Selecting stocks to Scan: Where to Begin?

One of the more challenging tasks I encountered when I focused more with Technical Analysis was where to begin my scan selections. By the way, if you're looking to learn the basics of Technical Analysis, check out Ms. Guillen Rocher's blog. Her posts about candlesticks, Stochastics, Support and Resistance, and Moving Averages are great! Check them out.

To date, the PSE has 314 stocks to invest in, give or take a few preferred shares. Doing scans over the weekend is fine, however it cuts into my family and relaxation time (I've yet to watch Deadpool so no spoilers please). Also, what about doing scans mid-week such as Wednesday? I have a day job, so I do not have the time to be scanning all 300 stocks listed!

What do we do? We follow the volume. We look at the most actively traded stocks, or those stocks that have significant amount of volume. I use COLFinancial and Utrade as my online brokers, so I can point where you can get this information if you're also using those brokers. If you're using others, explore the website abit. Each broker typically offers this information.

For COLFinancial, you go to Quotes, then Market Information, then Most Active. I marked them with an orange arrow as 1, 2 , 3 respectively. Please refer to the picture below (click on the photo to enlarge).


For UTrade users, click Quotes, then in the drop-down list, click Most Active.
(click on the photo to enlarge)



Once you have this page open, check the column labeled as Volume. This is the number of shares traded throughout the day. In this case,traded on Feb. 26, 2016. You will want to focus on stocks that have had 1 million traded volume or more.

Based on the above information, we take a quick peek at MPI and see if a trading setup is present.


If a setup is present, note it down for further study later then move on to the next stock on the Most Active list meeting our volume criteria.

Another useful area is the Gainers and Losers tab in COLFinancial. (click on the photo to enlarge)


This tab shows a list of stocks that have had the most significant increase or decrease to their prices on a previous trading day (or during the day itself).

For UTrade users, it is still under the Quotes tab, and right under the Most Active line. I encircled it in orange below. (click on the photo to enlarge).


Instead of Volume, we base our selections on the Value column. The numbers under value are derived by multiplying the total number of shares traded, at the price traded, and getting the sum of those prices (tama ba? hehe).

During a trading day, I often have Gainers and Losers and the Most Active tabs open at a new window or in a new tab (alt + tab is your friend) so I can quickly cycle through my web browsers. This is so I can quickly see if a stock is rising during the trading day, and if a breakout should occur, I can quickly enter when it breaks a resistance line....but thats for another article.

So, when I come home from work, this is how I do my scans. Hope this article will help reduce your scanning time and God bless your investments!