There are plenty of ways to find profitable trading opportunities that are around you every day – many of which are right before your eyes and fingertips.
The following suggestions can help you find your next great trading opportunities whether you are looking for either buying or “shorting” opportunities.
Biggest Stock Gainers And Losers – By Day, Week Or Month
A listing of the biggest daily stock gainers and losers can be found on your broker’s website or on other leading business websites such as marketwatch.com and cnbc.com.
You can investigate these stocks (on a percentage basis) to see which ones are falling the most and which ones are rising the most.
Try to find out why they are actively moving by checking the news for such companies which can easily be done by using your online broker or using reputable business and news websites.
To find the biggest stock gainers and losers on a weekly or monthly basis, you will most likely need to use a stock screener to do that.
Internet
Go to big name websites like cnbc.com, marketwatch.com, bloomberg.com, yahoo.com and reuters.com to find breaking stories and other relevant news about companies. News and stories about new innovations, new product lines, corporate scandals and corruptions, and accounting irregularities (“cooking” the books such as WorldCom and Enron – not to mention many others that did the same thing) can all lead to big profitable trading opportunities.
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This could come in different forms such as magazines, newspapers, television, radio, billboards and the Internet.
Keep a watchful eye out and listen carefully for anything that may have a significant impact on the price of a company’s stock like:
- A hot new product coming out soon that could revolutionized the industry
- Approval of a new pharmaceutical drug or one showing significant promises as it goes through clinical trials
- New technology innovations that could create huge customer demand bringing in massive revenues to a company
These types of things (and many others) can all have a dramatic impact on the price of a company’s stock.
Shopping Malls
The next time you are at the shopping mall take notice of any new stores popping up or which ones are the most crowded. Observe which stores shopping bags are being carried around the most stuffed with items from that store.
Investigate which products are being quickly sold-out due to high customer demand. Ask the store manager what is the hottest selling product and follow the news and stock price for that company.
New Restaurant Chains
See which ones have long customer lines or are always busy and hard to find a spot to sit down and eat. You can even go and try the food for yourself to see if it impresses you.
Business Newspapers
The Wall Street Journal and the Investor’s Business Daily are excellent resources to find profitable trading opportunities. Keep an eye out for either positive or negative news that could have a big impact on the price of a company’s stock such as:
- Positive news like a new highly talented management team with impeccable leadership skills, the launching of a company’s hot new product, or a company that is quickly growing and starting to dominate its market space
- Negative news like customer demand and revenues expected to be wiped out due to a product or a division being discontinued, investigations by law firms or the SEC (or other government agencies) into a company’s possibly corrupt business practices, or new laws being passed that will have an adverse effect on a company’s business operations
Note of interest – Investor’s Business Daily was founded by William O’Neil who also created the “CANSLIM” formula – a popular way to find profitable trading and investing opportunities.
Children And Young Adults
Children and young adults always seem to be up-to-date with the hottest and newest products, gadgets and fashion trends that are creating all the newest craze creating huge demand resulting in possible record breaking revenues for a company. Find out what these new products and services are and research the news and stock prices for such companies.
Technical Analysis
There are many ways to find profitable trading opportunities using proven methods of technical analysis. Technical analysis includes a wide array of methods to measure price action for making intelligent trading decisions.
Some of the many popular areas of technical analysis include:
- Chart Patterns
- Moving Averages
- Relative Strength Indicator
- Candlesticks
- Oscillators
- And Many More Ways!
Stock screeners (see below) can quickly find you great trading opportunities using technical analysis.
Fundamental Analysis
Another great way to find profitable trading opportunities is using fundamental analysis which can include:
- Finding companies that are leaders in their respective industries
- Having fundamentally strong financial statements
- Revenues and earnings of the current quarter beating the prior quarters by a big winning margin
- Plenty of cash-on-hand to exploit new investment and business opportunities
- Low to manageable levels of debts
- Superior management team with proven leadership skills
- Strategic and innovative business plans in place
Stock screeners (see below) can quickly find you great trading opportunities using fundamental analysis.
Seasonal Stocks
There are many companies whose revenues and earnings fluctuate in a cyclical pattern – higher during certain times of the year and lower during the rest of the year. For example, during good economic times, Christmas Season usually generates an increase in revenues and earnings for companies in the apparel, jewelry and electronics industries (among other industries) driven by winter holiday shoppers compared to the slowdown of shopper’s in the summer time.
Stock Screeners
Using stock screeners to scan for stocks (and etfs) can be a quick way to find profitable trading opportunities. Screeners can quickly scan 1,000’s of stocks and etfs providing you with a qualified list of them using the screening criteria you have chosen. Stock screeners can scan for all kinds of things including areas of technical analysis and fundamental analysis. They can scan for such things as chart patterns, candlesticks, moving averages and stochastics (and a whole host of other things) to help you find good stocks to trade.
Stock screeners should come complementary with your trading platform when you open an online brokerage account.
There are also third party stock screeners that can offer more advanced screening capabilities. Some can scan in real-time (essential if you’re day trading) while others can advise you of when to buy, sell, hold or even “short” as well as providing risk management advice of when to exit a trade if it goes against you.
(to see our recommended third party stock screeners click on Stock Screeners)
Stock Alerts
You can automatically have stock alerts electronically sent to you of when a stock has reached a certain price target that you may have been waiting for so that you can immediately act on it. Stock alerts can be sent to any computer or mobile device such as laptops, tablets and smart phones.
