Having been scanning and looking at thousands of charts for some months already, keeping track of at least 500 stocks, but hold only 4 or more stocks. Always keep scanning for other better stocks, but find it very tedious, but at the same time, don't want to lose track of any good stock, so any good advise u can give? Also have been switching strategy from 5 days play to 20 days play, and picking bottom, each strategy has its weakness and strength, so i pick stocks based on these strategies, but in the end, find myself back to square one, no profit and no loss, what's the point of wasting so much energy?! Sometime, u buy today, then it drop tomorrow, cut loss, then jump up the next day, some time u will win, some stocks u lose big on some news, cut loss again, some u win based on general market up, earning result, then sell to keep profit, to find it some months later, it gone up by 40% from the point u sell. The winner is only the stock market operator. And find the only strategy to win is time. Meaning don't cut loss at all, hold forever. Buy above 3bn stocks, bigger company. Then will not get whipsawed and in out so many times to find myself back to same spot. Not to repeat anything but this is my story. Sick n tired, maybe should only trade during uptrend market, but who knows when is uptrend or downtrend market, till downtrend happen, and one can say, play shorting, but shorting is too fast, by then time u want to short, too late
Cut down the number you watch to a more manageable amount. Having hundreds/thousands eggs in the pot doesn't necessarily amount to better opportunities if there are too many to monitor.
Sit down and make an achievable, measurable goal. Then put together a clear method that you can trade by. Sit out, and practice your method paper-trading. Don't worry if you miss any stocks, the market will always be there presenting new opportunities. Do your best to avoid the losers, risk management is the name of the game. And of course limit the amount of stocks you want to watch. But the best advice I can give you is to just sit down and put together a clear method you understand. Figure out what works and what doesn't, then make your method and write it on paper and keep it near you. Make sure the goal is achievable and measurable, it will help when you create your method.
Develop reasonable guidelines for stocks that you want to trade in terms of volume, price, volatility and trend position. That should go a long way towards getting you better focused.
Take a look at Trade Ideas. It's a bit pricey I guess but if you are looking for really good candidates triggered by technicals or volume or any combination thereof, it's a wonderful package. I don't use it right now because I have some other things I'm working on, but I used to use the "Short Trader's Paradise" preset and always found great plays. They also have a "Up 5 days in a row and..." that's fairly good. It's all customizable and I think it's a great way to get candidates to look at that meet really strict criteria without just poring over chart after chart. You can totally customize new or existing indicators. Cheers.
You might want to limit yourself to daytrading. If you have good discipline and money management skills it could work for you. You don't have to worry about extraneous factors such as market conditions, dishonest analysts, stupid TV commentators who don't know what they are talking about, shady hedge funds and the list goes on ad nauseum.
i used to do what you are doing, but in the end I was overwhelmed. then I decided to focus on just a few stocks (big caps) and indexes via ETFs like SPY IWM QQQQ XLE and OIH. These have very good intraday ranges, so I missed nothing from the volatile stocks' days! Also, since I started trading options (you need a lot of time to get to know options, otherwise you will lose big time), I can trade ETF options (ETFs mentioned above only) and get large ranges per day e.g. 30-100% gains per day, but of course I reduce my trading size in case trade goes against me. i try and limit my losses to 30-50% per trade with options. if you have a good system/plan as someone said above, you can do well. I started a blog end last year and I hope people especially those with good experience can come and discuss some of their "tricks" and experiences to benefit all of us! I do discuss other issues over weekends or when the markets are quiet, like politics that could affect markets or oil stocks (XLE, OIH). Last Friday I posted a basic outline of my trading entry signal which I believe Brett Steenbarger will be collecting together with other traders' systems into a Link Fest tomorrow! That should be interesting to read. I hope this helps, but if you have more questions, let me know via my blog email or otherwise. I am no expert, but I share what I know and learn much more from others! Good luck, but bottomline is make it easier by focusing on fewer quality moves and stocks/ETFs and be free! http://lauristonletter.blogspot.com/
Don't forget the free stuff they make available. I started using their EOD data way back when they first made some available - they've only added to it over the years. You can now even build your own or see what others are doing. www.trade-ideas.com/StockInfo As lauritson mentioned, the advice and wisdom from Brett Steenbarger is invaluable too.