Managing Your Watchlists
August 23, 2023
Duru has posted another video, this time showing how he cleans up (manages) his SwingTradeBot Watchlists.
I was glad to hear him talk about keeping his lists focused. He said (at the 6:00 mark):
I was glad to hear him talk about keeping his lists focused. He said (at the 6:00 mark):
You may ask "why don't you give the stocks a chance to rebound?". Well it's because there are so many stocks. Why bother with the weaker ones when there are so many other strong candidates. So I have to have very tight rules because I don't have a lot of time and capital is limited & I don't want to spread it across all sorts of different hopes. So I have to be very rigorous & basically merciless about getting rid of stocks that don't meet the criteria.
One of the reasons SwingTradeBot has limits on the number of stocks in a list is because of a best practice I picked up from William O'Neil / Investors Business Daily many years ago. They suggest:
- Don't add too many stocks. Especially for your "Ready" list of stocks near a buy point. Keep it focused on the strongest stocks so you can actively track each one and be ready to act on a breakout or pullback to the 10-week (AKA the 50 day) moving average line after a breakout
- Regularly "weed out" your lists. If something changes with a stock on your list (e.g., it breaks down or breaks out and becomes too extended, etc.) remove it. Your watch list should be actionable -- and to keep it that way, you need to actively manage it.
- Create a watchlist routine -- and stick to it! Whether it's early mornings, late evenings or the weekend, find a time that works for you to regularly review and refresh your watchlist. Even just one hour a weekend can lead to good gains -- if you do it consistently. (SwingTradeBot's routine functionality was also inspired by IBD. And this is why there's an item on the default weekend routine to "prune watchlists")
- Note potential buy points and make a plan of action. For stocks on your "Ready" list, make note of the ideal buy point. Then make your plan of action BEFORE the market opens. For example: Determine how many shares you'll buy if the stock breaks out. Set alerts on your quote service or use buy-stops if you'll be away during trading hours.
Back to the video... I love that Duru started using his browser tabs! 🎉 While I'm obviously a big fan of the "All Charts" view, watchlist pruning is something I usually do on the normal list/table view. In this case I personally find it faster to just stay on that table view. Here are a few things I do:
- Sort by the "Total Change" column to quickly see which stocks have moved too far (see point 2 from IBD above).
- Sort by the "Date Added" column and mark stocks that have been on the list too long without triggering an entry.
- Take quick glances at the charts using the hover / pop-up charts.
During each of those steps I can quickly check the checkbox in the left column to mark stocks for deletion. Then I just click the "removed checked" button to prune the list (as Duru shows in the video).
Another thing I wanted to point out is that Duru wanted to remove a stock from his "to buy" watchlist and put it on a "to short" list. He did that by deleting the stock and then he was going to add it to the other watchlist. One could also move a stock between watchlists by clicking the edit button on that stock's row. Then you can choose the watchlist you want to move it to.
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