For the novice trader that is just learning about the market, besides the normal hurdles of learning to find stock setups setup on a chart, the question “How do I find the stock to begin with to watch for the trade setup?” is very common. There is always so much going on, its easy to start to only notice day trade setup ideas after they have already occurred which does no good, other than for learning.
Part of the issue of noticing trading setups in hindsight is you have the result of the setup already on the screen, so your brain only notices the setup conditions where it worked. You are looking for longs, you find the ones that worked. The same setup condition may have happened an hour earlier and went nowhere or only went small but it gets overlooked. What is needed is a method to find ideas to watch in real time so you can either trade it OR simply try to predict the outcome and learn.
First off, you need to start your watch for stock setups with the prior day close. This can be done post market or the next day before the open. Scan for stocks that have closed at least 2% up or down from the open of the day. Next take this list and then pull up a 15 minute chart on each. Put a pivot indicator on the chart (most packages this is built in). You want to make note of the ones that are near a lower pivot or higher pivot area. This will be an area of action the next day. The ones that are far away OR are already beyond a pivot area (meaning that days move blew out the pivot) I would leave out for now unless you need more names.
Once you have this list, you need to put in alerts at 1/2% below a breakout pivot (for longs) and 1/2% above a breakdown pivot (for shorts) for day trading depending on where the stocks close. What we are looking for is stocks that moved decent the prior day with good action and are approaching a potential support or resistance area. This will provide a turning point OR a breakout point. Either way, you should get decent, tradeable action around this area.
A second way to find ideas, assuming you need more, is to wait for the first 20 minutes of the day to pass, then scan for the 2 ETF’s that are the strongest (sector ETF) and the 2 that are the weakest. A list of sector ETF’s can be easily found on Google. Once you have this list, you want to then put up on a watch list the top 3 components from each. So your list would consist of 6 stocks to watch long and 6 to watch short. You can get the sector ETF components through Google easily as well. One modification is to pull up at longer term chart on each, 15 min and maybe 60 min (on the ETF’s) to see where they are in relation to ranges. Occasionally that would flip – meaning you might be watching the strongest ones for a short (if they have had a big push AND they are approaching what looks like a decent resistance area), instead of for a long. Most of the time you should be looking to play in the direction of the trend, that will keep you out of trouble.
A third way is to try to play follow the leader. Get the number one stock in each sector/industry. Put those on a watch list. On a separate list, have the number 2,3,4,5 stocks in each sector/industry. Wait for the number one stock in a sector to make a decent push up or down, where it appears a trend is starting. Go to your other list – play the 2 names in that main direction that are the relatively the strongest of the 4. Do not play the laggards with this method. An alternate to this is to buy the number 1 name (or short it, if trend is down) and then in addition play another 2 names so you have 3 bets on a sector. This will mitigate any potential problems that might happen when stuff gets uncorrelated at times, meaning the main one runs and the others do not move much.
Once you have found a nice list of names, you should have plenty of stock setups to watch throughout the day. Of course this does not mean there will be lots of actual setups, but at least you have stuff that is moving and has the potential to make a bigger move on your screen before the move happens. One additional thing to pay attention to is stuff that SHOULD work long or short, but abruptly does the opposite. Often times this type of action can be a key turning point as they trap one side of the market.
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