[Tigerman11]

I have searched all over the place in the past and just want an easier system when searching for potentially winning trades. With thousands of stocks out there, it is impossible to keep up with too many.

[Shaun Overton]

Tigerman,

Many stock traders use screeners to look for the market conditions that match their strategy. I like trend trading, so the way I scan for candidates is to run a screen searching for:

Price is at a 52 week high
Price >= 5% above the SMA50
Average shares traded >= 500k
Marketcap >= 250 million

What type of conditions are you searching for? Range, trend or something else?

[uahmed]

That is great advice Shaun. I always think to myself the trend is my friend.

If you are trying to find bottoms you should really look for a pattern to develop or candlestick patterns. This is a bit risker but you may make more money.

[Tigerman11]

Thanks for the replies. Shaun, I now realize that I don't have a good grasp on what the different styles are to answer this question.

I know about daytrading, swingtrading, and position trading.

I have learned of scalping, momentum, and trend trading only recently.

I don't care for scalping after my research so that is out for me.

Swingtrading and momentum trading look similiar to me and position trading and trend trading appear to be in the same family. Am I missing something? If these styles are relativley similiar, why do people keep using different terms?

Range trading if I understand it correctly is finding a stock like Applied Materials(AMAT) that trades between 17-22. This stock has traded there for like 5 yrs.+.

Now the last part of my question would be based on the styles of trading, which indicators am I using, how do I set them up properly and how would I set up my screener?

I now understand why I didn't have great success in the markets for 7 months. I jumped in from a fundamental perspective which no doubt kept me alive for that timeframe, but I didn't have a good grasp of charts. I also didn't have a good money management system in place. I need something simple because I find if ti gets too complicated, i will be more lost and likely get killed.

[Shaun Overton]

tigerman,

Momentum trading and swing trading are more or less the same thing. Some people might dispute this, but I think it is more important to focus on the what rather than what to call it.

AMAT qualifies as a ranging stock, although it seems to take forever to move between its boundaries.

As for setting your stock screener, you need to decide what you are looking for. What you should do is spend the next 1-2 weeks watching markets that you are interested in trading. Try to pick out 3-4 demo trades in real time. The outcome of the trades is not important. The goal is to provide a window into what you are looking for.

Post screenshots of each demo trade and the reason you entered. Afterwards, we can narrow down the criteria to match your trading style.