December 14, 2006
Notable New Highs — December 13, 2006
Chop with a negative bias all day, funny blast of buying in the last 30 minutes.
A few observations: Progen (PGLA) the Crazy Play of the Day (690x average volume) — again, if your scanner is not picking these things up within 1 minute of blast-off, something is wrong; Ford (F) back below $7; optionsXpress (OXPS) takes a spill; darn hard to find a European market not trading at a new high: Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, UK, etc. ad nauseum.
Cat: | Time: 8:25 am (utc+8)
December 14th, 2006 at 11:04 am
Is there a free, real-time scanner that would have picked up PGLA within minutes of liftoff? ;-)
December 14th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
Michael: There’s no such thing as a free lunch (yet). Maybe I’ll create such a thing in 2007 (New Year’s Resolution). ;-)
December 14th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
what do you consider the best scanner product or products?
December 14th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
Jake,
There are some good, free scanners out there. Prophet.net, for example, has a free real-time scanner. You can also look at quote.com for their free scanner (though I don’t know if it’s real time) and also the nasdaq site has a scanner for “unusual volume”.
Good luck to you.
p.s. Most brokers also offer scanners, so if yours doesn’t, you might consider changing to one that does. Interactive brokers, for example, is very inexpensive and has a scanner.
December 14th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
jake: The best scanner I’ve ever used is Hottrend, which is bundled together with RealTick — definitely not free. The Hotlists in Qcharts are very useful, but again not free.
December 15th, 2006 at 3:34 am
CM-
How are you able to determine how much buying there was and when it occurred? For instance, you mention there was a “blast of buying in the last 30 minutes”, how are you able to ascertain this information? I’d like to get my hands on this data too :>)
December 15th, 2006 at 10:24 am
amir: I look through several hundred charts of active stocks and ETFs in multiple time frames every day after the close and can see the ebb and flow of buying that way. Similarly, I can see in real time the same buying and selling waves by watching the “tape” (or quote sheets). All experienced chart-gazers have this ability, I believe.
December 15th, 2006 at 10:38 am
CM-
Sure, I understand and I too have the ability to see buying/selling patterns for a security throughout the day. However, my question was more based on your general statement that said “Chop with a negative bias all day, funny blast of buying in the last 30 minutes”.
I took this to mean you were able to see that in the general market there was a wave of buying late in the day. My broker doesn’t offer this sort of information to be able to ascertain the general market buying/selling pattern for a certain time period. You can see volume but not whether it’s sell/buy volume.
So I was and have been interested in how to determine the buy/sell volume for a market(say NASDAQ) for a certain time period. What are you using to determine this?
Thanks.
December 15th, 2006 at 10:43 am
Amir,
You broker doesn’t offer intraday charts? The “blast of buying” CM mentioned is obvious on any intraday chart.
December 15th, 2006 at 10:53 am
Michael,
Sure I get intraday for a security (e.g., MSFT) and I can see the buy/call volume indicators down to the minute level. I can get intraday for the NASDAQ composite as well but I can’t see the buy/call volume indicator for the composite but rather just the volume size for the composite for any time period down to the minute.
So what would be nice for me is to see for a 15 minute period if the NASDAQ composite volume is indicating buy/sell. I’m assuming this is what CM was referring to?
December 15th, 2006 at 11:37 am
amir: Right, yes, you can view breadth statistics like TICK and TRIN and Block Trades and Bid versus Ask Volume and all those kinds of things to get a sense of “market tone” as well. See what kind of market breadth statistics you have available in real-time from your broker or charting service.