Chapter 14
Keeping Track of What’s Going On
IN THIS CHAPTER
Using scans
Building three important lists
Creating alerts
As a chartist, your charts become a large part of your work. You need to look for stocks that have setups you like, as well as buy them at an attractive entry point and then sell them when you determine a good exit point and close the trade. You can make your decisions based solely on charts or use charts with some other form of analysis.
As you find out in this chapter, managing your stock trading becomes much easier when you create watch lists. Using a watch list, you begin to collect information on stocks you want to monitor. Starting with predefined scans is a good way to look for key stock trends, such as stocks hitting new 52-week highs. You can place the scans of the indicators you check regularly into your watch list. When you decide to buy a stock, you place it into your list of stocks you own; you can also create a list of stocks you sold. No rule says that you have to use these steps, but they can help you get organized and comfortable with your charting process.
For an introduction to the ChartLists described in this chapter, check out Chapter 13. To use ChartLists, you need to become a member of StockCharts.com; to do so, click “Free 1-Month Trial” on the home page.
Making a Watch List
Creating profits starts by having a main watch list that you continually move good setups into. Chartists have looked at a healthy list of ideas over the years. You can take advantage of this experience at StockCharts.com, where there is a scan engine that allows you to sift through thousands of stocks in order to spot opportunities you may have been missing. This capability makes the engine one of the most powerful tools available to you on StockCharts.com. Analysts and users have created over 75 scans and sorted the results for investors all on one page called Predefined Scans. You pick from these predefined scans to create a ChartList dedicated to scans, and then populate it with the ones you like best. (If you need more information on how to develop ChartLists, see Chapter 13.)
Surveying predefined scans
You can use the predefined scans to find the stocks you like and want to watch. This is a great place to start. Populating your watch list with stocks that have good setups is an important part of using StockCharts.com to make your charting experience great.
After you log in to the site, click on the Gears icon beside the ChartLists button in the bottom right-hand corner of the Members page, as shown in Figure 14-1. Make sure the Scan Center option is turned on. Close the window.
Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com
FIGURE 14-1: The Gears icon.
Scroll down the Members page until you are just above the ChartLists banner and click on the Predefined Scans button. Figure 14-2 shows the Predefined Scans link.
Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com
FIGURE 14-2: The Predefined Scans link.
Clicking this link displays a window with the Predefined Scan Results summary table shown in Figure 14-3. There are hyperlinks all over this page so you can click on one of the links and see the list of stocks that was found by a particular scan.
Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com
FIGURE 14-3: The Predefined Scan Results summary table.
Many predefined scans are all set up for you. The following is just a sampling:
- Seventeen bullish technical indicators (see Chapter 11)
- Seventeen bearish technical indicators (see Chapter 11)
- Five candlestick bullish reversal patterns (positive change in the direction of the price trend)
- Five candlestick bearish reversal patterns (negative change in the direction of the price trend)
- Two candlestick continuation patterns (the price trend continues at the same level)
- Five single candlestick patterns (see Chapter 4)
This list is a veritable gold mine with so many interesting scans that demonstrate different ways to look at the market. For example, consider Keltner channels (see Chapter 10 for more information). Scroll down the list of technical indicators until you find the Keltner channel scan. If you click the link in the column of numbers on the far left (in Figure 14-3, the number with the link is 96 and the name of the scan is Moved Above Upper Keltner Channel), it opens the scan results across every exchange. For this example, zoom in and click on the link for the NASDAQ. This provides a list of companies that you can look through (see Figure 14-4).
Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com
FIGURE 14-4: Keltner channel scan results.
Saving scans to ChartLists
After you’ve taken the time to pick the scans you want to view regularly, you can save these scans to temporary scan lists until you decide how you want to use them. Here are the steps to do that:
- Click on the column headers to change the sort order of the companies.
Click on the SCTR last and put the largest SCTR number at the top.
The stocks that populate the list will be current on the day you click, not the same as the stocks in this figure. (By the way, SCTR stands for StockCharts technical ranking; see Chapter 12 for an introduction.)
Click the drop-down menu for Available Actions at the top.
It may extend above or below the drop-down, so scroll up if you don’t see it at first. This gives you an opportunity to save these predefined scan results into a ChartList without typing each company into every list.
- Select Store these results in a new ChartList from the drop-down menu.
A pop-up box should appear similar to Figure 14-5. Fill in the information for the ChartList name. An example of the ChartList title is shown in Figure 14-5 as a temporary scan file, 1500 – Scan list 1.
Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com
FIGURE 14-5: Create a new ChartList.
Click the Preserve Sort Order toggle if you want to save the current order of the SCTR ranking. This was the last column you adjusted, so that will be the sort order preserved. If you click the toggle, when it saves the stocks into the ChartList, it will add a number to control the sort order to show the stocks with the strongest charts first. The SCTR allows you to quickly see which charts are better. Chapter 13 discusses controlling the sort order of charts in a list.
Creating and Using Your Three Main ChartLists
Before you can do anything with the scan results (covered earlier in this chapter), you need to create ChartLists for the watch list, current stocks you own, and closed trades. These lists are your three most important lists.
On the top right of your screen, click the New List icon and create three new ChartLists, one after the other (flip to Chapter 13 for details on how to complete this task):
- 2000 – Watch list
- 2100 – Current
- 2200 – Closed
The following sections provide tips on reviewing scans and moving them to your three main lists.
Deciding which stocks to move
After you have created your three main ChartLists, you can start to move stocks between your temporary scan results and your watch list. Using the drop-down tool with ChartList names on the top (see the top of Figure 14-6), click to select and go back to your ChartList titled 1500 – Scan list 1. This will enable you to look through the scan results, and if you find a chart you like, you can move it to your Watch list ChartList.
Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com
FIGURE 14-6: Keltner channel on default.
As you can see at the bottom of Figure 14-6, an arrow is pointing to Apply Style To All. The Apply Style To All button allows you to set up one chart in your temporary scan ChartList and apply this style to the other charts. You need to set up all the indicators and overlays that you want to be displayed (see Parts 2 and 3 for details), and then apply the settings to all the charts in this list. Click the Apply Style To All, read the warning pop-ups, and click OK. That saves so much work!
To continue the example we start earlier in this chapter: Because the default chart does not have the Keltner channel overlay on it, it is hard to see what the Keltner scan is finding. Scroll down to the Overlays area below the chart and select Keltner Channel from the drop-down list. Remove the two moving averages and click Update.
Figure 14-6 shows the updated chart. Note: We have removed the indicators MACD and RSI to fit the Apply Style To All button on the screenshot, which is at the very bottom of the screen. You can keep the RSI and MACD on your screen.
Because you’re working inside the temporary scan list 1500 – Scan list 1, you won’t accidentally change other saved charts using the Apply Style To All. You wouldn’t want to use the Apply Style To All in your Watch list, Current stocks, or Closed stocks ChartLists. This Apply Style To All setting only affects the current ChartList you are inside. Using it in temporary ChartLists works great.
At the top, in the center of the screen, click on View All. This allows you to scroll through ten stocks per page. If you don’t like a chart, hover in the top right-hand corner of the chart and a little garbage can should appear. You can quickly delete the chart and keep scrolling. Examples of charts you might discard for a trade expecting higher prices are stocks in big downtrends that have bounced to the top of the Keltner channel, low-volume stocks, stocks with prices stuck in a sideways range, and so on.
Stocks you would like to put in your watch list might be stocks that have just made new three-month or six-month highs. But because the price is already extended, you would want to wait until the stock pulled back to the center of the Keltner channel. This would be a stock to move to your watch list so you could wait for the pullback without forgetting about it. Click on the chart to move out of View All mode into SharpChart mode.
Moving stocks into your three lists
In the center of the chart beside the View All button at the top is a Save As button (refer to Figure 14-6). This allows you to save the chart into your Watch list ChartList instead of the temporary ChartList you are currently in. You can save the chart as the ticker symbol and the date — for example, CHEF 20170811 — in the 2000 – Watch list ChartList. Chefs’ Warehouse (CHEF) is the chart used in the example. This will sort the stocks alphabetically by ticker and tell you the date you put it in the watch list.
This same process is repeated to move stocks from your 2000 – Watch list ChartList to 2100 – Current ChartList when you buy the stock. Change the date to the date you moved it into the current list.
When you close the trade, you should move the stock from 2100 – Current to 2200 – Closed. For your closed trades, you can alter the saved chart name with a W for a winning trade or an L for a losing trade. You can look through your closed trades to see whether there are patterns in your losing trades or winning trades.
At the end of the year, using the Edit ChartList View, change the 2200 – Closed ChartList name to 2300 – Closed trades [year]. Then create a new ChartList for closed trades (2200 – Closed) again.
Setting Alerts
One of the advanced features for chartists on the StockCharts.com website is the customized alert. StockCharts members who are Extra or Pro members can create custom alerts. You can try these features with your 30-day free trial when you first sign up on the site. You find the alert feature in the Technical Alert Workbench, which can be found in the Extra Control Center on your membership page. These alerts pop up when you log in and help you quickly find stocks with key changes you want to see.
Staying with CHEF as an example from the previous section, suppose you want to be alerted when the stock crosses below the 20-period exponential moving average (EMA; see Chapter 10), which is the center of the Keltner channel. That would be a good place to look for an entry to buy the stock for the first time. Figure 14-7 shows the Alert Center.
Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com
FIGURE 14-7: The Alert Center.
The Alert Center allows you to specify the name of the ticker symbol and what it needs to do for you to be alerted. For CHEF, you want it to pull back below the 20 EMA.
In the world of stocks, the typical scan or alert signal is one thing crossing another. An example is price crossing a moving average by either crossing up or crossing down. StockCharts.com has simplified how to scan for that condition. The “x” represents crossing above. Whatever is listed first is crossing above the second part. For example, [Close x EMA(20)] means the close is crossing up above the 20 EMA. [EMA(20) x Close] means the 20 EMA is crossing above the close. In regular English, the price has fallen below the 20 EMA.
When you click on New Alert in the Alert Center, a new page appears. Figure 14-8 shows the User-Defined Alerts page. From here, you can do a number of things:
- Click into the main panel and edit the conditions for the alert.
In the bottom right is a button for checking syntax to make sure the phrase is understood by the scan engine.
You can type the word “Syntax” into the StockCharts.comsearch box if you need assistance writing the alert. Lots of examples are shown.- Click on the notification drop-down where it defaults to email to change the notification method. The other choices are text message or on-screen pop-up.
- Lastly, click Save As and name the alert descriptively so it means something when it pops up in an email. An example might be CHEF Pulling Back Below 20 EMA For Buy Signal.
Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com
FIGURE 14-8: User-Defined Alerts page.
Figure 14-9 shows the Alert Status page. To reach this page, use the Control Center on the Members tab or scroll down to the bottom of the User-Defined Alerts page and Click the Your Alerts link on the View Alert Status line.
Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com
FIGURE 14-9: Alert Status page.