A Quick Dive into the Most Bullish Shares in the UK Stock Universe

As  global equity markets continue to gyrate lower, finding opportunities to get long have become both fewer and shorter lived: so where is the strength in UK markets? This quick article and scanning tool will help you find strength and hopefully better navigate these tough market conditions

Markets have narrowed in their breadth over the past few months with fewer shares staying bullish:  one quick screen to run is to only consider taking longs in shares that are above their 50 and 200 day moving averages.

Entries to these can be fine tuned using shorter timescales  (for example buying a  pullback to/and rally from  the 21EMA) as price behaviour around these tend to be supported by the longer term price trend IF that  trend is still valid. These are simple momentum and relative strength criteria which should form an initial screen for more detailed analysis

Below this article  is a simple visual tool which allows you to scan all 1818 shares and select prospects according to price relative to these moving averages: you can also filter for market cap, volume and screen by sector and index to fine tune your search. You can post questions and comments below this article.

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 Screen Criteria

The universe of 1818 names were filtered using the below parameters

• 1) price above 50 and 200 MA ( these are expressed as % in the plot below: a min of 1%  above the MAs was set to avoid names on the cusp of rolling over)
• 2) Market Cap > £50 M
• 3) Volume >50,000 shares (av. per day)

The rationale for the above is to select shares with supportive medium and longer term technicals and with some  liquidity which should allow  entering and exiting positions in relatively elevated market volatility.( Note as share  price decreases, volume should be increased to allow for overall traded value in a day : otherwise liquidity can easily disappear for any but the smallest positions)

Here is how these names breakdown by sector :

You will  also notice that many of the resulting shares cluster in a few sectors

(Click on any of the graphics to enlarge them)

11 in Closed End Instruments

10 in Oil and Gas

7 in Software

6 In Industrial Support Services

6 in  Investment Banking and Brokerages

5 in Banks

4 in Precious Metals

Here are the Setor Plots

Below this article is a visual mining tool which allows you to do your own research by entering your search criteria in the boxes on the right : this will mine the underlying data and show results in the plots.  Here's some help on navigating and using these  tools here 

Highlight the table below the plot and select Focus Mode to show your results in table form.  Click on the Stock Code (EPIC) in that table to open a Tradingview chart of that name[/perfectpullquote]