Monday, April 9th, 2007
Should I buy stock market screening software?
I have a daily routine to analyse the market.
It goes something like this:
1. Print out 52-week highs and 52-week lows
2. Write down all stocks making major up and down moves (my broker platform provides this, splitting major moves into small, mid and large-cap stocks)
3. Write down stocks making big volume moves
4. Manually go through the chart of each stock identified in steps 1 - 3
Each day on a notepad page I write down stocks hitting new highs, making major prices or volume moves, or are starting to form a base.
The page ends up looking something like this:
8/4/2007
Stock A (aax) - New high (Hitting 52-week high)
Stock B (bbx) - Most (Made a significant move on the day)
Stock C (ccx) - Basing (starting to form an interesting base)
It is very simple but so far this has served me well.
When the market moves into a position where I need to buy, I will scan the charts of stocks listed in past daily pages of the notepad (going back a month or two) looking for buys.
But I’m beginning to wonder whether scanning the market each day is time efficient.
Couldn’t I just buy software that allows me (when the market becomes a buy or sell) to screen for new highs/lows, major moves for the past month etc?
So far I’ve been too tight to buy the software that allows me to scan the market comprehensively.
I’m also concerned that I could lose touch with the market.
My daily routine, while slightly laborious, forces me to watch the market closely and look at hundreds of stocks each day.
There is no better way of becoming a great chart reader.
That said, routine can become boring and I am currently looking at ways to mix things up.
Word Count: 276. This entry was posted on Monday, April 9th, 2007 at 10:43 pm and is filed under Stock picks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
