In addition, the stocks must have a large daily stock trading range, which is the difference between the high price and low price of that stock for the previous trading day, and a lot of volatility. I look for a trading range of at least $2.00 per share, but I really prefer those that are more volatile and have a daily travelling range of $3.00 to $6.00 and more.
The reason for this is that I trade both sides of the market, both the long side and the short side on an intra-day basis. I have no interest in whether the stock closed in positive, or negative territory the previous day, just as long as the volume and price action are there.
All I want is the price action, high volume and the volatility. If I have these three ingredients, I know that the major players are very active in that stock and they are either increasing, or decreasing their weighting in that stock. Adding to and contributing to the price and volume action are what I call the "accelerators", which are the momentum players, the program traders and the hedge funds who are trying to jump in ahead of the mutual funds and front run the stock, either up, or down. This is when the action really heats up and you will see "climatic volume" where each stock trade is occurring in less than a second. I have seen this many times every day. It happens all of the time.
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