Rightmove - the wrong move for the shorting housing market bears

Over the last few years I've read quite a few posts on various forums calling either a top or short for Rightmove.  More often than not these posts don't make much reference to timeframe, although many seem to make reference to the struggling UK housing market, the crash to come in house prices and that surely Rightmove should be ripe for shorting as it would fall alongside this housing market collapse.  Unfortunately for the bears, Rightmove has defied stock market gravity and simply gone up and up and up....

Here's the Monthly chart of the last 6 years or so.  Each candlestick bar represents a month worth of trading activity.

Nice momentum there since about 2009 with absolutely no let up in the relentless rise from around 162p at its low in Feb 2009 to an impressive 1600p today.  Nice 10 bagger if you could have got it!

For those looking to short this stock, times have been tough.  You may have got the occasional downturn to catch on the Daily and 4 hour charts, but you would have needed to keep a close eye on it as this one has been up all the way on the longer term chart.  In fact, this is a stock where arguably you would only want to be trading the long side until something gives on the longer term charts.

Still, does the MACD suggest on this chart a move down any time soon?  It is clearly in well overbought territory and we might just be getting a crossover to the downside, but there needs to be a warning here.  The MACD is a long way above zero and as this is the monthly chart we could be at least 6-12 months away from it happening, if indeed it does. At some stage we will get a move down, but I for one wouldn't like to call when.

From a fundamental point of view Rightmove is still producing.  Today's results have seen the share move up 8% as I write.

LONDON (SHARECAST) - Property website Rightmove said trading in July continued to be strong and it is confident of achieving company expectations for the year.

Profit after tax increased 36% to £29.3m while underlying operating profit rose 28% to £42.6m for the six months ended 30 June 2012. Revenue jumped 23% to £57.9m.

Average revenue per advertiser rose 20% to £518 per month while the number of advertisers was little changed at 18,299 from 18,276 the year before.

The increased spend came from price rises and sales of additional advertising products, Rightmove said, with 80% of agents and new homes developers now taking at least one additional advertising product compared to 70% at this time last year.

Underlying operating margin increased to 73.5% from 71.1% the year before while underlying earnings per share climbed 30% to 32.2p.

"Trading was strong in the period with the results also benefiting from customers increasing their spend more sharply than usual at the start of the year and the strength of our data services business which included some one-offs," the group explained.

http://www.sharecast.com/cgi-bin/sharecast/story.cgi?story_id=20267680

I suppose the point to note here is that almost regardless of house price inflation or deflation, Rightmove gets business from the industry regardless.  Rightmove bears need to take note.