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How to find trades?Let me give you a quick insight into how I find trades. There are several advanced software scanners available, which can scan about every financial instrument available for potential trades. These softwares are rather complicated to operate and I would not recommend it to beginners. I would like to go over a few easy to use tools and tips a beginner can use. Keep in mind that complex analysis and scanning tools don’t make you a good trader. Too much information rather complicates trading unnecessarily and it can easily become too confusing. First let’s go about a few ways on how to find trades that have an interesting daily chart pattern. Each charting/trading software has so called “hot lists” build in. Let’s assume you are looking for stock that is in an up trend and that has pulled back over the last couple of days. You could simply bring up a “hot list” that shows you which stocks have had the biggest percentage gains over the last month. If you look thru the individual stocks within this list I am sure you will find stocks that match your criteria of a pullback pattern (i.e. basic swing trading patterns). Bring all of those stocks in separate watch list and do some further analysis. Do the stocks fit you trading criteria? Do they have enough volume? What is your risk reward ratio? It is very important not to over-analyze and to only consider stocks that match your criteria. On some days you will simply don’t find trades or interesting candidates. Beginners often don’t understand this fact and end up making trades they shouldn’t have considered in the first place. This is one of the main reasons new traders fail! I tend to not look at a stock for more than 10 seconds when I look at it in my hot list at the start of my scanning process. This allows me to stay more objective and gives me less room for false interpretation. The longer you look at a stock the more things you see that are not really there. The second step in my “scanning” process are newsletters. To find trades I often use newsletters and other publications can actually be a tremendous help in order to find the “perfect” trade. Think about how difficult it is to sort thru the endless lists of stocks every day by yourself. Chances are that you miss some great opportunities. By looking at other tips you can vastly expand your horizon and it also takes away some of the work from you. It is extremely important though to only consider those trading tips that you completely understand and that match your personal criteria. You must know exactly why you are entering a trade, what to expect and most importantly what your risk is. For example here's a link to a site called U.S. Stock Screens -Small-cap and micro-cap stock picks which is basically Small-cap and micro-cap stock picks, balancing anticipated growth and perceived value. U.S. Stock Screens looks at stock fundamentals, technical factors, and analyst expectations to generate monthly stock picks for investors in the U.S. stock market: http://www.stock-screens.us To find trades, I want to urge you to only consider trading tips that are based on technical analysis. Don’t even make an attempt to trade stocks based on news interpretation. You simply have no idea what influence a news story might have or if it is already priced into the stock. I have to say though that some individuals are quite good at interpreting news. If you absolutely want to trade news please have a technical stop level to limit your risks. Anything else is a recipe for disaster! I also find many interesting daily charts (also weekly etc.) while I am searching for day trading candidates. Even if I am looking for a pure day trade I want to make sure that the “big picture” (trend) is in my favor. When I look at these daily charts I often find interesting patterns and simply keep those stocks on my list for the next day(s). BTW, there are many free newsletter out there that will fill your watch list within days so don’t worry too much about finding a paying newsletter… Scanning for day trades: Scanning for day trades is a little more difficult because there is less time to prepare for the actual trade. Just as with scanning the daily charts I use hot lists to find candidates. Please refer to your software in order to find out which particular list is interesting and available. I also like to use “remote” scanning programs. These scanners deliver a number of pre defined and partially adjustable scans directly to your desktop without having to install complex software that takes up a lot of resources. They can be used to find trades for day trades as well as swing trades. Keep in mind that no matter what scanner you use the results are generated by a machine and you will need to analyze the results by yourself. Here is an example: Your scanner comes up with a stock that is in an up trend and has pulled back in price over a few consecutive time periods. This could be a good trade but we still need to determine whether the trade has enough potential and if the stop is small enough. I found that about 80% of the results I get from a scanner are not interesting for me. The other 20% deserve closer attention. 5% or less end up being a trade. Again, patience is extremely important. There will be good chances and you rather wait for a good trade instead of being stuck in a bad one. I also like to monitor chat rooms during the trading day to find trades. Usually I simply put the stocks that are mentioned in the room into my own charts in order to determine if they are interesting using MY criteria. There are a few good chat rooms out there but be aware of the “bad” ones. A good chat will not only provide you with profitable trades but also offer education and an exact explanation of why the trades are entered. A “bad” chat room will simply tell you “enter now — exit now” without you knowing why. They often trade stocks that are moving way to fast. Don’t even attempt to make a profit in a room like this. It is simply impossible to follow someone else’s scalp trades. Those are only a number of ideas on how to find trades. Even though it might not seem to be overly complicated you are going to be very busy using only a few of those sources. A successful trader will be able to scan thru them rather quickly and then focus on the trade itself. Make sure to keep it simple and not use too many sources at once. Less is more and will be extremely crucial for your success! Now is a good time to move on from how to find trades to the next section about the importance of a trading plan 
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