Mastec

MTZ

Company. "Mastec Incorporated ... provide[s] end-to-end communication, broadband and energy infrastructure services for clients in North America and Brazil. The Group designs, builds, installs, maintains, upgrades and monitors internal and external networks and other facilities for its clients. The Group also provides services related to the installation of integrated voice, data and video local and wide area networks within office buildings and underground locating, construction and maintenance services to utilities." (MarketWatch.com) (company website)

Buy. Mastec has apparently reversed the downtrend from earlier in the year and is on the way back up. Volumes have been heavier than normal in recent weeks, and money is flowing into the stock (CMF). At the beginning of November MTZ crossed the 200-day moving average, which is starting to flatten out and turn upward again (I hope!).

Buy 2. (23-Nov-04) By this morning, I had decided that MTZ was not going to work out. Since I bought, the price has stepped down four consecutive days. I put in a trigger to sell — I thought — at $7.50 if it traded that low. What I failed to notice was that my trade ticket was defaulted to buy. Ouch!

Trying to put lipstick on this pig: My buy sparked a small rally and MTZ ended higher than my buy. The buy lowered my average share price and consequently my loss to date.

Sell. The market works in mysterious ways.

After closing nicely up yesterday, putting MTZ back above the price of my original lot, it opened a bit higher today and then took a dive. When I looked in, it was back to just above $9. In view of the sour mood of the market, I put in a stop-loss order to sell if MTZ fell back to $9. It did, and both lots sold.

There are mixed signals in the MTZ chart. On the one hand, the trend is weakening (falling black ADX line), but on the other hand, cash flow (CMF) is becoming more positive. Since MTZ is so far ahead of the moving averages I think it is prudent to have sold. On the other hand, the 200-day average is about to turn up again, and MTZ has quite a bit of headroom before regaining the price a year ago (see sidebar).

I probably should have sold only the first lot that I bought. That would have been essentially a break-even trade, and then there would have been lots of cushion for the second lot. Unfortunately, I thought of that too late, when only 100 shares were left to sell.