5 Big Trades to Take for 'Data Thursday'

With any technical pattern, it's critical to think in terms of buyers and sellers - not shapes. After all, triangles, wedges, and the like are a good way of describing what's happening on a chart, but they're not the reason why it's tradable. Instead, it all comes down to the supply and demand caused by those buyers and sellers.

>>5 Rocket Stocks Worth Buying This Week

The horizontal resistance level at $36.50 in LOW is a place where sellers have previously been more eager to sell and take gains than buyers have been to keep buying. But uptrending support tells us that buyers do have some control over shares at lower levels. The breakout means that buyers were able to absorb all of the excess supply of shares that was sitting above $36.50. Without that price barrier above shares, it makes sense to be a buyer. Don't be early on this trade.

Phillips 66

Phillips 66 (PSX) is another stock that's having a great year. Shares of the downstream energy company have rallied more than 66% in the trailing 12 months, unlocking considerable value for shareholders following the spin-off from ConocoPhillips (COP). At this point, there's little reason to believe that the uptrend is over.

It doesn't take an expert technical analyst to figure out what's going on in Phillips 66; a quick glance at the chart tells you pretty much everything you need to know. PSX has been in a solid uptrend since the market's short-term bottom in June, and it's been bouncing higher in between trendline support and resistance ever since. Those support and resistance levels give us a high probability range for this stock to trade within. And as you might expect, the ideal time to be a buyer is on a bounce off of support - and that's exactly what we're seeing this week.

When you're looking to buy a stock within a trend channel, buying after a bounce off of support makes sense for two big reasons: it's the spot where shares have the furthest to move up before they hit resistance, and it's the spot where the risk is the least (because shares have the least room to move lower before you know you're wrong).

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