Right now, I'm monitoring about 12 at a time, and I find it almost impossible to trade breakouts. There are no conditional orders available at my prop firm. I'm thinking of just specializing in four stocks: SLB, XOM, GE, PFE
I don't daytrade stocks, but if you are going to limit your universe of stocks to only four, I would think you would try and find the stocks that have a high ATR. The ones you mentioned would not be my choice.
Volume helps, but you need stocks with a decent range. If a 50 dollar stock only has a daily range of a dollar from high to low you are going to potentially make a whole lot less than a 50 dollar stock that has a 2 or 3 dollar range.
Excellent point. What I also need are stocks with low volatility as my shutdown threshold at this point is still low. What do you think of these: http://www.trade-ideas.com/StockInf...nVol=3000000&MaxVWV=0.15&MinATR=1.0&X_NYSE=on
I guess it depends on what type of trader you are, but for me I want stocks with high volatility because I trade off pivot points. My best days in futures are days like today. If it's a straight trend up or down I am terrible.
I'd check w/ some of the other Prop guys and see what they do. In general, I agree w/ HolyGrail, I would think you'd want to be trading in the momentum stocks to get some good price movement. Many of them have good volume and price movement (FSLR & BIDU are 2 current examples...). Last I knew, Zanger focused on breakouts. You might want to sign up for a trial if that's the direction you're going. R
There's the dilemma. I can't trade stocks like BIDU/FSLR because my shutdown is $250 at the moment. I'll have to settle for less volatile stocks with a dollar ATR until I can work my way up.
You got two competing objectives and no surprise your scan produced results that include several stocks for which ATR cannot be computed or it is very low. In addition, HLT had a buyout offer and its ATR is very low. LYO had a huge gap yestreday. You need stocks like: AVB, RIMM, CMI, CME, KBH, AAPL, etc. Ron
SNDK, QCOM, BRCM, AAPL, RIMM, CVX, XOM, COP, AMGN, GOOG......all range a dollar or better and many can be studied easily.