Wanted to do some paper trading this morning, but couldn’t kick my brain into gear so decided to shut things down until tomorrow and get a head start on real life work. I was trying to implement my “batting practice” strategy of shot gunning a bunch of promising setups and not over analyzing things, just to work on my “trading swing”. But I’m so cautious and hesitant. Will try again tomorrow.
In the meanwhile, thought I would share a tip on TD Ameritrade’s Motion Detector Tool. I still have trouble using the Scottrade HOD/LOD scrolling list (but haven’t given up yet) because it moves so fast and its hard to follow. TDA’s Motion Detector also finds many good stocks during the middle of day, by detecting fast accelerations and accumulations of stock in either direction. The nice thing is you can adjust the settings to only screen for stocks within your price target and volume threshold, among other things. It also shows only the top five stocks in each category and you can adjust the refresh rate. It does give many false positives, such as shocks that are not really moving that fast anymore or just had a market order filled, so not really a breakout, just a outlier transaction. However, I can catch several fast moving stocks every day, and very often the stocks alerted in chat will often show up on the TD Ameritrade simultaneously, but it also catches many not mentioned in chat.
I think its worth signing up for a TDA account just for this tool, but I already had one so it may be a hassle for some. They do require an initial deposit of $2K and you get a month of free trades if you click on one of their web specials. So after a month of your free trades, you can withdraw your money and go to your regular broker and still use the tool. They don’t have any account maintenance fees. Here’s a screen shot:
