The Markets and a new trade: Bought: Interactive Data Corp (IDC) @19.68

The market has rebounded nicely these past weeks. The volume on up days has been higher compared to the down days. Also the nasdaq seems to have found support around the 50-day moving average which so far this year seemed to be acting like a resistance.

My most recent trade this week has been Interactive Data Corp(IDC) @19.68

• The company recently reported earnings and the stock reacted favourably. This is important, since it's become hard these days to second guess the direction of a stock on earnings, not to mention trying to second guess the earnings itself, which is still harder.
• Stock hit a 2-year high and this is after an extended period of consolidation in a trading range between 16 and 18.
  
• Betweem 4/12/2004 and 8/13/2004 the stock has found support at the 200-day MA. More importantly the 50-day MA has found support at the 200-day before the breakout.
• The company is 60% owned by Pearson plc(PSO). There's no reason for me to think PSO will iquidate stock soon. Sep. and Oct. shares shorted were 1.52M and 1.10 M respectively. Given the average volume, a short covering should be in order. Currently the short ratio is around 10.5 days (October)
• Fundamentally the company looks sound with no debt and (Book value+revenues) around $13. It has a good suite of products: FT Interactive Data, CMS BondEdge, ComStock and eSignal . They seem to be doing some interesting things with providing data to the Blackberries of the world. I've heard from people who work in finance that the Blackberry is really popular in the finance area It looks like some of these products should be and easy sell to those people.

So much for now. I'll keep an eye out for the breakout.