Never, ever accept stock tips from strangers quaffing Greek coffee in an Internet cafe in Athens.

Don’t even think about it.

Unless the stranger is a tourist from Calgary, armed with a laptop bursting with technical analysis.

Then, you might want to think about it.

Calgary pro stock trader Tyler Bollhorn recently provided his free weekly commentary and featured stock opportunity to his Stockscores.com subscribers from an Internet cafe in Athens.

“In consideration of the heat, I want my research process to find a stock opportunity to be quite quick, so I opted to run the ‘Stockscores Simple’ strategy to find a Nasdaq stock,” wrote Bollhorn, mastermind behind the Stockscores system that is provided to investors on the popular Stockhouse investment site.

Bollhorn’s technical analysis rating system features two key numbers – a sentiment stockscore and a signal stockscore.

If the sentiment stockscore is 60 or higher and the signal stockscore is 80 or higher, the stock has passed the Stockscore test as a buy candidate. These numbers are available with the company snapshots at www.stockhouse.ca.

Bollhorn’s scan of Nasdaq produced 78 stocks that met the 60+/80+ criteria. The founder and president of Stockscores.com then used what he calls the Gallery Feature to identify his weekly feature stock.

“In all, the process to scan the entire market and find this one stock took less than five minutes,” wrote Bollhorn. “Market activity is telling me that this stock has good potential . . .”

The chart showed a solutions provider to the semiconductor industry named Electroglas (EGLS) had spiked from $2.07 to $2.44 on Aug. 28 on extraordinarily high volume of $2,225,900 shares.

Some traders might have been reluctant to bet on a stock that has popped 18 per cent, but generally stocks that meet the Stockscores criteria have already begun to move into an uptrend.

In this case, Bollhorn hit paydirt as Electroglas continued to rocket after the Labour Day weekend, hitting $2.86 after three days of trading for a 17-per-cent jump from the price when it was featured.

We’ve been testing the Stockscores system in recent weeks and it looks like Bollhorn has a winner, particularly in a volatile market that can play into the hands of investors who play the swings and shun the old buy-and-hold strategy.

It’s imperative that traders remember that finding stocks that meet the 60+/80+ is only part of the battle in identifying a winning stock based on technical analysis. As Bollhorn emphasizes, it’s crucial traders then determine whether a stock has a high probability chart pattern and be particularly wary of stocks that have already made a significant move upward.

Most stocks with favourable charts easily pass the 60+ sentiment test. The crucial number is the signal indicator that rates stocks bullish at 70-100, optimistic at 60-69, neutral at 40-59, cautious at 30-39 and bearish at 1-29.

The numbers can also alert investors when a hot stock cools, in which case the signal rating begins to drop. In his commentaries, Bollhorn focuses on technical analysis and, in featuring Electroglas, made no mention of the fact the company lost $11.7 million US in its most recent quarter. He urges traders to do their own due diligence.

And, of course, you should never accept stock tips from a stranger in a Greek Internet cafe. However, if he’s in a celebratory mood, it’s probably Tyler Bollhorn, in which case you may want to pick his brain and raise a glass of ouzo.

Opa!

* MEMO TO CONRAD BLACK, CEO, Hollinger International: As a former employee in the newspaper wars, please acknowledge that I am resubmitting my expense account due to a minor oversight. While researching a sports story on the father of Calgary hockey, Lanny McDonald, I purchased documents that once belonged to the father of Confederation, Sir John A. Macdonald. I believe these two men are related in some way.

The documents were purchased for $8 million Cdn, which, relatively speaking, should be a bargain as I understand that your company, Hollinger International, paid $8 million US in company money to buy documents that once belonged to Franklin D. Roosevelt, about whom you recently wrote a book.

Cut the cheques. No need to worry. If the ink-stained wretches at the papers you used to own make a big stink of it, I imagine your stockholders will understand. With all that controversy swirling over the corporate governance of your company, your shareholders ought to be thick-skinned enough to shrug off a little old expense chit.




HOT ALBERTA STOCK: RIPPER OIL & GAS
RIP-TSXV $1.44
Up 29 cents (+25.2%) on 7,100 shares (for week ending Sept. 5).
Ripper went on a tear when the company . . . well, OK, they didn’t exactly do anything as far as we can tell. The reason the stock when up was . . . well, you just never know on the thinly traded hot-air balloon ride known as the Venture exchange. The oil and gas junior did put out some decent earnings a while back (a profit of $711,942 or 7 cents per share). And, of course, it’s got a heck of a name.



COLD ALBERTA STOCK: UTS ENERGY
UTS-TSX 52 Cents
Down 16 cents (-23.5%) on 1,436,800 shares (for week ending Sept. 5).
After the stock spiked sharply to a 52-week high of 82 cents, shareholders kicked oilsands in the face of UTS, one of the players involved in the Alberta Fort Hills Oil Sands project. No doubt, the stock is being punished with the Fort Hills Oil project in limbo. True North Energy, the project’s operator, recently decided not to proceed with the project as scheduled.