How do you find new stocks? Many people find it difficult simply due to the sheer number of stocks that are available to trade. Some spend hours scanning the markets while others stick to popular big name stocks such as Google or Microsoft. There are lots of other options, though, including some unique methods that can help you find great picks.
One interesting recommendation that can be useful in a difficult market, is to look not only at a company, but also at the people who lead it. Who are they, and what kind of career path have they been following? When the market is in turmoil, look for companies—and people—who have weathered a difficult market before, and come out on top. Strong leadership makes all the difference to a company that’s going through a difficult period, and particularly for long-term investing, it can be a winning strategy.
Trading and investing can be more fun if you consider making investments in industries that you have a personal interest in—for instance, an industry related to a hobby you enjoy, or just an industry you’re particularly interested in learning about.
Focusing on specific industries can be a good move in any case, simply because it cuts down on the number of different stocks you need to keep track of. If you limit yourself to just a few different sectors, you’ll make it much easier to follow the market. And, the more you know about any industry the better off you’ll be when it comes to making decisions about investing, so this method can be pretty useful in more than one respect.
If you’re a seasoned trader, taking a look at your own trading history can be a useful exercise for those times when you’re stuck for trading ideas. Are there one or two stocks that keep making an appearance in your trade history? If you can figure out why that is, maybe you can apply those factors to your stock-picking strategy.
Still stuck for ideas? Try a stock-finding or stock-screening app. These can not only give you some good trading ideas, they can save you a lot of time, too. Stock-screeners work by allowing you to apply a number of different filters to a comprehensive stock list, so you can filter out stocks that don’t fit your criteria. The ones that you’re left with comprise a list of stocks that meet whatever requirements you set, giving you a much smaller list of leads to research.
None of these methods should be considered a replacement for a solid stock-picking strategy. Whatever your strategy is, sticking to it consistently is more important than anything else. It’s fine to make a game of finding potential stocks, but all the normal rules still apply when it comes to determining whether a given stock is a sound investment.
