Merck & Co. is a global health care company that delivers health solutions through its prescription medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies and animal health products. Co.'s reportable segments are: the Pharmaceutical and Animal Health. The Pharmaceutical segment includes human health pharmaceutical and vaccine products. The Animal Health segment discovers, develops, manufactures and markets a range of veterinary pharmaceuticals, vaccines and health management solutions and services, as well as a suite of digitally connected identification, traceability and monitoring products.
When researching a stock like Merck, 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 MRK 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 MRK 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 MRK 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. |