How to make a killing in the stock market, Use a QCP 6035.
Investor's Corner
Wednesday, April 18, 2001
Smart Ways To Catch A Stock At Its Breakout
By Jonah Keri
Investor's Business Daily
You've done the research. You've made a list of leading stocks with great fundamentals. You've picked out buy points for each one. One problem: You can't sit in front of a computer all day watching the market. So what do you do?
A few years ago, you had to rely on benevolent brokers or ESP to keep abreast of the market. No longer. The advent of the Internet, coupled with a boom in hand-held electronic devices, means you can get stock quotes on a Bora Bora beach or a mountaintop in Nepal.
No matter where you are, always use sound buy rules. Target firms with robust sales and earnings growth. Look for stocks forming strong bases. On a classic cup-with-handle base, your buy point, or pivot, is 0.13 point above the top of a downward-sloping handle.
Charles Harris, in-house money manager for IBD sister company William O'Neil & Co., keeps a list of all the stocks he's ready to buy, with pivot points. Investors can enter their own watch lists at investors.com. The Web site churns out stock quotes on a 20-minute delay. It also shows you volume on an intraday basis compared with the 50-day average. If your stock crosses its pivot, the volume will tell you if the breakout is worth chasing.
You don't want to chase a breakout too far. If it extends more than 5% beyond the pivot, let it go. If you buy it any higher, the stock could knock you for a quick 7% to 8% loss. A stock can fall back to its pivot before resuming its rally.
So how can you nab a stock before it becomes extended? Kyocera's QCP 6035 Smartphone offers HTML and WAP Internet browsers, plus Palm Web clipping applications. Investors can configure their chosen browser to create watch lists. Discount brokers E-Trade and Fidelity offer Palm Query Application platforms to help set up those lists.
The Smartphone has a drawback: You normally have to make a call to check stocks online.
But certain phone service providers can push information out to users through the Smartphone, the way a pager would. This allows you to find out the second a stock crosses its pivot.
Users of online broker Ameritrade's system can set up a portfolio to track stocks they own. They can then add up to 10 other portfolios to track potential buys. The Web site works with a number of pagers, mobile text-messaging systems and e-mail to alert users when stocks cross certain thresholds.
"You can track percentage price change, dollar amounts from your purchase price," said Peter Ricketts, interim president of parent firm Ameritrade Holding. "You can also use volume alerts, like volume percentage change over average daily volume."
Other features include e-mailed daily portfolio recaps and weekly spreadsheet reports with detailed descriptions of your stocks' performance vs. the major market indexes.
O'Neil & Co. money manager Gil Morales uses QuoTrek. The hand-held quote device made by Data Broadcasting Corp. sends real-time quotes over a radio signal. QuoTrek won't push information out to users. But it does offer streaming real-time quotes, a rare feature.
You don't need to be a market pro to benefit from the device. Morales' wife started using QuoTrek four years ago. Sticking to sound, big-name tech breakouts, she's bumped her initial $9,000 investment to $80,000 today
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