It must be August and it must be the dog days of when we are bored enough to look at the hot stocks, but, sigh, we did and we mention them here because undoubtedly our readers are hearing about them too and kicking their dogs awake and looking for something to chase away the boredom so here is what we saw in the hot stocks.

AMD shows a clear buy signal.  The risk is absolutely clear too.  A 4 or 5% stop under the nearest low.  While we don’t like handicapping stocks we love charts where the trade is so clear  — both the signal and the identified risk.

SBGI also has lots of volatility, lots of possibility and a clear stop with filter under the low of the last bar there.

And damned if GT doesn’t look like a flag here, meaning there should be some more upside there.  We would put a money management stop on this one — about 7 or 8% down from today’s low.

Of the hot stocks we also looked at CHIC, NPD, ARIA and thought them buyable in reasonable lots.  Hot stocks we thought not so hot were AIG, MELA and WCRX.

Remember if these things burn your fingers we warned you about handicapping individual stocks.  So this week we will review our list of ETFs, many of which look buyable.

Quite apart from this closed system game of the market one must register the air of unreality in this little universe.  Sunday’s Times notes the decrepit state of the banking business, and the real estate situation is a sucker’s game of banks doling out foreclosed properties.  If they dumped them we would see a precipitous crash in house prices, followed by a precipitous crash in stock prices.  We are completely bemused by an economy “on the mend (?)” when the real unemployment rate must be in the high teens or maybe even 20% (depends on whose lies you believe).

Keep your powder dry and your stops undated.