HOW TO FIND GOOD STOCKS TO DAY TRADE: In order to Day Trade successfully, you must first find a stock that is a good candidate. My criteria is a stock that is over $10.00 per share and has an average daily volume of around 5 million shares traded per day. This ensures that there is adequate market liquidity so that when you want to sell your shares with a Market Order, it will all fill without moving the PPS up or down on the chart as it fills.
I don't trade stocks that are over $100.00 per share because I always buy 1000 shares of any stock or ETF I trade. The more expensive a stock is, the more volatility it will usually have. My favorite stocks to Day Trade are usually found in the $10.-25.00 range, so that I can buy one, two, or even up to four thousand shares when I'm absolutely sure that the trade will be successful.
The Scanner at StockCharts.com
Here is a great place to scan for stocks in every price range that are showing very positive or very negative characteristics, which will give you good Long and Short Sell candidates. My favorite categories to scan are: Strong Volume Gainers, Bullish MACD Crossovers, Bearish MACD Crossovers, Overbought with a Declining RSI, Oversold with an Improving RSI, Moved Above Upper Bollinger Band, Moved Below Lower Bollinger Band, New CCI Buy Signals, and New CCI Sell Signals. All of the charts in these scans are daily charts, but they are still very helpful in finding good trading candidates to go Long or Short on. You are primarily looking for stocks that are breaking above levels of resistance to go Long on, or have broken below major levels of support to go Short on.
http://stockcharts.com/def/servlet/SC.scan
First, look for a price range you are comfortable with, and then look in the Volume column to make sure it has at least a few million shares traded daily on average. This scan page gives you the choice to pick stocks on the: Nasdaq, NYSE, AMEX, TSE, and CDNX Exchanges. Once you have selected a stock to look at, you will want to click on the square button to the left of the ticker symbol that has a red vertical bar surrounded by two blue ones. This will open a Sharp Chart for your selection, and you can edit many of the settings on these charts to suit your personal preference.
The Finviz.com Scanner:
This is the best scanner I've ever come across. The number of filters you can apply is simply amazing. I highly recommend this scanner:
http://finviz.com/screener.ashx
The Investors Hub (IHUB) Message Board:
Another way I've always found interesting stocks to play is by finding which ones have a lot of interest by other Day Traders. This is done by seeing which stocks are being talked about the most on stock market message boards. There are too many of them to mention here, and I am a member of six or seven of them. My all time favorite message board is Investors Hub (IHUB), and you can browse many of the Free Boards as a free member. You don't need to pay to join this site, but I do because it gets rid of all of the ads that are shown only to free members, and there are a lot of additional functions available only to paid members:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/
I follow many different boards there, and they cater to stocks of all shapes and sizes. Most of the boards there are for Penny Stocks which I avoid at all costs, but there are also a lot of boards dedicated to Big Board Stocks only. Look around, and do a Search for your favorite stocks in the search box at the top of each page and you'll probably find a board that suits your tastes. Here is a list of all of the boards on IHUB:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/hubstocks.aspx
If you are into playing penny stocks because they are your favorite kind of stock, or that's all you can afford to play, here are a few boards that talk mostly about those kinds of stocks. They talk about stocks that are moving NOW, and have plenty of MOMO (movement), and have unusually high Volume. These boards are moderated by the very best traders IHUB has, and they have been posting on this site as long as I have if not longer. A few of these members were my teachers/mentors many years ago, and I have to say that I would not be where I am now if I hadn't learned so much from these people about how to read charts with Technical Indicators on them.
CASH COW
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?board_id=2117
TRENDFINDERS
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?board_id=6115
Wealth University
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?board_id=10933
DAY TRADING ACADEMY:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?board_id=15213
MOMO'S BREAKOUT BOARD
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?board_id=4929
2010 Orion Party Bashers Stocks
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?board_id=12753
There are hundreds of good boards on the IHUB site. I highly recommend it, and it's up to you if you want to check it out. I spend a lot of time on that site while the market is open, and before and after market hours. Over the years, I have made numerous friends there and it will always be a place I will call home.
A WORD OF WARNING!: Stay away from any stock that is listed on the Pink Sheets Exchange. They are on the Pink Sheets for reason. Most of them are nothing more than outright SCAMS! In my 15+ years of trading, it has been my observation that 99% of Pink Sheet CEO's lie 99% of the time. And also beware of most stocks listed on the Over The Counter Bulletin Board exchange. They aren't much better, since they are not required by the SEC to submit Quarterly and Yearly Reports. Both Pinks (Stinky Pinkies) and OTC-BB companies are commonly known for massive share dilution, corruption, and deceit. If you are going to trade the Stock Market, at least do it with respectable companies. The other drawback to trading Pinks and BB stocks is that you are required to use Limit Orders to Buy or Sell shares. A true Day Trader ALWAYS uses Market Orders to get nearly instant execution at either the Bid or the Ask depending on if he is Selling or Buying.
Other Good Stock Market Message Boards:
Here are just a few of the message boards I have enjoyed over the years. There are many more than this, so if this is your kind of thing, do a Google Search and see what other ones you can come up with. But beware...some of them are outright nonsense since they are totally unmoderated. Personal attacks are common, and so are a lot of other annoying things. That's why I like IHUB so much. They have a good set of rules and they enforce them. These have been some of my favorites over the years. Some of them have gone, and some new ones have sprung up. Whatever you do, stay away from Raging Bull. It has to be the worst example of a message board I've ever come across.
Online Traders Forum:
http://www.onlinetradersforum.com/index.php
Trader's Talk:
http://www.traders-talk.com/mb2/index.php?
Silicon Investor:
http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/
Ticker Spy:
http://www.tickerspy.com/
TRADDR:
http://www.traddr.com/
And Finviz.com used to have an awesome forum, but it has been discontinued. It's still a great place to do research on stocks:
http://www.finviz.com
