Travelers Insurance (TRV): Is it time to sell…or time to buy?
Discussed in this article: Travelers Cos Inc. ( $TRV )
I want to look at Travelers ( $TRV Travelers Companies Inc ). The DOW was actually up pretty nice today, but Travelers ( $TRV Travelers Companies Inc ) was definitely not participating. That’s because this company is going to have let’s just say, significant payouts of because of the tornado that’s blown through the Midwest. That’s truly a tragedy but I’m not really talking about that now I’m talking about this stock.
So do you avoid this stock because it’s got a clear break of support ? You can see how this stock has broken below the 50-day moving average so it’s time to sell the stock; you’ve got to get out of here, right here, right now before it falls even further. I would say, no, not so fast and here’s why. First of all, the weekly chart, yes, it shows a really nice uptrend. We know why the stock was falling today; we would expect the stock to fall on this type of news. This is what happens with insurance companies when you insure against a natural disaster. You just have, hello, property and casualty insurance and you have property damage and casualties; guess what? Your stock is going to take a hit.
If you look at the weekly chart and go back to say, prior disasters, you can see that it would have actually been a pretty good move to buy into this weakness. Now, I’m not saying that Travelers ( $TRV Travelers Companies Inc ) is done going down, but I am saying that this is actually a pretty good opportunity to start building, what I would deem, a low risk position; here’s why I think it’s low risk. Because if you just look at today’s intraday low 83.16 you can see the stock closed just a little bit above that. Now if I were just to kind of project out in time, I’ve seen this type of pattern before, you see a big move down like this and then the next day perhaps the stock even opens up a little lower, maybe it trades down for one more day, but maybe it also opens up lower, and then starts to reverse and trickle higher. I think we don’t have to choose, first of all by the time you can act on this video the opening bell is going to ring and you’ll be able to do it.
Here’s my take though. If we look at this intraday, you’ll see where there’s some pretty solid support. This was the big overdone sell-off down here to 83.16. After that the stock really trickled higher the rest of the day. So I’m looking at this level here as some pretty solid support for Travelers ( $TRV Travelers Companies Inc ). So if you’re buying this stock now you would want to set a stop just below the intraday low, because we could have another down day. So you’d set a stop just below today’s intraday low. If it turns out that Travelers ( $TRV Travelers Companies Inc ) opens up lower tomorrow, don’t know whether it is or not, then where you would want to actually buy is above this intraday low, expect a better resistance up at this level. Then if Travelers ( $TRV Travelers Companies Inc ) winds up clearing that level, you’ve bought here, your adding there, and now you’re off to the races.
So try that strategy tomorrow and see if it works. At the very least you’re going to lose only a little bit of money because this is low risk trade.