credit market tightens, the companies with the strongest cash positions, coupled with low debt, reduced inventories and the like, will be in the best position to weather a financial crisis. And today's eye-popping numbers made me think that in spite of all the turmoil we've seen in the stock market, some companies should do just fine due to their healthy balance sheets. So here we go: I first looked for companies with Cash and Marketable Securities that are higher now than they were last year at this time. Having a strong Cash position means companies will not have to depend on banks ...

So all that being said, I decided to put together a screen that looks for companies with solid cash positions. Let me note that I'm not doing this in hopes that these companies initiate repurchase programs of their own, even though that could be a benefit. I'm doing this because, as the credit market tightens, the companies with the strongest cash positions, coupled with low debt, reduced inventories and the like, will be in the best position to weather a financial crisis. And today's eye-popping numbers made me think that in spite of all the turmoil we've seen in the stock market, some companies should do just fine due to their healthy balance sheets. So here we go: I first looked for companies with Cash and Marketable Securities that are higher now than they were last year at this time. Having a strong Cash position means companies will not have to depend on banks ...

Today's article isn't really a screen (although I do have one at the end).

I want to talk about something that I believe is critically important in light of what's been happening in the market.

And that's about managing your risk -- using stops, cutting your losses -- all of that stuff.

Not a fun topic, but probably one of the most important for right now.

What's interesting is that nobody ruins their portfolio when the market is going straight up. It's when the market goes down that people get into real trouble.

But ironically, it's when the market is going up that a lot of these bad habits are created.

The problem is that even bad decisions are oftentimes rewarded in a bull market. But when the market is going down, there's no mercy for bad decision makers. Sitting on losses in hopes of them coming back can

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We've mentioned it here before, but it's worth saying again: Nearly half of a stock's price movement is tied to the performance of its respective group (Sector and Industry).

That being said, most great stocks from great groups often have some great peers as well.

If you find yourself in a killer trade, take a look at the characteristics of THAT STOCK and then hunt within its group to find OTHER STOCKS that share the same characteristics.

Does a certain outstanding stock exhibit great sales growth? I'm sure there are at least a few within its group that are also showing similar numbers.

What about increasing margins? If the stock is doing well, it's likely that the industry itself is experiencing meaningful increases in margins too.

This type of screening is often called 'modeling'. Figure out the components of what makes something successful and concentrate on that.

If you're

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