5 Big Stocks to Trade for Gains

CenterPoint Energy

$9 billion utility stock CenterPoint Energy (CNP) is showing us a very similar setup right now. Like SPY, CenterPoint is moving higher in a trend channel that's been in force for a while. In fact, CNP's channel has been leading the big index this year.

That's not a huge surprise. S&P 500 components tend to correlate very highly with the rest of the index, so CNP's status as a member stock means that it's going to tend to move broadly alongside "stocks" as a group.

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CNP has tested trend line support quite a few times since the late summer (evidenced by all of those blue arrows), but the channel has managed to hold up. That's a very good thing for longs - it means that CNP can still catch a bid at support as buyers start to think, "hey, that looks cheap again!"

The best time to buy a stock that's in an uptrending channel comes at support -- it's the place where shares have the furthest to move back up to resistance (the top of the channel) and where they have the least distance to move through support. Since a breakdown below support means that the channel is broken, it's also a logical place to put a stop below; that means minimal risk. With CNP up around the channel's midpoint, opportunistic buyers would be well advised to wait a little while before jumping in.

The 50-day moving average is acting as a good proxy for support here, so I'd recommend placing a protective stop under it to reduce the risks if support does ultimately fail.

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