Discretionary and Systems traders: How do you manage your watchlist?

We all have our ways of determining a stock of interest
be it Fundamental or Technical.

Do you find stocks and place them in a watch-list.?

If so How do you move them in and out--why do you?
How long will you keep them?

Do you have further steps to go through before trading or
culling.

I personally look for POTENTIAL trades rather than trades
that I should by straight away.

With Systems trades Ill have a pool of potential trades to use
from which one or more will trigger.
(Its part of the system)

Interested in what others do?

tech/a said:

We all have our ways of determining a stock of interest
be it Fundamental or Technical.

Do you find stocks and place them in a watch-list.?

Click to expand...

I don't use watchlists. I use a stock screen when I'm ready to buy. Although I do check my screen regularly out of interest of what I might be buying in the future. So it becomes a defacto watchlist, in a sense.

Screen as in.

A scan using a set of conditions which deliver a list
from which you can select a trade?
If so how do you decide to purchase ONE of then ---or 2,3 etc?
I guess a new scan(screen) drops those no longer satisfying your
conditions.

I haven't traded ordinary stocks in some time.

Back when I did, I chose to confine my watchlists to the constituents of the ASX50.

At the outset of system deployment, the live trading watchlist was empty and the paper trading watchlist contained all ASX50 constituents.

In order to gain admission into the live trading watchlist, each of the stocks in the paper trading watchlist, had to first prove itself via completion of a successful paper trade, concordant with the system.

Some years later, when I decided it was time to move onto derivatives and leave stocks in the past, there was exactly one, outstanding paper trade, that had been caught in limbo (i.e. paper trade opened, but never closed, due to the market price having persistently failed to meet the system's exit criteria).

The system recalculated exit and entry targets on an EOD basis, and orders were adjusted accordingly.
Multiple entries into different stocks were allowable, however, the system was designed to only signal entries into a stock position that wasn't already held, and to only signal exits, whilst the position remained open, thus ensuring that the system, would be unlikely to demand, more than 50 positions be held open, at any one time°.
(°When WMC shares were split into WMR and AWC, I was alerted to the potential, for creation of positions, surplus to those systemically opened.)

tech/a said:

Screen as in.

A scan using a set of conditions which deliver a list
from which you can select a trade?

Click to expand...

Yes.

tech/a said:

If so how do you decide to purchase ONE of then ---or 2,3 etc?

Click to expand...

The screen does two things: 1) filters all stocks to those matching my criteria, and 2) sorts them on one column. Starting from the first result, I then manually examine them, rejecting any that don't meet my "manual criteria". The first one that passes is the one I buy. I'm especially happy if I'm rejecting stocks because I already own them. It shows my original premise still holds true today.

tech/a said:

I guess a new scan(screen) drops those no longer satisfying your
conditions.

Click to expand...

Correct.

So to me
There are conditions that allow entry into my watch list.
Potentials
There are many like volume/pattern/high at x periods
Ist occurrence of a Techtrader entry---.

From there there must be a trigger to buy.
Any signal or potential signal has a life span.
Some much longer than others.

EG a pattern only lasts as long as it is proven wrong
1-5 periods.
Volume spike can be weeks to days.
etc.

tech/a said:

So to me
There are conditions that allow entry into my watch list.
Potentials

From there there must be a trigger to buy.

Click to expand...

OK. So your "potentials" list could contain no stocks that are suitable to buy at that very moment?

Yes that is possible.
They are always being added to --- bought---or discarded.

tech/a said:

Screen as in.

A scan using a set of conditions which deliver a list
from which you can select a trade?
If so how do you decide to purchase ONE of then ---or 2,3 etc?
I guess a new scan(screen) drops those no longer satisfying your
conditions.

Click to expand...

I'm a bit like @Zaxon. I don't use watchlists, I just run a scan using one 1 condition, scanning 1 specific universe at the end of each trading week. I like to see what stocks are starting to pop up in my scans even if there are no positions to fill. If there are positions to fill, I will check each chart and discard the charts that don't meet the next objective criterion. This culled list is then momentum ranked from strongest to weakest and the purchased from the top down. Stocks already in the portfolio are skipped over. Scan list is then discarded, never to be seen again.