Stock selection process for 5M ORB strategy?

[WearyBear 12]

Hi everyone,

I thought I'd give the forum a shot since the question I have on my mind, seems to be pertinent to many.....

I've been trading the 5M ORB strategy for 1.5 - 2 months now. My results are not great, I'm barely at 50% win / 50% loss. I've reviewed my trades and keep coming back to the same thought: I wonder if I could do something different to select the stocks I trade. 

I'm using a combination of Trade Ideas and Benzinga Pro (I'll abbreviate them TI and BZP below)

The TI scanner I use, is configured as follows:

• Stocks with a price between $20 and $250
• Daily volume at least 150000 shares / day
• Today's volume: At least 50000 shares
• Average True Range at least 0.5$
• Gapped up or down by at least 1$
• Float size between 50 million shares and 500 million shares.

Here is my current stock selection process:

During pre market:

• Review TI and select the tickers presented - select "copy"
• Paste the tickers into BZP and determine if there are earnings or analyst ratings changes for any of the tickers
  • Strong preference for earnings - I believe this catalyst is the strongest of them all
• Review the stock's daily chart and draw price levels (horizontal lines) on every daily pivot for the past year
  • A daily pivot is the high or low of the day where the stock changed direction
• Look for areas with at least 2$ worth of room between daily pivots. The best opportunity, is the one where such a window / gap / space is right next to the pre market high / low of the stock.
• If there are no catalyst events, look for gappers with solid volume, and a window of opportunity near the pre market high or low

 

In all its simplicity, that's my stock selection process.

What do you all think? Am I missing something? How do you select stocks for a 5M ORB strategy?

[WearyBear 12]

@peterB -thank you.

How do you select stocks to trade using the strategy you have adapted?

[mortforshort 3]

Are you suffering from analysis paralysis at open? Picking a stock that just sits? I see you have trade ideas as a scanner.  They have a great new feature called stock racing and you can use it to focus on the movers. (sort top lists by volume, gap, pivot levels, float earnings... pick your catalyst preference)  Then setup a race and focus on the directional winning movers. 

As a back test you can look at what others have traded and see if your scanner is presenting you the same opportunity to select your orb.  

[WearyBear 12]

36 minutes ago, mortforshort said:

Are you suffering from analysis paralysis at open?

Mmm, I don't believe I do. When I started this thread, I believed my success rate (at just a hair above 50%) was not good enough. Based on what I've learned by participating in this discussion, I now believe that it's more a matter of making my wins (much) larger than my losses, while staying around the same success rate.

Thank you for the suggestion of TI's stock race. It's a relatively new feature which I never could understand what was, or how I could use it. -That statement, BTW, applies so SO many things in TI as far as I'm concerned but that's a whole separate discussion LOL

[mortforshort 3]

The "let the winners run issue"  ..I like to define the "reason to sell" as a "did the momentum change?" (whos in control bulls/bears with my timeline)  Thats a library of various trading strats. Orbs are momentum plays that can become trends  where the real money hides. Otherwise its a scalp

[WearyBear 12]

You are right, I need to get better at this  

Onwards and upwards!