Buy Stocks Online: Start Looking At Charts

by Ty Coon on September 21, 2010 · Comment

When you first start to buy stocks online, I’ve suggested that you spend a lot of time practicing first and I’ve defined that time period as 100 simulated trades. If you have been following along here as we buy stock online, you’ll note that we’ve bought 3 stocks. They are JKS, MSB and OPEN. All three of those stocks were up today. The market really hasn’t suffered much distribution and today it even cleared out one distribution day on the NASDAQ because of the distance the rally has increased the price of that index.

Today, the market returned a bunch of stocks on the Stocks on the Move screen. Here are the stocks I had to look at today.

mvo

vit

rax

ppd

pvh

msb

svr

dsw

tgh

thi

teo

pay

aap

cpo

vsi

clf

hdb

tpcg

rovi

ebix

otex

sina

ntct

igte

zoll

trmb

mwiv

zbra

wrld

hmsy

bidu

asps

pcln

infa

ndsn

wynn

arlp

disca

aapl

hsni

gmcr

neog

After seeing relatively few stocks on the screen for so long, it appears that the market is strengthening based on this list. Applying my screens to these stocks returned the following candidates for buying stocks online through our simulator.

They were:

MSB TGH EBIX ZBRA PCLN NDSN

If you buy stocks online ZBRA might deserve a look.

Of these stocks, I purchased $1,000 in ZBRA. We’ll see how it does.

In learning how to buy stocks online, I’ve started to turn my attention to analyzing charts in greater detail. The first thing I am going to tackle is the cup with handle pattern.

The first thing I noticed from O’Neil’s book is that he uses weekly charts to identify his chart patterns. So starting with the six stocks today, I began taking a closer look at the price and volume action and specifically looking for the cup with handle.

The goal here is to identify the correct buy point, also known as a pivot point. He spends a lot of time talking about buying stocks at the right time. Mastering this particular component is probably going to be the toughest.

For now, what I recommend is get in the habit of looking at the charts. See if you can spot bases. As we go along, I’ll try and lay out my strategy for figuring that part out.

Until then, good luck with your stock market investing program. If you want to follow along with my progress here, I suggest that your read, “Buying Stocks – A Case Study“. Here are a few other posts that go through what I’m doing.

Buy Stocks: Where I Started
Buy Stock: Follow The Leaders
How To Buy Stocks
Stocks To Buy Today
Finding CANSLIM Stocks To Buy