BALTIMORE (Stockpickr) -- Put down the 10-K filings and the stock screeners. It's time to take a break from the traditional methods of generating investment ideas. Instead, let the crowd do it for you.
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From hedge funds to individual investors, scores of market participants are turning to social media to figure out which stocks are worth watching. It's a concept that's known as "crowdsourcing," and it uses the masses to identify emerging trends in the market.
Crowdsourcing has long been a popular tool for the advertising industry, but it also makes a lot of sense as an investment tool. After all, the market is completely driven by the supply and demand, so it can be valuable to see what names are trending among the crowd.
While some fund managers are already trying to leverage social media resources like Twitter to find algorithmic trading opportunities, for most investors, crowdsourcing works best as a starting point for investors who want a starting point in their analysis. Today, we'll leverage the power of the crowd to take a look at some of the most active stocks on the market today.
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These "most active" names are the most heavily-traded names on the market -- and often, uber-active names have some sort of a technical or fundamental catalyst driving investors' attention on shares. And when there's a big catalyst, there's often a trading opportunity.
Without further ado, here's a look at today's stocks.
H&R Block
Nearest Resistance: $32
Nearest Support: $27.50
Catalyst: Q4 Earnings
Positive earnings numbers are spurring a big-volume 3% pop in shares of tax preparer H&R Block (HRB) this afternoon. H&R Block earned a record profit of $3.29 per share, besting analysts' consensus estimate of $3.23. The firm also reiterated that it plans to increase its focus on tax returns with the pending sale of its banking business.
From a technical standpoint, though, it's a little early to celebrate HRB's success. Resistance at $32 is still a challenging level for shares of H&R Block to take out. Until buyers can clear that hurdle, it's premature to be a buyer. Today's fade over the course of the trading session is evidence that there's still a glut of sellers up at those higher levels.
Best Buy
Nearest Resistance: $36
Nearest Support: $28
Catalyst: Shareholder Meeting
Best Buy (BBY) started off the morning with a volume spike, leading to an interesting open the first session after the firm's 2014 shareholder meeting. There's not much in the way of directional trading in today's session, but the big picture in BBY is starting to look bullish again for a change. This electronics retailer spend the last four months in an ascending triangle bottom, a price setup that actually broke out back at the beginning of this month.
There's a lack of nearby resistance in BBY at the moment, a fact that gives this name an uncharacteristically good risk/reward tradeoff right now. If you decide to be a buyer here, the 50-day moving average is a good place for a protective stop.
Micron Technology
Nearest Resistance: N/A
Nearest Support: $26
Catalyst: Analyst Upgrade
Last up is Micron Technology (MU), a name that's up 6.4% as I write today. The boost comes from an upgrade at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where the computer memory maker saw an upgrade from underperform to buy, alongside a price target increase to $40. That's a pretty dramatic change in opinion from BAML, and it's fuelling the dramatic pop in MU's share price.
Micron has been in a textbook uptrend for quite a while now, bouncing higher on ever successive test of trendline support. So even though shares are a little extended at the moment, Micron remains a "buy the dips" opportunity for investors.
To see these stocks in action, check out the at Most-Active Stocks portfolio on Stockpickr.
-- Written by Jonas Elmerraji in Baltimore.
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At the time of publication, author had no positions in the names mentioned.
Jonas Elmerraji, CMT, is a senior market analyst at Agora Financial in Baltimore and a contributor to
TheStreet. Before that, he managed a portfolio of stocks for an investment advisory returned 15% in 2008. He has been featured in Forbes , Investor's Business Daily, and on CNBC.com. Jonas holds a degree in financial economics from UMBC and the Chartered Market Technician designation.Follow Jonas on Twitter @JonasElmerraji
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