Watch List

I have a watch list. The watch list is categorized into the following

1. Stocks for trading
2. Growth stocks
3. Precious metals stocks
4. Oil, gas and agriculture stocks
5. Candidates for short sells
6. Highly speculative stocks

My list is a little different from others. I love growth stocks. I indulge in speculative plays as in no.6. These can be juniors or under $10 stock which has illiquid or no options. Fundamentals are key to these counters. Keep an eye on when to cut loss. Also keep the position size small. Every year, I will have a few multi baggers from this list.

Also, I short stocks regularly. It is one of my key income. I do not share the list freely because there are lots of fundamentals and technical ideas behind each stock and it is not possible to trade just from the list. It is better that a trader develop his own favorite list.

I do not do scanning but rather read widely, do a lot of research by participating in discussions, chats, and interviews with people in the industry. I used to subscribe to StockFinder software and data stream. They are one of the best in breed for scanning. But I do not find it helpful for me. I prefer to dig deep into a company's fundamentals and understand a company well if I am trading it.

For example, this weekend I manage to meet up with a successful entrepreneur of a up and coming company in the internet segment. I got myself updated on the industry with developments at CSCO, SKYPE, IBM, JDSU, cloud computing and VOIP, AAPL  and MSFT. I asked questions like why CSCO is giving such a gloomy forecast and yet NFLX and CRM are performing like the dot.com bubble era. It was an interesting discussion but it is not my intention to discuss the details here.

But it was such discussion periodically that I update my watch list. It is done almost every week.

Also, I do a technical analysis evaluation every 1-2 days and change the list. It takes less than an hour for me to go to through the list and form a mental picture of the short term directions.

This list will form the basis of my investment priorities for next week.