MarketSpeak

It’s now a few days into my JPM prediction and you may be wondering why, with the stock clearly below my $20 floor, I’m still optimistic?

Nothing will happen in a day or two. Technicals showed that the price of this stock needed to ease up a little. That said, today’s pivot point analysis shows S2 at $17, S1 at $18.24, and you guessed it, the pivot point at $20.

Furthermore, today’s daily price chart (based on 5-minute dojis) shows that JPM suffered the ill-effects of being in horrible company in its sector. Nonetheless, Fast Stochastic indicators show that we are nearing a price decline bottom. No signal of direction change as of yet but we are getting close the bottom percentile range. In addition, if price continues to decline tomorrow, RSI may hit the 20th percentile mark, matching its lowest mark in some time. (Typically, when this happens, price reverses upward.)

Lastly, during the last 15 minutes of trading, today (Thursday),we saw a solid price jump above the midline of the Keltner Channel and price range remained above the midline, albeit not as solidly as one would like to see.

I reiterate that JPM is solid as long as the macro-enviornment cooperates. Unfortunately, dinosaurs like CITI and GM are in bad need of resolution so the rest of the market can continue to heal. It really is a difficult time when one must weigh employment security against stabilizing the financial markets.

There are, however, a few bright spots in the market, vindicating my long-standing prognostications on low-end retail, healtcare IT, and alternative energy: Wal-Mart showed excellent performance, today, under the circumstances, with a 5.1% increase in sales. A few days ago, First Solar announced its acquisition of a competitor and healthcare IT is about to break through with the support of the White House.

On this last item, healthcare IT will have the political and financial support it needs to thrive. However, support from medical practionners cannot be assumed to be readily available. In effect, according to my week-long inquiries, medical practitionners continue to maintain their skeptical demeanor towards automated solutions. And I can understand, to a certain degree. IT is famous for glibly shrugging off bug after bug and technological incompatibilities like they are no big deal. If a stock market trading station goes down, oh well, there’s insurance for that. However, if a wireless network skips a few packets and doesn’t deliver a vital bit of heart monitoring information, it could mean a patient’s life-critical status escapes the attention of an attending nurse.

So, having a solid understanding of the players in healthcare IT and what, specifically they deliver, can help us navigate the multifaceted sea of vendors in order to pick out the safest solutions to invest in and explain to medical practioners that automation can be most beneficial in certain areas, namely document management, processing, delivery, backend process management, and non-vital status monitoring, to name a few obvious ones.

Clearly Misys, eClinicalWorks and the like seem to have a leg up, at this time. But their success depends on physician support and adoption.

I commend the current American government for their solid commitment to reducing the cost of healthcare through various means, including automation, but let’s ensure that medical practitioners are at the forefront of learning about technology and help guide this evolution judiciously in this very delicate and vital area of society. As President Obama and Senator (Sir) Edward Kennedy said earlier today:”let’s put the patient first.” And, let’s ensure that the doctor is an integral part of the process. Let’s ensure that we don’t automate for the sake of automating without regard for how the practice of medicine will change. There is such a thing as too much automation.

Steady as she goes, folks.