Matrix Service (MTRX)

Company

mtrx(1)_1yr
MTRX 1-year chart

"Matrix Service Company provides general industrial construction and repair and maintenance services principally to the petroleum, petrochemical, power, bulk storage terminal, pipeline and industrial gas industries." (company website)

mtrx(1)
MTRX 6-month chart

Buy

20 April 2009. I put in my buy order last Friday, while MTRX was having its third consecutive day of gains. The order didn't execute then, but it did this morning — and since the market was in a funk, my bid, too low last Friday, was suddenly today's high. Argh!

MTRX bottomed in February and has been climbing steadily ever since.

  • Percentage price oscillator (PPO) — just below the signal line
  • Volume — big volume for latest dip

Based on technical analysis, MarketEdge calls MTRX a "buy" in a "strong upward trend," but notes that it is "overbought."

Sell

gain Bottom line
8%

7 May 2009. After getting stopped-out of IVAC I set the stop-loss at 3% to trigger if the price fell 2% below the previous close (compared to 2% at 1% for IVAC). Although I eventually got stopped-out of MTRX as well, it had been much higher to start with, so I still made a reasonable profit on the transaction.

Maybe the thing to do is to wait until a gain of at least x% before putting in trailing stops. Or maybe I should look for a way to avoid using intraday prices at all to trigger sales. Hmmm. More thinking to do.