1% of All Liquid Stocks Doubled YTD

It is this time of the year again, when we take a look at the best and worst performers. So far 2011 has been extremely volatile and correlation in price moves reached record levels. Almost 2/3 of all stocks are down for the year. About 10% of the all stocks advanced 30% or more. 36 (1.1%) doubled at a minimum. See a list of the best performers below, excluding the acquired companies.

Ritholtz’s Collection of Trading Rules is Pure Gold

Barry Ritholtz has assembled an impressive list of trading rules and aphorisms from different sources that are well worth perusing. Trading rules are basically lessons, derived from personal experience. While there is no substitute for making your own mistakes and learning from them, taking into account other people’s lessons is an essential element of anyone’s learning curve.

It is amazing how much could be said with so little. Some of my favorite quotes include:

Valuation alone is insufficient reason to get short a stock — History teaches us that cheap stocks can get cheaper, dear stocks can get more expensive

ALWAYS work with a pre-determined loss – either a physical or mental stop loss — Never leave yourself open to infinite losses

Fundamentals tell you WHY to short something, not WHEN to short it. ALWAYS have some technical confirmation before shorting. Make a short selling wish list, then WAIT for technical confirmation.

The Return of the Reflation Trade?

The S & P 500 managed to close barely positive for the day, but under the relatively calm surface there was some heavy selling pressure in ex-momentum leaders, namely $AMZN $PCLN $LULU among others. Meanwhile, fertilizers, gold and silver miners staged a massive comeback after lagging the general market over the past few days. In addition, many of the oil stocks are hovering near 52week high.

One day certainly does not make a trend, but given the expectations that any European bailout solution will involve some form of debt monetizing, gold and silver miners might have more room to run.

Don’t take anything for granted. So far, Europe has preffered to fight the debt crisis with austerity measures, so more steps in this direction should not be excluded. If this is the case, headlines won’t have the expected positive effect on gold and silver miners.

Keep in mind that I am looking at these stocks from a few days to a few weeks perspective and in such short time frame, price action itself could be a catalyst. Anyway top picks for the next few days: $XG and $RGLD with stops below today’s lows.