STAA showed up on my list at $79.77, but it looked kind of weird. My filter also returned ICLK at $7.82, RCII at $30.66, and BPMC at $98.57. But, all three formed a red daily candlestick, which would make me too uncomfortable to buy any of them.
In looking at my U.S. index charts, it's no wonder given the the market as a whole seems to have stalled, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it pull back next week.
Based on what I've seen today, my advice to myself would be to switch to cash, regardless of what stocks I'm holding or that my filter returns, whenever I begin to detect weakness in the major U.S. indices.
I can't find the chart I was looking at last week when I felt I was looking at the market stalling, so I just now configured one that I hope will serve the same purpose. Base on what it's showing me, now would not be the ideal time to enter the market in that it would be better to wait for a pullback first. (I will also use this same setup when considering individual stocks.) Nonetheless, I'm going to go ahead and run my favorite stock screen anyway, just to see what happens. However, when market conditions are favorable, my filter returns too many candidates. So, what I've been doing up until now was selecting those that were under $10. But, I just opened and account with Charles Schwab were I can supposedly purchase stock slices, so going forward, I will whittle down the selections by raising the criteria instead of using price. From the close of Friday, this gave me a list of equities from which I selected the ones that looked to be coming off of pullbacks when viewed using the chart setup I just configured, which left me with... DHR - $234.68 FVRR - $173.30 TMO - $488.59 PKI - $132.12 LL - $26.57 ROL - $58.83 FND - $75.97 BKI - $94.52 TMX - $49.62 I'm not really all that interested in the ones that are over a hundred bucks, so I'll be mainly concerned with what happens with the last five.
Even though the major U.S. indices did fine today, of the equities I picked on Friday, only BKI, PKI, and TMX made gains. So, I will need to compare this to what happens when the stocks are selected on a day when the indexes are bouncing off a pullback.
Friday / December 11, 2020 Presently, I would need the Dow to pull back to at least 29,459 or thereabouts to meet the conditions I set above to once again actively screen for stocks to buy...
Since the above post form November 14th, the major U.S. indices have not offered the kind of pullback I have in mind. The last time they bounced off a retreat in the manner I'm envisioning was on November 3rd, so I'm going to go ahead and run a screen today regardless... I'll track these stocks for the next couple of days, but when I attempted to fund a new Schwab account so I could start trading fractional shares (stock slices) my bank opted not to okay the transaction. I don't know why, but I'm in no hurry, so I just took it as an omen not to get started yet. If it happens again when the S&P, Dow and/or Nasdaq actually do evidence the touch-and-go I seek, I'll contact the bank then to find out what's up. For now, I'm satisfied continuing to trade only Forex.
As of today (Thursday), all but GLW and MTN have shown at least marginal improvement since last Friday—but nothing to write home about—which reinforces my belief that it's best to wait for the bounce off a pullback in the major U.S. indices before using the corresponding stock filter.
Finally, after waiting three months, the indices are at long last looking like they might be setting up the kind of touch and go structure I need to purchase one or more equities.
Tuesday, February 2, 2021 I got my buy signal today, so I was going to purchase UAA, EVH, AQN and SUZ, which I selected from the following list... When I tried funding my Schwab account last time, for some unknown reason, my Mastercard wouldn't let the transaction go through, but I didn't really care and opted to take it as an omen that it was not yet the right time for me to get back into stocks. But today, when I went back I got a different set of instructions, informing me that I would first need to receive trial deposits (two small deposits and one withdrawal) to my external account within two to four business days, and that once the trial deposits are made, Schwab will notify me by email, to be followed by a verification process. So, I guess I'll just have to paper trade my picks to see if there's possibly any validity to my theory about timing market entries.