how to search for stocks

I use the Scottrade platform (you need an account), but there are other options. Yahoo!Finance is the one I've looked at most, but it's kind of limited. I wanted to give you some option to that. I searched on the term "stock screeners" (in Lycos). I tried the link for http://www.marketwatch.com/tools/stockresearch/screener/.

I asked for stocks trading between 11 and 11.1, but got nothing. I tried stocks between 11 and 12 and got a list. I started looking at the charts. Open the page in a new window by right clicking on the symbol (in the list) and choosing that option. Find the charts tab, and choose "advanced". Select a 1 decade time frame. (You should be looking at an OHLC chart.)

I think this, looking at stocks in a narrow price range, is the easiest and best way to find good trade. You aren't trying to use a simple tool, the scanner, to do the intricate job of analyzing the fundamentals, just to give you a list of stocks. One reason to choose a price range is to limit the length of the list, but there are reasons to choose one price range over another. I think the lower the price, the more potential there is for appreciation, but, on the other hand, at very low prices, buying and selling becomes trickier. Stocks trading around 10 look like a reasonable compromise.

I need to emphasize that I have no proof you can find good buys this way. I'm not a successful investor! I'm just someone who has stuck with it for a long time and thinks it's looking good. I'm getting really enthusiastic about the charts I'm turning up. This system is a new development for me - in a direction I like, simplifying things - and I really like what I'm seeing. I'm seeing, in the price history for lots of these stocks, big surges of appreciation. Now prices may be settling back to old lows, in which case they're pretty much buys, or they may still be up, in which case I expect them to settle back to old lows, at which point they will be great buys - so I think. A surge of appreciation means prices surged upwards for a period of time, maybe a year or more, or they surged upward and held at the new high prices for months. It took some kind of enthusiasm in the market to generate a move like that. Behind that kind of enthusiasm is some kind of interesting activity that a company is engaged in.

Prices will, most likely, fall, after an upward move. If you look at any reasonably extensive selection of stocks, I think you'll see them move up and down, say, by 200% on the upside, then down 50% again, over and over and over. A decline does not represent a failure at a company, I think, as a rule. It's just a wave, and waves follow one on another.

If there are repeated waves, that you can see in charts, your job is to buy near earlier lows. You can estimate where the next top will be from earlier tops, and sell in that area, or even below it, if you have a good profit. I think you will find this is reliable. What's not reliable is buying near cyclic tops, or even above them. Then you'll likely to see prices dip, or drop. Not good! (There are exceptions to this. Prices can shoot up from a cyclic top. But identifying situations like that takes more advanced analysis. This system is designed to be easy to understand, easy to apply. It's like we're fishers, and there are fishers who can find and capture great schools of fish, but we are just fishers dangling a line in the waters. Still, if we're smart about it, we can catch fish.)

I kind of like these charts at MarketWatch. Wow. Market Watch is quite a site. It just suggests, I think, the power of the stock market, that can support a huge site like this, seemingly without effort. It's the kind of thing that suggests to me we are much more likely to see a wave repeat than to see the stock expire without explanation.