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My screening strategy is very basic at the moment. It is likely to evolve.
I start by looking for big movers. I'm looking at percentages, not points. Points do NOT matter. Only percentages matter as nearly everybody deals with a dollar budget and not a set number of shares to buy and sell.
I am looking for the biggest percentage moves, both up AND down.
But there's a catch to that: Obviously, the bigger the move, the more of the move that has already occurred.
If you catch a mover when it's already up 15 percent today, then that's 15 percent of movement you will NOT be part of.
But that's fine if there's another 20 percent of movement still to go. But how can you know that?
Did I expect that this stock would end the day over 100 percent up from its starting point, or that it would peak at
125 percent? No, I did not. But contributing factors made me think it might get close.
It might actually be a good idea to screen for a SMALLER percentage jump early in the day, as it MAY be the herald of a greater gain to come. I think that any stock that gains full percentage points in the first few minutes vs. last night's close is certainly worth a moment's evaluation.
So if the movement is big, then I want to see two more things: Huge volume and momentum. The moving average lines need to be in agreement that this sucker's still very much on the move. And they were.
I always want to see big volume. I don't even bother looking at stocks that aren't in millions of shares traded per day.
Actually, half a million is my lower limit. But it does apply to the volume of the DAY. I don't care much if the stock
doesn't move that many shares on other days. If it's popular TODAY and moving, that's good enough for me to look into it further. This one had volume in spades.
And I want to see some news about that stock. The news is the REASON for a sudden move. You need to know what that reason is. There was news on this one.
Say the CEO got arrested for embezzling funds from the company...time to sell short, I'd bet.
Say the earnings report was amazing. That's good for a long term stock boost.
And, in the case of this particular stock, they just announced a 50:1 reverse split. While I don't fully understand all
the implications of that move, it reduces the number of available shares by a factor of 50 so the law of supply and
demand pretty much guarantees that the stock value will appreciate.
I saw a lot of the same features in this chart that I see a LOT. For one, this chart looks just like the chart of a lot of
other energy sector stocks for today. Within a given market sector, expect similar behavior over and over.
I expect, and see, a substantial drop in price anywhere between 11 and 12, which I call the morning dip. I see it in daily charts more often than not. I view it as a buying opportunity and THAT is the point at which I would prefer to
buy in rather than right at market opening. That gives me at least an hour to watch the stock's progress before
putting anything in, while giving me a good chance to get in at nearly the morning low.
I'm starting to pay attention to the volume traded through the day. It SEEMS to me that when the volume stays
steady all day, those are the days when the stock is most likely to end on an uptrend. If volume tapers off in
the afternoon, I'd be more inclined to expect a price collapse BUT that may be a great buying opportunity.
I expect profit taking to start at 3 PM. And it can be very sudden. Feel lucky? Then have your short sell order
prepared and ready to launch on a moment's notice.
Of course, these are all my newbie's impressions and opinions. They may well have very little to do with actually
making any money in the long term.
In the real world I would not have done well on this stock given my own account limitations because of a few
factors: I hesitated to get in. And I got cold feet and at one pulled out and took a big loss, but as the party
continued I jumped back in after a pullback and recouped my losses and then some. And then I took the 3 PM
dip with a fat short order and cleaned up very nicely.
It's SO much easier in gaming because you don't have that 3 day settled funds rule to contend with, plus no
need to worry about the pattern day trading rules.
I don't think that game performance equals real world performance but it is certainly a painless way to experience
many scenarios that can eat your lunch for you in the real world, or make you rich.
nice pattern, I've noticed that when a stock declines in value to extreme lows and stays there like a horizontal line it's prone to potentially explode like it did before on the left of the daily chart.
I first found out about these types of patterns when playing chartgame.com skipping through stocks and eventually getting to a penny or very low priced stock. It's like a springboard.
R.I.P. Joseph Bach (Itchymoku), 1987-2018.
Please visit this thread for more information.
I was looking at KNDI going long based on earnings etc. to target 22 dollars but I'm also practicing because it's a new way of trading for me unlike how I'm used to.
R.I.P. Joseph Bach (Itchymoku), 1987-2018.
Please visit this thread for more information.
I used to run a stock screen, everything over $1 and above a volume level, copy and paste the data page by page into some software I wrote, then I could flag stocks of interest to not lose them, I could look for volume spikes above average or easily see movers over 5% and loads of other functions.
Today's lesson learned concerns the risks associated with sudden activity in a stock that usually trades low volume on an average day.
Stock symbol USU, Usec Inc, in the basic materials sector.
Started out nice, with the stock starting 22 percent over opening. (No, I did not make over 20 percent at any point. Just to be clear about that.) But I got in (game, not real money) well off the peak, close to noon after the 12-ish dip, expecting a recovery.
And at that point the volume started to collapse. Actually it showed signs of volume collapse well before that.
So I'm adding another rule to my selection criteria: Average daily shares moved needs to be good, at least half a million
per day, on a quiet day. Good news will only increase the volume on that stock but can't be expected to keep things
busy by itself.
It's not nice to be the guy standing there on the floor hoping to trade when everybody else has left.
I gave back most of my week's profits on that one. I got out from under it quickly enough to avoid taking a loss
compared to when I started out but I'm literally back to square one just because I wasn't looking at volume indicators
that could have warned me.
Fortunately this was all just in a game.
Tomorrow (Friday) I play with real money. I hope to have a good day. My goals are very modest.
Please start a journal, this thread is turning into a journal but it didn't start that way and wasn't placed in the journal section.
Also, any day you are trying to make 20% is a day you are out of your f'ing mind. The market will teach you about risk, just keep in mind you are a typical rookie newbie with no understanding of what you are really doing right now.
Maybe I'll think about starting a journal later. (Edited...I actually just started one. But no need to move this one into that topic unless you really want to.) I hadn't intended for this to become that but when I learn something new I don't object to sharing what I've learned.
I didn't want to lead anyone to think that I made 22 percent on that stock at any point. It just opened 22 percent above the previous day's close. I never got anywhere near that level of profit even before I took the wrong turn.
It's a shame, though, because I'd managed to pull 25 percent in a bit over a week and then gave it all back.
