Johnson & Johnson and the Jets

Woody Johnson, pictured above, is the current owner of the NFL's New York Jets, as well as the great-grandson of Robert Wood Johnson I, co-founder of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ). After several lackluster seasons, Woody and the Jets may be a playoff team with their top-ranked defense, though I suspect the Patriots and upstart Bills could throw a wet blanket on those aspirations. 

And so it is worth probing whether JNJ, another disappointment of late, can turn its ship around, too, as the consumer/healthcare titan has been in a downtrend for nearly eleven months now, while many other healthcare plays screamed to one new high after the next. 

After JNJ reported earnings this morning, the stock is flattish; basically a non-event. 

Like PG and XOM, for example, the multi-decade chart of JNJ shows why so many people declare a "safe" stock like this, with its dividend to boot, to be a "no brainer" investment over time. 

However, very few ask the question as to whether the uptrend, seen below on the quarterly chart, will eventually break. The bull case is that the highlighted eleven-month pullback amounts to nothing more than another in a long line of buy signals. And that may very well be the case. But, just as with PG (especially with Buffett having turned sour on it), it is worth remembering that even the safest of plays can get battered and bruised, and nothing lasts forever.

$80 probably needs to hold in JNJ for this to be another routine pullback on a long-term basis. 

As for the market at-large, I will cover that for Members in my usual Midday Video.