Abbott Laboratories is engaged in the discovery, development, manufacture, and sale of a line of health care products. Co. has four segments: Established Pharmaceutical Products, which includes a line of generic pharmaceuticals; Diagnostic Products, which includes a line of diagnostic systems and tests; Nutritional Products, which includes a line of pediatric and adult nutritional products; and Medical Devices, which includes a line of rhythm management, electrophysiology, heart failure, vascular and structural heart devices for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes care products, as well as neuromodulation devices for the management of chronic pain and movement disorders.
When researching a stock like Abbott Laboratories, many investors are the most familiar with Fundamental Analysis — looking at a company's balance sheet, earnings, revenues, and what's happening in that company's underlying business. Investors who use Fundamental Analysis to identify good stocks to buy or sell can also benefit from ABT Technical Analysis to help find a good entry or exit point. Technical Analysis is blind to the fundamentals and looks only at the trading data for ABT stock — the real life supply and demand for the stock over time — and examines that data in different ways. One of these ways is called the Relative Strength Index, or RSI. This popular indicator, originally developed in the 1970's by J. Welles Wilder, looks at a 14-day moving average of a stock's gains on its up days, versus its losses on its down days. The resulting ABT RSI is a value that measures momentum, oscillating between "oversold" and "overbought" on a scale of zero to 100. A reading below 30 is viewed to be oversold, which a bullish investor could look to as a sign that the selling is in the process of exhausting itself, and look for entry point opportunities. A reading above 70 is viewed to be overbought, which could indicate that a rally in progress is starting to get crowded with buyers. If the rally has been a long one, that could be a sign that a pullback is overdue. |