Introducing Fresh Charts! By popular demand.
A new weekly post on trade setups (ETFs & stocks). I did the charting, so you don't have to.
The Story Behind “Fresh Charts”
As many of you know, I’ve been a professional investor for 33 years and have been charting stocks for 46 years. My “bread and butter” is producing quick chart takes with a strict focus on identifying major risk points—because managing risk when things get stormy is where I’ve done my best work over the decades.
With a rapidly growing Substack audience, I wanted a way to download the chart analysis running through my brain directly to you in a format that is time-efficient, affordable, and helps you think for yourself. I originally planned a daily 20-stock trading portfolio, but with so many stocks and ETFs to cover, a daily obligation is not in your best interests, or mine.
Instead, I called an audible: I am delivering my raw, ongoing chart work in its simplest, most adaptive form.
This week’s issue is below, and it is free to all of our subscribers. After this maiden issue, it will go behind the paywall, and only our paid subscribers will receive it. As a reminder, a paid subscription to ETF Yourself is currently $150 a year or $15 a month.
Starting August 15, all monthly renewals of ETFYourself.com will be at $25/month. Our annual price will be $200.
What is Fresh Charts all about?
Each week, I analyze hundreds of stock and ETF charts, to answer 3 simple questions.
Which charts look good to me this week? (Best Setups)
Which charts look bad to me this week? (Worst Setups)
Which charts do not evoke a strong view? (Do not appear in the report)
Tuesday vs. Thursday: What’s the Difference?
Tuesdays (Weekly ROAR): Macro, big-picture thinking and intermediate-term risk scores to help guide portfolio allocation.
Thursdays (Fresh Charts): Pure, short-term chart analysis. No portfolio management—just a weekly research report to supplement your DIY investing.
Key Universes Reviewed
Each week, I review approximately 800 tickers from the following master watchlists:
S&P 500 Stocks (500 tickers)*
Microcap List (All 150 holdings of ETF ticker:
FDM)International Markets (Rob’s country/international ETF list of 80 ETFs)
Rob’s ETF Watchlist (75 ETFs; full list at ROAR.PiTrade.com)
* Note: in this free issue, I analyzed the S&P 100 (100 biggest stocks). Starting with the first paid issue next week, I’ll cover all 500.
About Fresh Charts
Fresh Charts is designed to identify short-term market opportunities by evaluating technical chart patterns across hundreds of liquid securities.
The Objective: To scout for “high percentage shots” from more than 1,000 weekly tracked tickers.
The Timeline: Focuses strictly on a short-term horizon (10–20 trading days) using daily charts.
The Schedule: Updated every week following Wednesday’s market close and delivered Thursdays.
⚠️ Important Clarification: This is NOT a list of investment recommendations. It is a curated collection of stock and ETF tickers analyzed strictly through technical chart patterns by Rob Isbitts (me).
Q: Rob, why don’t you do “buy/sell” picks like a million other investing “experts?”
As my longtime subscribers know, I’m not like the others. It is up to you to decide if and how that helps you. I am here to coach by showing you what I see, on a regular basis, and discussing how my analysis and opinions evolve. There are plenty of “top picks” publications out there, so they are very easy to find.
Here, our mission is not simply to “give DIY investors a fish” but to “teach them to fish.”
How you use my observations, both in Tuesday’s Weekly ROAR and this new Thursday Fresh Charts post, is entirely up to you. Which ones to consider and how to gain exposure to them (small share position, large share position, deploying options, etc.).
I was a fidicuary investment advisor for 27 years, and retired from that role in 2020. Back then, I mapped my trade setups to our clients’ portfolios. This is research, and you’re the captain now! And we want to make you the best one you can be.
Complementing the ROAR Score
This report is designed to complement—not replace—the ROAR Score approach (ROAR.PiTrade.com). That site is all about replacing “picks” with “portfolios.” Learning to manage your wealth like a portfolio manager (my old job!) will create much more wealth for investors over time, and with far less risk of disaster along the way.
ROAR Scores gauge a ticker’s risk of major loss on an intermediate-term basis and are automated to help direct multi-security portfolio allocations (like my popular ROAR 10 ETF model).
Fresh Charts focuses solely on immediate, actionable chart reading. That’s why we call them “setups” not picks or trades.
We Value Your Feedback
How can we make this new report more valuable to your investing process? Send your questions and feedback to info@sungardeninvestment.com.
Now, here’s this week’s Fresh Charts!
Rob...appreciate the time you have spent in presenting the weekly focused setups to us. My concern/question is that will these setups be updated with any frequency? I'll illustrate 2 examples from your recent Barchart articles. CENT was highlighted on 6/15, and LYTS was on 6/25. I would consider the tone of the articles, published at that time, as "best setups" if this weekly posting was sent to us at that point in time. Both now appear on the worst setups as of 7/2. Balancing these previous examples, DLX could be considered a "best setup", highlighted on 6/15 (I think) and appears on the 7/2 sheets as such. Will you be updating during the week if any of these charts change dramatically between publication dates (like in LYTS example, which reflects on a recurring theme of yours, volatility in stocks and markets)? Thanks for any perspective...maybe this can be expanded upon during the Tuesday meeting.
Rob, $PRNG doesn't show up in Barcharts when I enter it for my watch list. Is this a typo or maybe a foreign stock?