Best Day Trading Stocks

I trade NASD stocks that average over six million shares daily and are over $20. Not recommended for beginners. I also try and stay away from stocks with huge floats. Of course, with the market decline my basket keeps getting smaller and smaller. I'm starting to think that soon there will only be a couple stocks left worth trading.

R.I.P. CIEN, JNPR, OPWV, and now SEBL. Hopefully they will be back.

Alex
 
To Aldrums

How do you trade these stocks, do you trade using a mechanical system or discretionary method? Have you been consistently profitable trading these stocks? I have really struggled trying to trade consistently.
 
Originally posted by jskeldon
To Aldrums

How do you trade these stocks, do you trade using a mechanical system or discretionary method? Have you been consistently profitable trading these stocks? I have really struggled trying to trade consistently.
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I have been specializing in buying into panic selling and pullbacks for the last six months. My account has been in a trading range but my winning percentage, average point gain and average profit-loss per week have been in an uptrend for that same period. I have only been trading for a year. This summer was pretty much a wash, but I made money last week. I only buy stocks that are in a divergence with the market. This gives me about 1 to 4 trades per day, because I am only interested in trading in a high volume environment. I find a low volume environment unreadable for my short-term style. Here is what I do:
What I do is watch and memorize support and resistance levels on a 1 minute E-mini Nasdaq chart, and two tapes (Time of Sales windows). One tape is filtered to show only trades with a minimum of 3 contracts. Next to the two tapes for the e-mini I have two more tapes which are linked to a level 2 window. One of those tapes is also filtered to show trades in stocks of a least 500 shares or more. The reason I use filtered tapes is when the volume gets heavy I find it easier to get an idea of the supply and demand. Then I have a scanner which I have set only to show me stocks (set to my volume, price, and pace criteria) which are selling. Normally these stocks will follow the futures, but occasionally one or more of them won't. I look for stocks that are panic selling when the futures are making a bottom from support or breaking through resistance. I wait for a pause in the selling and then I enter a buy order. A trade I did yesterday is a good example. The futures bottomed around 9:40 or so and looked like they might be turning around. I checked my scanner and noticed COST was still selling hard, while most of my basket was rising. I pulled up COST, went through my risk:reward scenario (which is a whole other discussion) and entered a bid for 34.18 at 9:40:52 when the selling paused, and I was filled immediately. Unfortunately, there was a large seller that stopped the momentum at 34.50 as the futures continued to rally. But I still got out with a profit at 34.44 at 9:48.
Having said all that, who knows if this strategy would work for you. Hopefully it will give you some ideas. The reason I am sticking with my buying strategy in a market that keeps heading lower is it is the only thing I have a feel for. I would love to be shorting but I never know where to enter my order. I have thought about applying my strategy in reverse, which is shorting stocks into euphoric buying when the market is bouncing off resistance or breaking support. The most important thing is to pick one strategy and go with it, and only trading when your setup occurs. Although I don't think of trading as "War" I do liken it to a battlefield. It is best to pick one spot to survey the engagement. It gives you a point of refererence in a never-ending stream of opportunities.
 
Wow, traded INTC again today. Wow this is a choppy stock to trade. Up, down, up, down. Probably program trading related. I have been watching the PREM.X to see if I can get an edge on possible program trades, but this number changes wildly minute by minute. Tough to get a grip on this number. Do any of you use potential program trades to influence your trading decisions. Seems like these program trades can be very quick and disruptive. And once they are over the stock does a quick retracement with very little follow through. Any thoughts out there on how to use the PREM.X. Thanks.
 
Originally posted by jskeldon
Wow, traded INTC again today. Wow this is a choppy stock to trade. Up, down, up, down. Probably program trading related. I have been watching the PREM.X to see if I can get an edge on possible program trades, but this number changes wildly minute by minute. Tough to get a grip on this number. Do any of you use potential program trades to influence your trading decisions. Seems like these program trades can be very quick and disruptive. And once they are over the stock does a quick retracement with very little follow through. Any thoughts out there on how to use the PREM.X. Thanks.
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Jskeldon,

My recommendation to you is to try and find another stock besides INTC to daytrade. The INTC is so liquid and heavily traded by everyone on the street that it is very hard to gain an edge. Whatever technical indicator you might be using, be sure that hundreds of other traders in INTC are looking at exactly the same thing. Try to find a stock where you can read the direction and gain an edge.
 
You two have got to be kidding...INTC is SO EASY TO TRADE. It follows the futures to a tee. When the futures turn positive, grab a big handful of INTC and hang on. When they turn down, SHORT the hell out of it!!!! What's not to understand???

And you know what, when you're on the wrong side, you don't get beat up too bad 'cause it moves a tad slower than some others and the spread is super TIGHTTTT!

As for the choppiness, call it BUSTIN"A MONEY MOVE 'cause that's EXACTLY what you want. Learn to surf those waves for MAJOR CACHINGO!!! HELLO! Anyone home?????

I like INTC ....she's cheap&easy! :D

short:cool: fool
 
to shortnfool

I have traded INTC for only one week. But it does not always move to the futures by the tee. I have watched the futures move down considerably and sometimes INTC hardly budged, sometimes even moved up. Could you be more specific about riding the wave. I really want to trade INTC every day, using one strategy only ie trading the 4 period High/Low MA on a 5 minute chart as long as 5/15 MA on a 13 minute chart is positive or negative. I do not have any backtesting software just QCharts, but it visually looks like a good stock to trade this way. Any info would be appreciated . Thanks.
 
Originally posted by jskeldon
I have had a horrible last three days trying to trade INTC profitably. Trying to sell breakdowns or breakouts seems very difficult. The stock seems to oscillate back and forth a lot. My trading methods have not worked at all with this stock. Maybe it is just the trading conditions over the last couple of days. I think next week I am just going to sell the 3 MA High and buy the 3 MA Low as long as 28 period momentum is negative or positive. A method I read in Jake Bernstein's day trading book. Has anyone used this type of method. Works great if a stock is just trading in a tight range. Do any of you experienced traders have any thoughts on a better method trading a liquid stock like INTC. Thanks.
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Actually if you want to trade INTC go ahead but don't sell breakdowns and buy breakouts. It trades in a very tight range all day. Figure out the channel and sell when it is near the high and buy near the low with a small profit target /small loss. You will be right about 80% of the time making 1R and losing 1R (a positive expectancy)

rtharp
 
Anyone here using regression analysis in day trading or knows how it should be used? Seems like it should be similar to moving averages but it is differenty, obviously. Can this tool be a more efficent method of finding the trend instead of MA's. Also does anyone know of software that updates/refreshes the regression analysis line automatically. In QCharts, you have to manually draw a new regression line, unlike MA's that automatically update. How many periods should one use say on a 5 minute chart (ie. 20 periods) to make this line statistically viable as a trading method. Your thoughts are sincerely appreciated. Thanks.
 
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