Barchart Stock Chart of the Day – March 2, 2009

Scanning the various Barchart daily screens, your eye quickly picks up trends. I’ve spoken about some of the most predominate trends of late, education stocks, gold and inverse ETFs.

While checking the Barchart Signals - Top 100 Stocks page, yet another trend is becoming clear. On February 26th, we featured outdoor retailer Cabela’s (CAB) as our Chart of the Day, and one of the reasons that Cabela’s was bucking the general retailers trend was because of higher gun sales after the election of President Obama. Fourth quarter sales were particularly strong.

Today two gun manufacturers appear on the signal improvement page, Smith & Wesson (SWHC) and today’s Chart of the Day, Strum, Ruger & Company (RGR) , a maker of handguns, shotguns and rifles.

Barchart Opinions for RGR are:

    Short Term Indicators Average: 100% Buy
    Medium Term Indicators Average: 100% Buy
    Long Term Indicators Average: 100% Buy
    Overall Average: 100% Buy

Barchart Trend Spotter Signal: Long since February 23, 2009.

Sector Performance: RGR is a member of the Leisure & Recreational Products sector, where it is the 1st best performing stock out of 16 stocks in the sector. While the sector as a whole has a weighted Alpha of -57.78%, RGR itself has a weighted Alpha of -10.3% indicating that it is stronger than the sector as a whole. To learn more about weighted Alpha, visit the Barchart Learning Center.

How we spotted this chart: We noticed RGR while viewing Barchart’s Signals - Top 100 Stocks page. We displayed the full list and then sorted by last month’s opinion. We several gun manufacturers had made the list and that RGR had improved its Barchart Signals score from a 48% Buy last month to a 100% Buy yesterday.

Recent Developments:
On February 24th, after the close, Strum, Ruger & Company (RGR) reported Q4 earnings at 29 cents per share, up from analysts’ expectations of 6 cents.