It depends on the type of setup your looking for. Trade Gauge has direct support for locating gap plays, relative strength plays, breakouts, momentum plays and others.
First, you have to narrow down your list of possible stocks/options/etc. There are thousands of securities to choose from and this is just too many scan on an intra-day basis. The list should be no greater than 20 - 30 stocks, in our opinion. We typically focus on a list of stocks that we have had success with in the past. For new traders, the following method might work:
1) Pick a popular index to scan like the Nasdaq 100.
2) Narrow your selection by stock price. (We like $50-$150 stocks.
3) Narrow based on daily volume. (We like > 300,000 shares)
4) Check the average spread. (Typically, less than $1)
5) If you have level II, check for the number of big players. (The more the better, typically).
This should get you down to a reasonable number of candidates. Study them. Become familiar with them--then trade.
Trade Gauge's recommended data feed (and the only one we support at the moment) is Quote.com quote.com . QCharts is the free software that comes with Quote.com's datafeed and it can perform all the filtering described above. We highly recommend it.
Once you have your filtered list, you can enter the symbols into Trade Gauge and perform the following types of operations (there are many more but these are our favorites):
1) Gap analysis. A very popular component for many trading systems. The current gap (yesterday's close - current open) is automatically calculated and displayed in dollar and percentage format. You can sort this list to find the biggest gappers both positive and negative. Gap prices are continuously updated during pre-market.
2) Support/Resistance. TG automatically calculates and displays what we call the Proximity Percentage. This tells you how close to a support/resistance level the stock price is. You can sort this value to quickly find stocks that are nearest to support/resistance and therefore most likely to stall or reverse.
TG also automatically charts all support/resistance regions on your price chart so you are always aware where momentum stalls may occur. Very short-term support/resistance plays have been our most successful type of play using Trade Gauge.
3) Relative Strength. Determining which stocks are leading the market and which are lagging can yield tremendous profit. Trade Gauge gives you second by second updates on which stocks are the strongest and the weakest on the day. It does this by using Percentage Gain from Open calculation. Of course, this is sortable a like all other calculations.
The basic philosophy behind Trade Gauge is that it provides a fundamental and critical set of day trading *tools*. It is not a black box or a pre-developed system and it will be of little use to traders that don't understand the basic concepts of day trading. However, to an intermediate to advanced trader, these tools can be combined in very profitable ways.
Trade Gauge provides new ways to look at Time & Sales as well. One feature of note is the ability chart the number of trades occurring in a given period of time (down to second-by-second). The trades are charted in such a way that enables you to see where the trades are occurring relative to the inside market. This can be critical information for monitoring consolidating stocks that are about to breakout (as well as picking bottoms, playing momentum, etc.)
Also take a look at tradegauge.com . This describes a bottom picking technique using support and resistance and includes a screen shot.
Hope this helps,
Shawn |
