How much have you lost on NutriSystem? No, I didn’t mean weight! Since I started watching the chart a few weeks ago, NTRI has trimmed about 25%. This week, I added it to coverage at HEDGEfolios with a DOWN signal and it was an easy call. The chart looked bad enough before today’s big slide but all that was just a continuation started on Friday by Thomas Weisel’s downgrade from “Market Overweight” (funny term in this case) to “Market Weight.” Today Citigroup’s analyst piled on and that’s all it took. I usually don’t single out individual stocks with negative posts, but I am making an exception. First of all, I hate their commercials. If you watch Bloomberg and CNBC as much as I do, you will probably be able to recite Dan Marino’s or Zora’s lines by now. I think NTRI must have decided that watchers of financial tv were “fat, dumb and (un)happy” and decided to place the majority of their ad budget targeting us. Are we really so out of shape? Anyway - I started working on a related post (unfinished) a few weeks ago because I just couldn’t believe how much they were spending on these commercials. I understand it’s peak season for initiating weight loss dreams due to the useless New Year’s resolutions, but I began to think that sales were not going so well and they needed to push these spots. The second (and more important) reason I decided to pick on them today was to suggest that if you ever want to see a picture of the interplay between fundamental and technical analysis, this is it. Combining the fundamentals reflected in the analyst’s work with a thorough look at the charts and you couldn’t miss the signal here. I hope their products help people lose weight as well as their stock helps them lose money.