Alliance Resource Partners is trading in a bullish trend and several arguments are in favor of the continuation of this movement.

The economic and financial situation of the company is still strong. Estimated sales from the Thomson Reuters consensus are encouraging, with upward sales and EPS revisions for the current and the next fiscal years. Debt is decreasing rapidly and the leverage should reduce from 1.09x in 2013 to 0.54x in 2014. Moreover, valuation levels are attractive, with a P/E ratio at 10x and the enterprise value at 4.95 times the EBITDA for 2014.

Technically, the security shows a bullish configuration on all time scales, evolving in an ascending channel. Prices are supported by increasing moving averages. In weekly data, 20-week moving average helps the stock to keep its uptrend, in direction to the short term resistance of USD 51.2.

According to these good indicators, it seems relevant to take a long position in Alliance Resource Partners at the current price. The target price is the USD 51.2 resistance. A stop loss will be set under the USD 44.7 short term support because a breakdown of this level would damage the technical pattern.

At the date of publication of this analysis, the Surperformance company, 4-Traders.com's publisher, outstanded a position of 225 shares acquired at an average price of USD 46.59.