Hi MacSusan,
You and Omni have both said something that I think has given me the solution; thanks!!
"and on the weekend I review and purge where neccessary."
Except for that, it sounds like you are doing almost exactly what I was doing over the past couple of weeks after joining stockcharts.com.
I have been using a very general scan (price 1-5, ADV > 250,000, RSI crosses above 50) and then adding the results to a list of charts I call "Main Stock Pool". I draw the major trend lines and pattern lines on the charts and put notations that say "breakout buy alert at 1.22" or "reversal alert at 1.06" on the charts. Then I set my alerts at those prices, often 2 or even three alerts per stock.
That way, I'm currently using the same scan for two different strategies (breakout and reversal).
I was also planning to try to create scans that are more detailed and specific to each strategy, but I may not have to. Here's why.
The quandry I was in was that the list was getting bigger and bigger, so I had more and more work to do to adjust the annotations and price alerts each day. So I started swinging to the other side of the fence by thinking "Can't I just do a scan for things that look they're ABOUT TO BREAK OUT and just look at different stocks each day?"
So the decision seemed to be between two different methods:
1. Add stocks to the SAME LARGE list each day, and keep all alerts until they get hit
2. Get a DIFFERENT SMALL list each day and just set alerts on those.
So I started to think of the two methods as SL (same, large) and DS (different, small)
But I have tried the "different,small" method in the past and it hasn't worked well because what would happen is that a stock would come up on my scan one day, but wouldn't break out, so I wouldn't buy it. Then I would stop watching it and it would break out two days later.
I talked to Omni about this on here yesterday, and he seems to go for the "same, large" method just as you do. I agree, but I still had the problem of the amount of work involved. Now after seeing his post and yours, I realize that what I wasn't doing was "pruning" my scan results, or in other words, SCREENING effectively.
I have noticed that there are certain patterns that I like to see for stocks, but then there are other charts which are just either chaotic and hard to analyze or show that a stock is just weak long term. So what I will be doing from now on is using my same old general scan, but getting rid of the stocks with charts that don't look good to me. I will then keep ALL of the good looking charts and maintain my alerts on those.
After all, why should I waste time trying to figure out where to set an alert on a chart that just looks terrible, lol??? It takes forever, I have to rationalize like crazy to set a buy point, and it just doesn't make sense. When I see a chart that has a pattern I like, it takes me about 2 seconds to figure out where to place the alert.
You have helped clear up my SCANNING, SCREENING, PLANNING, and MONITORING confusion. Thanks!!!
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