Now streaming quotes are
quotes displayed in real time, so don’t be
surprised if the numbers tend to change very fast for certain stocks. It only
goes to show that the market is definitely active. For a day trader, streaming
quotes are a valuable tool as they can help you make decisions including
corrections on the fly. You can spot emerging buying and selling trends and
analyze real-time charts. NASDAQ has an
example of a streaming quote,
although it’s much simpler than the others like Quotestream or Scottrader.
Live Market Analysis
Although technical analysis is essential in day trading, you should also not
neglect fundamental analysis as the latter can even dictate the results of the
former.
For this reason, I also use Live Market Analysis.
Live Market Analysis is simply a collection of any information, news, press
releases, and reports pertaining to the companies that are being traded. They
may not be directly related to finance (e.g., news about mergers or
acquisitions) but they can influence stock price movement within the day.
You can source the analysis online such as Yahoo or Google Finance.
Stop Loss Management
I hope I’ve already established the fact that stop loss is incredibly important
as part of your risk management strategy.
Learning Markets gives us two more options. These are the support and
moving average methods.
Support levels refer to the level in which stock price dips the lowest before
it goes high up. When you look at a fall below the uptrend is the support
level. In the support method, your stop loss can be placed just a bit below
than the previous support level as this assumes that going below the stop-
loss price means a continuous or longer downtrend for the stock.
Investopedia, on the other hand, has a good definition of moving averages.
One of the benefits of this is that it cancels out “noise” or fluctuations that
may not be that consistent. In other words, it gives you a clear picture of the
possible movement of stock prices.
For the stop loss setup, you can
determine the moving average and have it just below the moving average.