For these penny stocks, I might spend a week following the daily trades, news and rumours. During that time, I am doing DD on the company and management. The #1 piece of advice I give everyone is to spend that week following this board and Twitter to find out who you can trust, and who you can't trust. Then you have to decide to pull the trigger or not based on your comfort level. You never HAVE to trade.
For my NASDAQ plays, I have 132 BioPharm Nasdaq stocks which I follow and play over and over. Each evening, following the close of the After-Hour market, I review which ones have significant volume increases over its average volume. Volume predicts price I believe and I want to know the % of buys vs sells. Then I look at the RSI and Slow Stochastic to see if the stock may be over or under sold. I look at the MacD, Money Flow Indicator, Bollinger Bands and the Aroon to help justify my play. Once I have a comfort level that the PPS is headed up, I list those stocks as a potential buy. I limit that list to 5 -8 stocks to watch at opening and include the highest PPS which I would pay for the stock. In the morning I follow my stocks in the Pre-Market. Normally this will tell me which 2 or 3 I want to play. I always wait until after the bell to watch the action. I may miss a tick or two but I want to be sure of the direction before I buy.