Today's Trading

Screening the Top Gainers

Ian Wyatt | Oct 02, 2009 05:30pm EDT | Comment
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars

Over the last two weeks, we've been discussing how to use the daily "Top Gainers" list to discover quality small cap stocks that can generate short-term and potentially long-term prices. The Top Gainers list is simply the tally of stocks that have made the biggest move on a particular day. On Yahoo! Finance, it's referred to as the Most Price % Change.

We know that small cap stocks move the most, especially coming out of a recession. And the stocks on this list are usually putting in nice one-day gains in the 10%-20% range. There are often one or two that will be up 30%, 40% sometimes even more. And they all have one thing in common: they all appear on the verge of moving much higher. 

It's true some will move higher. The majority, however, seem to reverse quickly, despite the positive news that seems to be driving the stocks higher.

So, in the September 21 edition of SmallCapInvestor PRO, I set out some rules that will help individual investors avoid the "Top Gainer" stocks that are likely to quickly reverse and stick you with immediate losses and focus on the stocks that may have more upside coming. As a recap, here are those rules (or suggestions, if you will)...

For access to the full article, you must be a registered member - it's FREE.

Ian Wyatt

About the Author
Ian Wyatt is a co-founder and President of Business Financial Publishing and the Chief Investment Strategist and Publisher of SmallCapInvestor.com and SmallCapInvestor.com PRO.