Price Charts of Top Performing Stocks

Yesterday, we published a list of the best and worst performing Russell 3,000 stocks in the first quarter.  Below we highlight price charts of four of the top five on the list. 

The top stock on the list, BPZ Resources (BZP), was up 94% in the first quarter.  As shown below, the stock has declined in the first two days of the second quarter, however, and has broken its short-term uptrend.  IDIX, the second best performer, is a biopharmaceutical company that develops treatments for Hepatitis C and HIV.  Its price chart has developed a classic stair-step pattern.  The technical expectation would be for some short-term consolidation and then another step-up.  EBS is another biopharmaceutical company, and it has a very similar pattern to IDIX.  The last stock highlighted is Walter Industries (WLT), which was up 74% in the first quarter.  The majority of WLT's revenues come from coal, but they also have natural gas, mortgage financing and homebuilding operations (weird mix).  WLT remains in a solid uptrend, and until that breaks, the bulls will be in charge.