What would you consider the best stock or stocks to watch to learn to daytrade? Have done a considerable amount of reading and tape watching and just looking for some suggestions here from real traders. My preference leans towards NASDAQ stocks but am open to any and all suggestions. Thanks all.
No such thing as a best stock to trade. Its all a matter of personal preference to the individual trader. You may want to check out KLAC, QQQ, HD, EBAY, AMZN see if you like any of those stocks. My personal preference is HD, GE. HD is a bit volitile and not for the weak hearted. QQQ is smoother in its movements. Its back to the personal preference thing.
They use to tell me that when I first started trading. Anyway, I would recommend MSFT and play with it with the Nasdaq futures, the movements are usually similar but a lagging move to the futures would be ideal. QQQ is too slow for me. Omar
the king of all daytrading nasdaq stocks QLGC i don't trade this anymore....but in the past this thing has made me jump for joy one day and cry like a baby the very next. but seriously, one of the fastest out there. and usually pretty good leading indicator of the NDX.
Every group of stocks trade differently. So each stock has to be studied individually. Pick a stock or two from different sectors, and see how they trade. That's the easiest way. But from my experiences, every stock has their own pattern of trading.
Dumtom, On the nasdaq, you want to learn on a "thick" stock. i.e. a stock that has many participants at each tier level. The thickest is CSCO, followed by ORCL, then INTC, DELL. Once you get used to these kinds of stocks you move onto MSFT,KLAC,QLGC etc. I adjust my size accordingly so on CSCO I trade 5000 share increments on MSFT I trade 2000 share increments. On Cisco losing 4 cents on 5000 shares is $200. On MSFT losing 10 cents on 2000 shares is $200. In other words stops are a lot tighter on a cisco than they are on a MSFT - but then again MSFT can give you 40 cents profit, Csco gives you 10 cents The thicker stocks are easier to learn on since you can see the collapsing tiers easier.
i think as a newbie first you need to consider the exchange, the NYSE is less volatile and i think easier to start with and learn from versus the NASDAQ. if i had to do it all over again i would persoanlly start out with the NYSE.