New to this. Would appreciate some help or advice

Discussion in 'Trading' started by TsnAccount, Sep 1, 2020.

  1. I am just starting to day trade. I have been paper trading with penny stocks and was gaining about 20% profit for a few days. What I would do is buy a stock I noticed that would fluctuate low and high the days before and if I caught it that day at its low I would purchase shares. Then I would set a limit sale to automatically sell once it hit a certain price that I noticed it went up to the last few days. Anyway, my question is. Is there anywhere or anyone I can find that can tell me which penny stock is best to trade each day. I like to purchase early and set the limit sale so when I go to work it sells and I have some profit when I return home. I don't have much time to analyze every morning because I work 3 jobs. Is there anywhere or anyone I can find that can tell me which penny stock is best to trade each day? Or is there any software that can analyze for me?
     
  2. There are the pump n dump chatrooms ran by huckster gurus. If you play the players by bailing early, you can make a little dough. What happens is they pick a vulnerable company and buy up a significant portion of shares, enough to send the price up a bit. Then they announce their "find" in the chatroom so all their disciples can jump in, and drive the price higher. A few well placed announcements online, along with the price and volume action, brings in more buyers. Price goes up. Way up, sometimes. Guru starts selling. When most of his stock is sold off he tells his peeps they need to sell soon cause the stock is going down. If it is shortable, of course guru goes short on the stock and grabs profit going back down. So the published penny stock lists are at the same time bad for the suckers and good for the smart guys but terrible for the guys who only think they are smart. So stock picks, especially penny stocks, maybe you don't really want to depend on them.

    You actually are better off avoiding penny stocks, TBH. You could easily see a long string of losses and there goes your account. Better off playing stocks running in the $10 to $30 range, if you have a small account. $10k and up, play those and the bigger ones up to $2k or so. Penny stocks are tricky and risky.

    There is at least one thread discussing some fairly astute stock picks here. They aren't penny stocks.

    Finding your own stocks with a decent scanner is the way to go, IMHO.

    Day trading while holding a regular job is a major conflict situation. But here you go. One way you can play and still have a life, without resorting to just buying and holding forever.

    Buy TQQQ. Every day at close of market, check the price on a chart with your favorite indicators. If it is trending up and appears to be happy to continue to do so, don't sell. If it is trending down and especially if it is trading below say the EMA20 or the VWAP, sell, and don't buy until it is trending up again. Start with a small position. No more than maybe 25% of your account if it is small, no more than 10% if you have like $50k or more to play with. You don't have to have a hand in the game every day. If it isn't going your way, stay out. When you get the hang of it, you will probably make about 50% more than simply buying and holding, which BTW is risky with this instrument, which is actually not a stock but is a leveraged ETF based on the NASDAQ. A rather high risk symbol to trade, but the potential profit is a good bit better than say its unleveraged sibling, the QQQ. Right now, this very simple strat will earn for you. Soon the market will turn and drop like a Mississippi prom dress. And TQQQ and QQQ will be in semipermanent decline for a few months. Then you can try shorting big name stocks or else playing SQQQ, the inverse of TQQQ, and even more risk but sadly not for much more profit. I suggest you start with positions only half as big as you would use with TQQQ.

    That is just one simple way to trade that won't take up much of your time.

    Slightly more involved, trade only large cap NASDAQ stocks. Look for the high gainers. You won't be buying TQQQ but you will watch it. As long as TQQQ is going up, buy and hold the top 5 gainers, equally distributed in your account. For a big account, increase to 10. and try to not let them all be companies in the same sort of business. When TQQQ goes down, sell everything. Every day if possible, every week if not, at the end of the day just before the bell, see what the latest high gainers are, percent wise, and swap the top stocks in, sweep the low performers out. You can have your fun and make a reasonable profit as long as the bull market holds. Should only take you about 20 minutes a day to manage your account. Remember, if you can make half a percent profit on your account every single day, you can double your account in about 140 trading days. And you should do better than that, in a bull market.

    When I say a top gainer in this context I don't mean a stock that has increased 5% today. I mean one that has increased every day for say the last three to 10 days and shows no sign of declining.

    There are other ways to make a buck in the market but something like this is really all the action you can handle with one job, let alone three. Or just buy and hold. Banking, big tech, retail giants, all good. When the market tanks, sell long before things hit bottom. Buy when it starts coming up. You want the stocks in your portfolio on their way up, not on their way down. Holding through a crash, yeah they will come back up. But look at the guys who held through the 1929 crash. They eventually saw their investments recover their full value. After like 15 years LOL! The guys who sold early and bought again when things started looking up, whipped their asses. So my advice? when it is obviously a general market crash on epic scale, get out. OUT. Get back in later. Other than that, buying and holding makes a lot of sense if you are busy. In fact it makes a lot of sense anyway.

    Look here. Let's say you invest the maximum into your 401k. Scrimp and scrounge and do without. Just get the max allowed into your account. That's what... $15k? Okay let's say you earn 10% on that money in a year. So multiply by 1.1 and then add another $15k. Next year add it all up and to the new total, multiply 1.1. Boring, right? But do that 38 more times. You are gonna be amazed. Try it with just 5%, a very small return. Still a pretty big retirement nest egg. And the part that matters the most is those first few years. So forget about day trading if you really want a good life. Invest invest, invest. Day trade a little bit later. Don't rely on it as income. Think of it as a hobby, like poker. Play with what you can afford to lose, and manage your risk and your money in a way that fits you.
     
  3. Tavurth

    Tavurth

    beginner66 and GrowleyMonster like this.
  4. AbbotAle

    AbbotAle

    I don't think you're going to find what you're looking for, ie a good stock that you can buy on the open, go to work, come back and sell at a profit.

    People spend 12+ hours a day looking for the above and most of the time cannot find that one stock every day that's going to make them the easy money.
     
  5. jfin
    earnings tomorrow buy it today very early n hokd into tomorrow its a good one could run 59 cents today imo maybe hit 6 bucks tomorrow
     
  6. I was doing it successfully with paper trading. I was gaining about 20% profit every day. I would find a stock that was at it's low point and would check what it was doing and its high points on previous days. I would set a limit sale to a bit under the high that I saw reoccurring for the past few days and when I would arrive home it was sold with profit. It seemed to work. I am just asking for additional tools, software advise to find good stocks to to this with. Thank you for you comment though
     
  7. Thank you. I bought a small amount of this and set a Limit sale to $4.60 that is Good Till Canceled and goes into extended hours. I guess I just have to wait. Is this a good strategy I use so I don't have to keep watching it?
     
  8. Another thing I wanted to ask. I see that the earnings are due tomorrow. Is this something I should always look for to make a profit like this? A stock with earnings scheduled the next day?
     
    murray t turtle likes this.
  9. Do you have a stop? Without a stop, yeah you kinda have to keep watching it, unless it is a buy & hold or a long term swing trade. But I have a feeling you will learn this on your own, even if you forget what I have just said.

    Why don't you spend a few bucks on a couple of good books on day and swing trading, maybe one on investing, too? I recommend Andrew Aziz's book on day trading. Not the advanced one, the first one. And maybe Ross Cameron's book. I would NOT buy anything they are selling especially Ross Cameron, but either book is pretty good. I hate to say this, cause I like their books in other disciplines, but avoid all of the "For Dummies" books having anything to do with markets, trading, or investing. To me, they all read like they were written by someone who knows little about the topic personally, but has quickly read the "real" books, and sort of filled in the blanks of the Dummies format.

    Simply buying low and selling high works fine. It is the essence of bull market trading. The problem is, the simplicity isn't actually always very simple. If you add Bollinger Bands or MACD or some other indicator to your chart, maybe some EMAs, you can more accurately pick stocks to buy in a dip and evaluate the trend you are following. Just remember, the indicators are not predictors. They REACT to price and volume action. They quantify and visualize action, not predict it. The predict part is on you. Assuming that a trend will continue is right more often than wrong, but can still be wrong and cost you money. Pick your entries carefully. Learn to identify a bottom reversal setup.

    Trade with the market, not against it. Any time you check your stocks, or pick them, buy them, or sell them, check the index of your choice and see which direction the market has headed up to now. You don't want to be in long positions of the market is going down. Or vice versa.

    I still say though, that you are far better off investing than trading.
     
  10. Thank you for the information. Everything helps. I am investing also. I bought some long term stocks that should be worth a lot in 5 years. I just want to trade also for some profit now. I am starting small and intend to keep building on my profit over time. I'm not sure what the Bolinger Band is but I do have MACD, Signal, and Histogram but I'm not sure how to read that. I need to look into that more. Right now I just look for volatility and volume. I also just tried to modify my order to put a stop like you said but it does not give me the option. I believe the option was there when I first initially made the order. I will make sure to put stops from now on. I believe the reason why you say I need to still continue to watch it is in case the stock dips and never reaches my limit selling price and I lose money
     
    #10     Sep 1, 2020