revised scan

I've revised my scan, and am now looking at lists of stocks that are trading at or below 20% of their 1 year high. That's already true of a lot of the stocks I've been looking at, and certainly has been true of all of them more or less recently, and, mostly, more.

I've also been looking for historical examples of some of the patterns I'm basing my trading decisions on. Actually, I'm looking for stocks that at one time or another performed the way I want my stocks to perform, and closely analyzing the patterns just before those rallies. I noticed, looking at those, that some of the fast rallies in the historical record were proceeded by fast declines. For example, one stock fell 50% in a period of months, then rallied just as rapidly back. Studying the pattern, there really was a unique, distinct signal at the bottom, and another right after the bottom.

I've been checking the stocks I bought this week, though I'm only part way through the list, and they all look fine, which is nice. At the same time, they as a rule didn't rally strongly yesterday, which has me feeling impatient. So, the logic behind my research today is identifying patterns that produce rallies immediately. Well, I have some tools to identify bottoms while they're developing, and I'm aware that probably almost all rallies begin with some kind of small scale signal, so, really, the strategy for buying is waiting for that signal. Studying rallies in historical charts is making me feel more confident about being able to identify and trade such signals. The key I'm in search of will allow me to wait until a fast move is highly likely, the next day. Hopefully that will mean I can get results the next day when I place a trade, and I won't have to place trades that are likely to not move the next day, even if they are likely to move sometime in the near future.

I did also find two highly interesting patterns for trading tomorrow, in my list of 20%ers, as well as a dozen that will be interesting to watch, and this scan should produce a similar list over periods of time, all stocks to watch, by the look of it - it's a bit baffling ... I used to get long lists of worthless looking stocks when I ran this kind of scan on other platforms. Now I get lists of what look like real quality stocks. Is there something different about the scans, or is it something about the market. Maybe the recession has sort of cleaned up the trash out there. It has required a kind of toughness in companies that have been able to ride it out, right? It sure does look like a great time to be buying penny stocks. I think, though it's somewhat of an impression more than something I know, that lots of these companies would be really flying high in a bull market of the kind we've seen in past decades, while, in this market, their available at bottom fishing prices.