Caterpillar Is Ready to Roll: Opinion

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- When I think of Caterpillar(CAT) , the lyrics of James Taylor's Steamroller Blues come to mind: "I'm a steamroller baby, I'm bound to roll all over you."

When the global economy gets its act together, no other company will be so well poised to take advantage of all the new infrastructure construction that will take place.

The market hasn't been kind to the big CAT lately, but I think the stock has bottomed out.

The last earnings report was a little better than expected, and recently the stock seems to have reached a support level and started to inch up.

You can see this in the first chart below (from Barchart.com), which shows the hourly trading activity over the last month.

In the past six months the stock hasn't kept pace with the rest of the market as measured by the Value Line index. While the index is up about 1%, Caterpillar shares were down 18%. See the second chart below.

Caterpillar makes and sells construction and mining equipment, as well as systems for electric power generation and rail-related products and services. Caterpillar also provides financing services for its customers.

The company was founded in 1925, and its headquarters are in Peoria, Ill.

Factors to Consider

Barchart technical indicators:

• The short- and mid-term technical indicators are all strengthening.
• The stock has a 24% Barchart technical buy signal.
• The stock has a Trend Spotter buy signal.
• Shares are trading above their 20- and 50-day moving averages and are within $5 of crossing their 100-day moving average.
• There are six new highs, and the stock is up 3.1% in the last month.
• The relative strength index is at 59.56%.
• Barchart.com computes a technical support level at $85.62
• Shares recently traded at $87.22 with a 50-day moving average of $84.44.