Instead of scouring around to find what stocks are moving a lot today, consider day trading stocks that tend to consistently move a lot every day.
If you want to day trade stocks with lots of movement nearly every day, I’ll show you how to find them. Then, pick a few to watch and trade all week, month, or until the stock no longer matches your ideal amount of movement.
I provide several of these stocks each week on the Best Stocks for Day Trading page, under the Consistent High Percentage Movers section. Here’s how to do it yourself.
I reveal how to day trade these types of stock in the Price Action Stock Day Trading Course.
Scan for Stocks with Big Daily Movement (%)
Using scanning software we can search for stocks that move more than 5% per day, and have been able to average that for 30 day, 50 days, or 100 days or more.
That means you don’t need to research each morning what stock is up 7% or 10% (moving big). You can have a list of stocks that typically move that much almost every day!
In addition to scanning for daily average percent movement, you may also want to filter the stocks based on price, volume, and exchange.
Here is a scan that I run on StockFetcher.com.
It is a simple scan but it shows stocks that move more than 5% on average (7% on that particular scan), based on a sampling of the last 200 trading days. 200 days is a long time, so the scan also makes sure the stock is still moving a lot over the last 10 sessions. Any stock that shows up on the list has a long history of volatility and still has lots of movement recently.
Average Day Range is different than Average True Range. ADR is a %, while ATR is a number, and ADR doesn’t include gaps, while ATR does.
You can play around with these parameters to get more or fewer stocks on the list.
I also put in a price parameter so that I don’t end up with a bunch of penny stocks on the list. A penny stock may appear like it moves a lot because if it goes from $0.015 to $0.02 that’s a 33% increase, yet the price may not have even moved. It may just be hitting the bid at 0.015 and the offer at 0.02. You could do that sort of trading as well—sitting on the bid and offer all day—but that is not what this scan is for, hence the stock price parameter.
I have also added in volume requirements. These assure that the stock has been doing lots of volume over the last 10 days and over the last 50.
Exchange is not Amex basically means show stocks listed on NYSE or Nasdaq. If you use a different scanner you may want to input “stocks only”. If you are interested in day trading ETFs, there is the Best ETFs for Day Trading list.
The “add column” criteria are there to sort the data once you acquire it.
Here is a sample of the results from January 10, 2023. This screenshot was taken early in the session, so the current Vol is much lower than the Average Vol (30) which includes volume from the whole day.
Below is a screenshot from the pre-market on December 13, 2023 (volume is thus yesterday’s volume since the market hasn’t opened yet).
These lists have been sorted by Average Day Range (30). The top daily percentage movers are at the top of the list, so you know those are the stocks moving the most.
Sometimes near the bottom of the list, you may see a stock that has 4.5% movement. Remember, the list is sorted by 30-day average movement. Over the last 10 days and the last 200 days, the daily average movement is still over 5% (or whatever criteria you scanned for).
THE STATISTICS OF THESE STOCKS WILL CHANGE DAILY, YET THE SAME STOCKS TEND TO APPEAR ON THE LIST FOR MANY WEEKS.
There is also a chart view on StockFetcher. The following daily chart shows an example of TAL Education (TAL). It has daily average movement of about 9.3%. The chart shows that the day range has barely dropped below about 5% for the last few months. That’s very helpful.
When you’re day trading you can see the daily movement often climbs above 10%, but rarely falls below 5% at the time of this snapshot. If the stock stops moving as much, move on to day trading another stock on the list.
Snapshot from January 10, 2023
These charts can also be helpful in picking what stock to trade. A stock may have a high daily movement average, but that is only because it has really big moves once in a while. Another stock may move a lot every day…which is more what I am looking for.
Stocks like this, which tend to move a lot, work well with the Stock Day Trading Trend Strategy.
I like day trading with a one-minute chart, but you may prefer another timeframe.
Make Adjustments as Required to Your Day Trading Stock Scan
The parameters on the scan may need to be adjusted from time to time. During quiet months in the stock market, you may need to drop to a 4% daily average, or you may need to drop the volume requirements slightly.
During volatile times, you can increase the parameters to 6% and 15 million in volume and you’ll still likely get a handful of stocks to choose from.
Here is the scan during a volatile time in January 2021:
show stocks where the average day range (300) is above 6%
and average day range (10) is above 6%
and Price is between $10 and $125
and Average volume (50) is greater than 10000000
and average volume (10) is greater than 10000000
and exchange is not amex
add column Average Volume(30)
add column Average Day Range (30)
Below are the charts from that time.
There is no magic in a scanner. It is how you trade the stocks the scanner produces.
I show you how to trade these stocks in the Price Action Stock Day Trading Course. The video course shows you precise methods for trading the volatile open, capturing multiple trades within the first 30 minutes. It then reveals other patterns which tend to play out later in the day.
Picking Consistently Volatile Stocks for Day Trading
Go through the list and find one, two, or a few stocks that appeal to you (at most four…I trade up to 4 and it can get a little hectic when multiple trades are going at the same time!). The most volatile may not necessarily be the best for how you like to trade. Pick a stock that moves in a way that suits your strategy.
For example, if you want to actively trade trends throughout the day, then you will want a stock that tends to have big intraday trends and clean transitions (as opposed to whipsawing all over the place).
As an alternative method, you can look each day for stocks that are moving big after the open.
Cory Mitchell, CMT
Disclaimer: Nothing in this article is personal investment advice, or advice to buy or sell anything. Trading is risky and can result in substantial losses, even more than deposited if using leverage.
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