This morning I look at MO, the ticker for Altria Group Inc., the parent company of Kraft Foods, Philip Morris International, Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris Capital Corporation. First, here is the link to today’s Wallstrip show on the same ticker.

This chart gave me a hard time. MO displays a somewhat choppy and slow growth. To help understand the shorter timeframe, here is a look at a chart covering several years of weekly data:

If you asked a two year old to draw a stockchart in school, this is more or less what it would look like. I do not own any MO and have no plans of getting in but if I did, I would probably look to get in long. You can trade MO really either way but my comfort would be on the long side.

Altria had a nice run starting mid-June which was confirmed by a golden cross in early in July. The run was abrubtly interrupted late in September with bad news on the legal front (an important element for all the big tobacco companies). The price pulled right back to the MA200 line.

Although the price started increasing again and the trend-up seems to have resumed, the MA50 line is still dipping down for a symbol like MO, I would wait for a confirmation from the moving averages before getting in.