No matter what “technical indicators”, “technical studies”, or whatever equations you wish to throw at a financial instrument, they are all derived from the same information: price. You can take indicators of indicators, constantly bludgeoning the data into some kind of form that seems to tell us something that the price movement hasn't told us already, but that's useless if there is blind faith involved.

Here’s a quick little trade idea for you: sell, short or buy puts on Metro Inc. (TSE: MRU.A). Metro Inc. is the operator of A&P, Food Basics, Metro and Loeb grocery stores in Ontario and Quebec. It’s not that I think being in the consumer staples sector is a bad thing in this environment, but this is a stock that has been a high flyer over the last year and I think it’s time for it to come back down to the market’s miserable reality.

Metro purchased the A&P/Dominion stores in Canada back in 2005 and have spent the last few years integrating them into their Metro brand. 2008 was the year they reaped the rewards, and the stock price soared. In 2008, while the rest of the market was plummeting, MRU.A advanced over 90% making it one of the best performing stocks of the year.

The Double Top and Double Bottom Patterns are classified as reversal patterns, this means that once the chart pattern has been identified, the most probable outcome, is that when the price breaks out of the pattern it is going to go in the Opposite direction as when it entered the pattern. So, if a chart is heading Up, then it hits some resistance and a Double Top appears, once the price breaks out it is going to start going down. Conversely, If the chart is heading down, and then it hits resistance and forms a Double Bottom pattern it is going to start heading up once it breaks free. For this reason, both of these patterns are great to help you decide when it is a good time to enter a position, or exit one.

There are many, many kinds of moving averages out there. All of them suffer from one kind of weakness or another, much like any sort of parameter does. The Weighted Moving Average and the Exponential Moving Average both try to address lag in the Simple Moving Average by placing emphasis in the calculation in the more recent minutes. I recommend going to Investopedia for calculations of the basic set of technical indicators. For the readers sake with regards to moving averages, an SMA is simply plotted as the average of the past 'n' periods. (usually the closing prices of said periods) General interpretations involve a faster (smaller 'n') MA crossing over a slower MA to indicate a trend. I prefer price action relative to the usual set of MA's, myself, rather than MA's relative to each other.

I hate sounding like the perma-bear, but we have another company on the “bankruptcy watch” list: Nova Chemicals (TSE: NCX), Canada’s “premiere” chemical manufacturer… actually, they’re pretty much Canada’s only chemical manufacturer. In the eyes of the equity markets, bond markets, and credit markets (i.e., CDS market) this company may be insolvent within months. But that fate is far from certain. For the gamblers out there, there may be a long-shot trade to be made.

As an introduction, Nova Chemicals (TSE: NCX) is Canada’s major chemicals producer. Basically, they produce a variety of plastic resins and styrenics that go into the manufacturing of stuff like plastic bags, plastic containers, disposable cups, and vehicle dashboards.

Its been a while since my last dividend stock analysis, so I thought I'd start with what should be a heavy hitter, Royal Bank Of Canada (TSE: RY). I have replaced the Dividend Achievers slot, with the DividendInvenstors.ca star rating, due to the dividend achievers list no longer being viewable online. (If you know of a new address for it, please let us know in the comment section! As we all know, all the banks have been hit hard in recent months. Lets see how their overall scores turn out now that things have calmed down a bit.

About the company:

Here is Royal Bank of Canada's description of what they do, which can be found on their website here

The Cup And Handle Chart Pattern (sometimes referred to as "Cup With Handle") is a continuation pattern, which means that it once the pattern has completed and the chart breaks out of it, the price will continue moving in the same direction that it was heading before it hit the resistance that led into the pattern forming. The cup and handle isn't as common as some of the other chart patterns like any of the Triangle Chart Patterns, but what it does have going for it, is when it appears it has an extremely high chance of following through as expected.