Creating a list with a name and a number

Your first move is to create a new list. Under the Members tab, scroll down to the ChartList banner and click the icon button with the plus sign (+) for New List. Figure 13-1 shows the banner with the new list icon.

Now it’s time to name your list. The StockCharts.com website defaults to alphabetical order when it sorts lists, but that structure doesn’t work very well if you use lots of ChartLists. You’ll constantly be changing the contents of the lists at the top, whereas you’ll just be observing the contents of the ones farther down when you need to.

Because the naming convention alone doesn’t really help keep the lists organized, you can use a numerical system to help control the sort order. A numbering sequence for ChartLists is important to help keep your work in an order you like. Table 13-1 is a suggestion for sorting (find out more about these list categories in the later section “Organizing Your ChartLists”). Four digits work best for ChartList names. Because you may create a lot under industry listings, the group is numbered 3000. This is a unique group that you actually want to sort alphabetically to facilitate finding a name within the list of industries. For example, you may have insurance brokers, reinsurance, property insurers, and the like, so using the letter “I” in front allows them all to be together, and then sorted by their group under the industry numeric.

You aren’t going to type in all of these names at once. But having a structure allows you to add to the list in an organized, structured way. For your first list, you can use the name 5000 – Market overview.

Populating a list with one or more charts

After you create a list, you can start adding charts to it. To add a single chart (for example, a chart of the S&P 500), use the Add Charts to List tool that should be showing on the bottom of the list’s main page (in this example, the 5000 – Market overview page). At the top in the View List As drop-down, it should say Edit. If not, click on the drop-down arrow and select Edit. You can add one chart at a time, or you can add many at a time by finding an industry group/sector or uploading an Excel list. Figure 13-2 shows the panel for adding charts to a list.

If you want to add one chart at a time, follow these steps on the list’s main page:

1. Click One under Add Charts to List.

2. Type a ticker symbol in the Symbol box.

   For example, type $SPX in the Symbol box.

3. Type a name into the Chart Name box.

   For example, for $SPX, you can type S&P 500 in the name box.

4. Click the Add Chart button below the panel.

The charts will sort alphabetically by ticker symbol. This gets you started with putting charts in a list, one at a time. If you want to add multiple charts at once, click Many at the top under Add Charts to List, type the ticker symbols you want (for example, $NDX, $INDU, $COMPQ, and $RUT), and then click the Add Chart button below the panel.

Building lists with industry groups or sectors

To populate a whole list with the stocks of an existing industry group or sector, create another new ChartList. Follow these steps:

1. Go up to the top of the page and click the button with the plus sign (+) where it says New List.

2. Give your list a name.

   For example, you can use the ChartList name 3500 – T – Toys, and then click OK.

3. In the Add Charts to List area, click on the From Group tab as shown in Figure 13-3.

4. Choose your group.

   You choose from a predefined sector group or an industry group. Scroll down the list. For example, the industry group menu is sorted first by sector and then alphabetically. Scroll under Consumer Staples Sector, and select Toys.

5. Click Add Chart.

Using the Number in Sorted Order button

You can save stocks within a list in a particular order if you like. For this step, go to Summary View, which you can select from the top of the page under the View List As drop-down menu (you can see this menu in Figure 13-3). In this example, we use the 3500 – T – Toys ChartList. If you aren’t in the list you want, select it at the top of the page using the drop-down menu. Then go to Summary View.

From Summary View, as shown in Figure 13-4, you can sort the list on SCTR (StockCharts technical ranking; see Chapter 12) or any other column heading, or click on the Show/Hide Columns button for more choices. Putting the strongest SCTR first (as in Figure 13-4) allows you to look at the strongest stocks first when you change from Summary View to Ten per page viewing.

When you have the correct column and the list is sorted in ascending or descending order based on your preference, click the Number in Sorted Order button at the bottom of the page. This adds numbers in front of the names so the stocks will be saved in this order.

When you are in Summary View, you can sort on any column. Looking at stocks from strongest to weakest helps focus your investing on the best-performing stocks. Summary View gives you details about the stocks, but it doesn’t allow you to remove them from the ChartList. To make changes within the list, use Edit View.

Removing numbers from stocks inside a list

Each time you look at some stocks in a ChartList, look at the stocks from strongest to weakest to stay focused on the best setups. Using the SCTR column to gauge chart strength, the higher the number, the stronger the stock performance on a scale from 0 to 100, with 99.9 being the best.

There are some important controls under the icons at the bottom of the list in the Edit View. Figure 13-5 shows the Edit ChartList screen. The chart names have had a four-digit number added to them to preserve the sort order from the Summary View (see the preceding section).

To remove the numbers so you can change the sort order, select all the stocks by using the check-mark at the top of the page or the Select All button below. You can also individually check the ones you want to modify or delete. After selecting the stocks (probably removing numbers from all, so use the Select All button), use the Remove Numbers icon highlighted in Figure 13-5 to delete the numbers. If you don’t select any charts, no numbers will be removed.

There is also a delete button at the bottom that allows you to select multiple charts one at a time. Then click the garbage can icon to remove the charts you checked on the list.

If you want to re-sort the stocks within the ChartList and then add new numbers (as explained in the preceding section), click on the View List As drop-down at the top, select Summary, and select a column to sort on (Summary View is where the sorting columns are displayed).

Click on the very helpful Instructions icon in the top row of icons if you need further assistance.

Interesting charts

The interesting charts can be for stocks others have told you about or you heard about on TV, the radio, the StockCharts member page, or the ticker cloud. By keeping them together in a folder, you can scroll through them when you have time.

If you annotate on the chart what made each stock interesting, going back a few months later and looking at what happened subsequently can be a great lesson.

Temporary scan lists

The term scan refers to the StockCharts.com scan engine searching the entire market for a particular trade setup, like the moving average convergence divergence indicator (MACD; see Chapter 11) crossing up above the signal line.

When you have certain setups that you’re looking for every day or week, use empty folders to copy a list of scan results into so you have the info when you’re ready to do additional analysis. Scan results can be moved into a new or existing ChartList. Keeping these lists close to the top of all the ChartLists gives you the ability to access them as quickly as possible. As you work through scan results in a temporary folder, you can move the good ones into a watch list or into the current open positions list, if you decide to buy.

Some of the first ChartLists in your StockCharts.com account are the temporary scan ChartLists. The creation of static industry ChartLists for you to use are covered here before you start working with the scan ChartLists in Chapter 14, using more advanced methods.

SCTR list

Keeping track of the top-performing stocks is always helpful. SCTR (StockCharts technical ranking; see Chapter 12) alerts you to strong industry groups and individual stocks. You may be waiting for a pullback to buy into a strong stock. You should update this list regularly with the most current scan results to be able to recognize strong stocks quickly.

Watch list

Your watch list will likely be your most active as you hear about stocks from friends or news reports and want to start watching their performance. Or you may be sorting through sector or industry charts and find a stock that you want to start watching. Continually flushing charts into and out of this list makes it one of the most active ChartLists you have. There are also some charts that you’ll want to watch while the market is open, so you can put them in this list.

Current open positions

Obviously, you’ll want to check the list of stocks you own in one place. Any stock you currently own would be in this list.

Closed trades

Keeping a file of closed trades is important. If you look back through these stocks, you may see patterns in your good trades and patterns in trades that went against you. Reviewing these is the best way to get better at investing. At the end of the year, you can archive these to a year-end folder.

Sector or industry lists

Industries come into vogue for periods of time and then sell off. Within an industry, you want to trade in the strongest, most-liquid stocks. (Find pointers on building these types of lists earlier in this chapter.)

A good example is biotechs. They have explosive growth, but the industry has a lot of losers that investors are selling as well. Keeping a list of biotechs allows you to sort them based on SCTR rankings or volume sorts to trade in only the most-liquid biotechs. These stocks are very volatile, so only a small portion of your portfolio should be in biotechs.

ETF list

There are thousands of ETFs that you can trade, but having a good list of the most-liquid ETFs is very helpful. If individual biotech stocks are too volatile, for example, you may prefer to trade one of the biotech ETFs instead. If biotechs start to outperform, you can quickly go through to find the most-liquid ETFs and place your trade.

Market overview

This ChartList is a collage of different indicators and ticker symbols that help analyze broad market conditions.

Index lists

By being aware of the different indexes, you can quickly look into the lists to find large-cap stocks and sort them by sector. As shown earlier in this chapter, three critical ones are the NASDAQ 100, S&P 500, and Dow 30. If others are critical to your trading or investing style, they should be added as well.