Hey
@Rams Fan are you getting many Set-ups, indicating we're about to get a Bull run, or just the opposite? Failed Breakouts perhaps? Thanks.
It's a bull market for me!
Many breakouts moving up, a few faltering, sputtering, or outright failing.
I don't abide by the CNBC/CNN definition of bull and bear markets (20% up = bull and 20% down = bear). Stupidest thing I ever heard.
I watch individual stocks. I build my watchlist largely off the stocks that have big weekly moves on volume. If it also has big earnings growth, big sales growth,
or a great story (even though sales/earnings lacking) it hits my watch list. So long as the general market is acting right on a weekly and monthly basis, I am on a shopping "spree."
SMCI, NVDA, &TSLA (much to my astonishment) are my largest swing holdings currently. I'm also carrying CELH, IOT, ELF, DT.
I bought NNOX, sold it out yesterday.
I bought DKNG, sold it out the week before last.
MBLY & ONON are two others I have bought and sold as they were not acting right.
I'm watching YEXT and PLTR, but no position in either yet.
ARRY is also on heightened alert, but now it is selling down from the top of an extended base, though within the base it has put in a series of higher lows.
I use IBD mostly for the weekly "Stocks on the Move" table, however that newspaper is a great source of trade ideas throughout its pages, and I do get them from all over its pages.
Another place I watch is twitter. There is a good community of IBD followers on twitter, and some good traders as well. I pay attention to the stocks they are talking about as well. That is how I came upon SMCI last fall. As everyone thought the sky was falling and the S&P's were going back to 666, the IBD fundamental crowd was alerting to good price action on SMCI.
Like Darvas, I buy the right stocks at the right time, and let my stop losses take me out.
It really is that simple. I'm not saying it is easy for a lot of people because I see idiots everywhere - on CNBC, twitter, ET, who think they know something and they can game the market (but can't), or they've f'd up so bad over the years that they are now trolls who don't believe anyone can make a profit.
I do consider myself lucky that the internet was still in its infancy when I started to take investing/trading seriously. My main source of instruction was Darvas (the very first book I read when I decided to get serious about my money), from whom I discovered Gerald Loeb. I soon stumbled upon Livermore, and my dad recommended IBD and William O'Neil to me.
And that was all the start I needed.
Long way of saying, that for me, a market is a bull market as long as most of my purchases are showing a profit. When the market turns to bear, there will be many weeks, sometimes months, where I am only shorting stocks and not one stock is near a buy point.
