managing watchlists, and time

[keithkar]

Being new to trading, I'm trying to figure out the best way to more efficiently manage my time. Since I'm working full time, I have a couple of hours in the evening, and on the weekends I'm free.

What I find myself doing a lot is going through my stock scans, looking for certian setups for a swing trade, moving stocks to different watchlists, and the next thing you know I have a couple of hundred stocks I'm watching. I'm starting to think that looking at too many stocks is counter productive, especially starting out

What I'm going to do this weekend to prepare for Monday is just concentrate on maybe 3 or 4 stocks, and really focus on the price action during the coming week, and not necessarily place a trade. Hopefully I can learn more this way

I'm wondering how some of you guys prepare for the next trading day, especially for swing trading.

Thanks,
keith

 

[tomorton]

This sounds sensible Keith.

Over the years I have swung from extreme to extreme with this same problem. I have tried -

* trading an unlimited number of stocks - hard work, caused me to be 'dazzled' by charts: impossible to pick the best from 2,000+ targets, the many missed opportunities became more important in my mind than the taken ones

* trading 1 index - too few set-ups and returns too slow: this encouraged me to 'force' myself into positions in order to be active

* 4-10 major indices and forex pairs, plus Gold - this more manageable but too diverse: some trades turned out to be the converse of some already open

* now swing trading stocks from the FTSE100 index - still a big number but I only use 1 set-up: at weekend/evening I update major index charts with trend channel and direction: then each of the 100 share charts with trend channel and direction: only take positions in line with major index trend direction so at least half the 100 shares can be ignored each night as in opposite or unclear trends: another 25-35 will be pointing in right direction but set-up not yet ready: so I end up selecting stocks on which to place orders from 20-30 only, from which I try to not select too many in each industrial sector, no point placing 6 parallel orders on on e.g. the retail sector when 1 or 2 will do the job.