Thomas asks a great question: What websites do I use to get my pre-market information.
My main source of information is Briefing.com Platinum "In Play" - Starting around 6:00 a.m. EST the folks at Briefing start posting coverage by the financial news sources such as WSJ, Barrons' Business Week, followed by early research calls, earnings, warnings, economic data releases and any signifacant stock and market moving news for the U.S. markets. Between 8:30 and 9:00 they also post a list of stocks gapping up (down) and the reasons for the gap.
If you don't have access to Briefing.com, a substitute for the In Play feature is MarketWatch's "Headlines" which posts all of the news from the wires by ticker symbol. It's not as user friendly as Briefing because it involves constant refreshing and clicking on the symbol to get to the actual story.
Other sources of information in no particular order:
Trade-Ideas.com - Pre and Post Market Action - This is a great scanner which lists all of the pre-market movers along with the next support/resistance level based on user defined filters. For example if I'm only interested in stocks over $10.00 with a minimum average daily volume of 1 million shares then I can custimize the scan so that I don't waste time looking at small cap gappers.
Interactive Brokers - My IB execution platform gives me the futures for the NDX and S&P as well as early price action on all the stocks loaded in my system. It also gives me user defined pre-market scans. The two that I use most frequently are "Top Trade Count" and "Top Trade Rate" These scans allow me to focus on gappers with the most volume.
Esignal - My Esignal Basic real time allows me to see the pre-market trading from the chart perspective as well as Level II and time and sales. This rounds out the information I need to get an early feel for the stocks I want to trade that day. Also, I always have a chart of the QQQQ on my screen to moniter how the market will open and what direction we will take based on volume, support and resistance.
My last pre-market information stop is Trader Mike's blog. Every morning shortly after 9:00 a.m. EST, Mike posts his Watchlist for the day. This includes his take on the pre-market action as well as Briefing's list of gappers, stocks of note, and any economic releases which may affect the markets. Mike is an experienced trader with an excellent feel for the open.
Another great source of information is the newly launched InstantBull which is a news/blog aggregator of sorts. The technology they use allows you to surf from one financial news information source after another all from the same site.
Next week I'll follow this post up with my post-market or evening preparation.
1 comment:
Thanks Dave,
I never used to bother with Barron's Online because I thought it was strictly a paid service. But I see now that there are several free features including the economic calendar and some interesting tech stuff including the tech trader blog and Technical analysis by Michael Kahn.
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