ChartSmarter Tuesday Game Plan 5/5/15

Markets posted gains for the second session in a row but volume did not cooperate and benchmarks finished well off highs for the session. A look at the Nasdaq shows it CLOSED 2/3rds off its intraday highs made early on of .75%. Last Monday through Thursday the Nasdaq declined on very heavy volume and neither last Friday or today saw as much trade as any of those aforementioned down days. The S&P 500 gained .3% Monday which was the best result of the big three. Digging a little deeper into the casual dining plays it looks as if the consumer is gravitating toward the lower end. This is a small sample but perhaps can be a gradual sign that risk is going off the table in this sector as investors flock to the presumed safety of the more mature names. Former high flying names in the sector fell after recent earnings reports like BWLD losing 12.8% on 4/29. DIN dropped 4% on 4/30 and CMG declined 7.4% on 4/21. CBRL currently trades 16% off recent all time highs (CBRL and DIN do sport decent dividend yields of 3 and 3.6% respectively to be fair). All four of these names are lower between 5-12% on a YTD basis, while names like YUM and MCD have advanced 4 and 3% in 2015 thus far. Perhaps capital is flowing into recent casual dining IPOs hoping to emulate the the massive gains a BWLD for example has attained over the years. Stocks that may fit into that category are HABT which is higher by almost 20% in the last 2 sessions and SHAK up a very appetizing 65% since coming public in January this year. Do what you want with the puns but respect price action. Below is yet another name that has broken down and a great example of why we wait for price to CONFIRM and not front run a trigger. This is how we examined DENN in our Tuesday 4/21 Game Plan. The ascending triangle trigger was never taken out and last Wednesday it plummeted almost 9% leaving shareholders with some indigestion.