I’ve recently worked my way to the short side of the ship, which means firing from a stern bow now. The best move, I have learned in this bloodthirsty state, is to update my eligible list of go-to growth longs.

Why do such a thing? The market’s going straight to hell in a wall mart e-tail basket, right?

Oh most certainly. Perhaps.

Michael Davey here…

And I do love the Thanksgiving week. I’m endlessly thankful when I can trade so easily. Monday and Tuesday have a decent tendency to sell, while Wednesday and then Friday’s half-session love to quietly lull higher; so much that by an hour into Friday I’m by then focused on other lusts, but still somehow making money.

Click on the upper left of the graphic above (the other left) and you see the top-50 of IBD’s updated industry group rankings (50 out of 197 total industry groups; roughly the top 25%). I’ll get into this more elaborately another time (if I’m not lost at sea), but briefly for now, I hunt for longs focused on the highest ranking groups, as well as those rapidly increasing in score. I throw out several groups because they have too few stocks, or they publish newspapers or something like that. So in fact three out of the top four groups at the moment are not of interest to me (this graphic does not show the number of stocks in each group, unfortunately, but textiles and housewares have only four names each in the group).

Noting the highest scoring groups is easy enough, while the following have been rapidly increasing in relative strength (RS):

Apparel-Shoes
Cosmetics/Personal Care
Pollution Control-Equip
Energy-Other

One thing I can say is that I wake up to a lot less names on my long-book gapping-down dramatically, by buying only highly-ranked groups. I tend also to avoid a high-ranked group which is dropping rapidly in score (current ex: Banks-Foreign). I should further note, I generally do not short from the higher ranking groups, especially not from a group rapidly rising in RS. More on all of this later.

Back-pocket pantry list of leadership longs for the upcoming holiday week:

Pollution Control-Equip:
DGW
RINO
HEAT
INSU
DCI

Auto/Truck Equip and Truck Parts (combined):
CAAS
CYD
TXIC
GNTX
AXL
OSK

Cosmetics/Personal Care:
REV
NUS
MED
NTY
BARE
EL

Computer-Data Storage:
CML
NTAP
WDC
QTM (near penny-stock)

Computer Sftwr-Enterprise:
ASIA
JDAS
TLEO (>20.25 2ndary pr)
IBIX
RNOW
CVLT
CTFO
ININ
CRM
SLH

Paper & Paper Products:
SWM
CLW
TIN

Energy-Other:
TSL
CSIQ
YGE
APWR
WLT
MEE

Machinery-Construction/Mining:
BUCY
JOYG

Chemicals-Specialty:
NEU
LZ
OMN

Retail Clothing and Apparel-Shoes & Related (combined):
DBRN
SMRT
CHS
SHOO
CTRN
GES
URBN
SKX

Leisure Svcs:
NFLX
CTRP
PCLN
WYN
EXPE

Leisure-Hotels & Motels:
HMIN
H (new ipo)
SVN (new ipo)

Misc (very strong, but from medium-ranked groups):
LFT
DEER (chinese ipo)
HOLI
SXCI

Note: Several of the above stocks are currently extended. The list is not for buy set-ups here and now, but my list of eligible names (and I recommended nothing just now, except reading all of the disclaimer texts on the site). A strong slice down on an extended leader is often a good entry. I break the names into their respective groups because on a given day I prefer to judge the leading and lagging groups for that session and shop then accordingly (cruising my individual names from that day’s leading groups and avoiding that days worst declining groups; although sometimes I may buy a leading group, which is lagging on a given day, nearer to the close of trading). Finally, I left out the Metals-Gold/Silver group, which is again increasing rapidly in rank. I will try to post the (long) list of eligible miners, should I find myself buying in this group (I am avoiding for now due to the potential firming of the Dollar).