Oh, too soon. The trouble is I’m running out of titles for posts about ROKU, which tells us something about what a great stock it is to trade. Just take a look at this zoomed out chart for the day:

Some days you see a chart like that and you thank your lucky stars. There’s a bit of everything there — patterns to suit all kinds of traders. Support and resistance, flags, rectangles, whatever your thing, ROKU had it on offer.

In fact the chances were you could sell the stock at almost any point in the morning and cover later for a profit. Not that I’d ever suggest such a scattershot approach to trading. And obviously hindsight is a wonderful thing. As the chart is unfolding, we have no idea of the carnage ahead (although what was going on elsewhere in the market gave some pretty strong hints).

To my trade then. Or rather, trades. Because even though at the hard right edge we don’t have the gift of foresight, there were enough early moves on momentum to be worth taking a couple of shots:

The first of the quick in-and-outs started going back up almost as fast as it dropped. That made for a little less than a grand profit. I was ready to leave ROKU for pastures new after this, but that weakness continued so when the second trade came along, I was in. The bounce was quick again, which is why I got out slightly too late as it came back up to one of my targets. Yes, there was money on the table to be had if I had got out sooner, but as I said, hindsight at all that…

When the price started heading north with a bit more gusto, I did move on to look at other things. But as we saw from the first chart, there were plenty more opportunities to keep going back for more ROKU for anyone who hung around.

Core

A core stock list is no substitute for building a quality daily watch list, but having good core stocks like this in your back pocket takes a lot of pressure off trading. A decent core list should provide at least one good trade opportunity each day.

When we know we have at least one good trade ahead of us, we can relax a bit as we watch the market, safe in the knowledge there will be something to do sooner or later. Removing stress is always a good thing.

That’s not to say we’ll always catch any core trades that come along — it’s possible our attention is elsewhere at the crucial moment. Missing great trades part of the game, and something we have to learn to live with.

How do we build a decent core list? It all comes down to after-market analysis. Analysing our trading journals and seeing what’s working for us repeatedly is the first step to making a great list of core trading stocks.