Thanks Reid for a well thought out response. I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately as I have started trading actively again. I have been placing a little more emphasis on the fundamentals then you probably have. I don't spend a lot of time at it, but I have been wanting to limited my downside surprises in this year of negative warnings and earning surprises. I have been debating whether I have been placing too much emphasis on this since I have been holding things for such a short period of time.
Here is what I have been considering doing. Scan Value Line and Value Line Expanded weekly updates for stocks rated #1 or #2 for timeness. I would take a special look at stocks moving up in ranking. Next scan down the Betas and don't even look at anything with a Beta below 1.1. This often throws out entire sectors. Value Line has around 50 different sectors which it ranks in timeness by sector as well as individual stocks. Next look at the chart and decide whether to add the stock to my watch list. Once you have done this once, it would only takes a couple of minutes each week to see if Value Line has made any changes its rankings. I would also added companies from other sources to my watch list. But if they have a 4 or 5 Value Line rating I would drop them from my list. I would place each stock on the watch list by sector on separate streaming stock quote pages. This would allow me to see within seconds which of my stocks in that sector are in play on a given day.
When I start the day I would check to see which sectors look like they are going to be hot and check and see which stocks on my watch list are in that sector and then go look at the TA for those particular charts.
Just thinking out loud here! I guest you would say I would be using fundamentals and Beta to screen out by sectors which stocks I would look at from a TA viewpoint on a given day.
As far as price, I would be willing to trade stocks down to $5.00, but I would want a large number of shares trading that day. I haven't thought much about a specific number but a million sounds like a good choice.
As far a PE goes, I have been thinking that no PE or a high relative PE within a sector would indicate which stocks would have the potential to move quickly. It would seem to me that stocks that have a relative low PE have a relative low PE for a reason and my not be best for position trading; may be a great long term value play however!
Of course looking at SAWS last week might make one question everything I have said here!
Oh well, as I said this monkey is still in training.<g>
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