And On a Friday, No Less! BNVI, KOOL, and AMLN Off and Running

To see a stock pull out of a nosedive and start to ascend again is encouraging. To see it make that ascension on higher volume is compelling. To see it happen on a Friday is downright bullish. That's what makes ThermoGenesis Corp. (NASDAQ:KOOL), Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMLN), and Bionovo Inc. (NASDAQ:BNVI) so bullish today.... all three charts are painting a compelling picture. Take a look.

Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. didn't have a great 2011. In fact, it had a pretty lousy 2011, falling from a peak of $16.62 to a low of $8.03 in October. A funny thing happened after that though - AMLN started to move higher, and higher, and higher. In fact, the recent strength has been so good, that 2011 downtrend has turned into an uptrend. A key resistance line (orange) was snapped, and the 200-day line (green) was hurdles a couple of weeks ago. [Both had been ceilings at one point.]

The kicker is the way the other two key moving averages (100-day and 50-day lines) have finally started to play a support role... a missing ingredient with all the previous bullish efforts from AMLN up until this point. Given that this pace is a sustainable one, the shape of this chart is quite encouraging. And yes, the two 'up' days from this week were also the highest volume days for Amylin Pharmaceuticals this week.

Bionovo Inc. is telling a very similar story, though heavier on the volume side of the tale and less so on the technical breakout front. Volume has just exploded for BNVI over the past two bullish weeks, with the first seeing 10.4 million shares trade, and the second giving us activity of 12.0 million shares. Both are records for the stock.

The volume surge accompanies a clear reversal of the recent downtrend too, though perhaps it's a little too much of a pop. BNVI is overbought right now, and may be due for a pushback. Some heavy lifting has been down, however, so the next cross back above the 50-day moving average line (at $0.26) is a bullish signal; today's cross above it may not be permanent, given how overextended Bionovo is.

Finally, ThermoGenesis Corp. has not only jump-started a new uptrend (killing a downtrend in the process), but it's also cleared a major ceiling that had been nagging it since late November. The horizontal mark of $1.00 - also a big psychological hurdle - was a problem in November and mid-January, but the third time has proved to be the charm for KOOL. The stock blasted above it today to close at $1.02. And it did so on higher volume.

Like Bionovo, the volume fueling the rally for KOOL is a recent and pronounced phenomenon that started back in early January. That effort got the stock above some key moving averages, but not past a major technical horizontal ceiling. Once the crowd has spoken though, the echo never really dies.... it can just take a while for it come back around. For ThermoGenesis, that happened on Friday. It's still overbought, but this is a very big bullish blow. Look for the next wave of follow-through.