How to Find Stocks for Swing Trading: Uncovering Swing Trading Stock Picks Effortlessly

So you know you want to begin investing – and you’ve decided to go all in on the swing trading strategy. Great choice – compared to day trading, swing trading takes far less time and in some cases, delivers more impressive yields. But there’s just one question you have…how to find stocks for swing trading? Fortunately, you’ve come to the right resource. We’re here to help. Today, you’re going to learn how to pick stocks for swing trading effortlessly – no manual analysis, no guesswork, just simple investing tactics that win you trades on autopilot.

Sounds too good to be true? It’s not…you’ll just have to read all the way through to the end to get the juicy details. Before we explain how to select swing trading stock picks with VectorVest, we want to teach you the old-fashioned way. We’ll go over how to select stocks for swing trading through technical and fundamental analysis. And, we’ll even teach you how to manage your position – getting in and out with perfect timing – after you’ve identified stocks to swing trade.

Before all that, though, we want to quickly stress the importance of developing a repeatable strategy that helps you find the right opportunities. This isn’t something you should take lightly – so read carefully throughout the entirety of this guide. Let’s get right into the topic at hand today…

Why Learning How to Find Stocks for Swing Trading is So Important

The importance of learning how to find stocks for swing trading can’t be overlooked. More importantly than just finding a good stock for swing trading is coming up with a strategy that is consistent and repeatable. After all, you’re not here to win a single trade. You’re here to make a living from swing trading or create supplemental income as a side hustle. That means you need a process you can replicate time and time again with a high rate of success. And, in order to do that, you need to first understand the principles behind uncovering opportunities in the stock market.

If you’re just getting started learning swing trading, we encourage you to take a look at some of the helpful resources we’ve curated in our blog – such as how the stock market works, what affects stock price, and our guide on market sentiment. Our beginners swing trading guide goes over the fundamentals behind this strategy, too. But if you’re ready to learn how to find stocks for swing trading, let’s waste no more time. We’ll begin with the traditional methods that investors without VectorVest are stuck using.

How to Pick Stocks for Swing Trading: the Traditional Methods

Before we get into the details of how to pick stocks for swing trading, we want to mention that the principles you’ll follow for this type of strategy differ greatly from others. That’s because of how swing trading works. You’re not worried about the long-term potential of stock – your goal is to capitalize on those short-term swings in a stock’s price. You may find your greatest opportunities in a stock that is slowly headed towards the bottom – as you can get in and out on the little pumps on the way down, earning modest profits each time.

So, learning how to identify stocks for swing trading will rely primarily on technical analysis – not so much fundamental analysis. The best swing trading indicators differ greatly from those of day trading, long-term trading…you get the point. So, with all this said, let’s get into the meat and potatoes of how to pick stocks for swing trading. We’ll begin with determining what makes a good swing trading stock pick for your unique strategy.

First – Determine What Makes a Good Swing Trading Stock Pick

Before you can learn how to identify stocks for swing trading, you have to know what you’re looking for…right? This isn’t something that’s one size fits all. Your criteria for finding stocks for swing trading may differ from the next person – and it mostly comes down to risk. We have an entire guide on how to manage risk in swing trading which goes over this in detail.

With that said, though, you’ll want to start evaluating what a “good opportunity” looks like for you. Maybe it’s an undervalued stock with great upside potential. Or, maybe it’s simply a stock that has momentum forming – and you don’t care about the actual fundamentals of the company. Your preferences for a stock will dictate which indicators you rely on most. And from there, you can start to build out stock screeners.

Creating Stock Screeners

No matter how you trade, you’re going to need to leverage the help of an investment platform. This helps you screen for stocks – and bring winning opportunities right to your doorstep. Now, creating screeners is just the first step – but getting this step right is incredibly important. If you miss the mark, you’ll bring in low-quality candidates. You’ll be set up for failure from the start. 

In building your screener, you can lay out your criteria – which we talked about earlier. Maybe your screener is based on momentum indicators to help you find stocks with great timing. Or, maybe your screener is based on leading stocks in a certain industry or sector. The specific screener you set up is dependent on your strategy. But for swing trading in particular, momentum-based indicators are typically your biggest asset. That’s because you’re just looking to capitalize on price swings – you don’t care too much about the actual performance of a stock. So, maybe your swing trading screener is built with indicators like RSI, Moving Averages, Volume, Bollinger Bands, or Stochastic. 

Once you’ve got your screeners running, you’ll start to see stocks listed that meet your criteria. The next step is validating them.

Validate Your Opportunities

Just because your stock screener brings in a candidate, doesn’t mean it’s automatically a great swing trading stock pick. You need to validate it – looking deeper into the technical analysis and determining if 1) it does in fact meet your criteria and 2) where the opportunity is. From there, you’ll be able to identify a good entry point and exit point. 

The rest just comes down to managing your position and getting in and out of the market as you planned – which is easier said than done. But, with the right tools – it can be entirely emotionless and automated. We’ll talk about that more later on. First, we’re excited to introduce you to the easiest way to uncover good swing trading stock picks. Here’s how to find swing trading stocks with VectorVest…

How to Find Stocks for Swing Trading with VectorVest: The Easiest, Smartest Way to Uncover Swing Trading Stock Picks

Now that you know how to select stocks for swing trading the old-fashioned way, your head is probably spinning a bit. Yes – it’s a lot of work. No – it doesn’t always produce great opportunities If only there was a better way to uncover swing trading stock picks on autopilot…

Fortunately, there is – and we’ve already teased it enough: VectorVest stock forecasting tools. Our revolutionary system is transforming the way investors take part in the stock market. Not only do we help you uncover winning swing trading stock picks on autopilot. But, with our software, you also gain accurate insights to help you time your entry and exit to perfection. You’ll know what to buy, when to buy it, and when to sell it. This is the easiest way to make money in the stock market at a high rate of success. Before we actually explain how to find stocks for swing trading with VectorVest, we want to teach you a little bit more about the system itself.

How the VectorVest System Works

When it comes to how to analyze a stock, there are so many different indicators and forms of analysis – do you really want to dig through charts all day and analyze data manually? Probably not. That’s why we’ve developed a smarter way to invest – boiling down all technical analysis into three simple metrics: relative value (RV), relative safety (RS), and relative timing (RT). Together, these make up the overall VST (value, safety, timing) rating of a stock. All of our ratings are put on a scale of 0.00-2.00. 1.00 is the average, and the more a rating trends towards the upper end of the scale – the better.

Based on the VST rating of a stock, we’re able to rate it as either a buy, hold, or sell – at any given time. These ratings are fluid and adjust with the market – so you always have real-time insights into what our system thinks of a stock. Just pick stocks with the highest VST and you’ll win more trades! It’s really that easy. And, it’s made even easier through our stock picks and watchlists.

How to Find the Best Stocks for Swing Trading

Now – when it comes to actually finding the best stocks for swing trading within the VectorVest system, how do you do it? Well, that’s where our Stock Pick Ideas feature comes in. We’ve put together some great lists of stock picks that are constantly being refreshed and updated to reflect the current market conditions.

We have separate searches built for hot stocks, safe stocks, top dividend stocks, you name it. We even have searches in place for the top 5 industries in an upward trend – like insurance, mining, semiconductors, and more. The point is, we have searches in place that make it easy to find stocks that fall in line with your unique trading strategy. Wondering how to find momentum stocks for swing trading? You can filter by highest RT – and this will pull up stocks that show strong trends with lots of momentum. Want to find safe stocks to start investing early for retirement? Filter by the highest RS and you’ll find low-risk stocks you can buy and forget about.

The point is, you don’t have to learn how to pick stocks for swing trading the old-fashioned way. It’s time to change the way you invest – and eliminate any emotion, guesswork, or manual labor from the equation. You can see how our intuitive stock analysis works yourself with a free stock analysis here. Or, get started today with a VectorVest subscription – you can even get our stock advisory app to bring us anywhere you go.

Quick Tips for Managing Your Swing Trading Stock Picks After Buying

Now – you’ve learned how to find stocks for swing trading and you’ve started buying good candidates. What now? Monitoring your position is the fun part – but, it is just as important as uncovering winning swing trading stock picks. If you get greedy and wait too long, momentum can turn – and you’ll watch the profit you made dissipate. On the other hand, if you get out too early, you’ll miss out on profits before they’ve even had a chance to form.

Your unique trading strategy and risk tolerance will dictate when you get in and out of a stock. But, you can set alerts directly within the VectorVest system to help you identify windows to close your position out. You can even set stop losses to close your position once a stock price falls below a certain threshold. This is another area VectorVest helps with – as we recommend a stop loss target for every stock in our system. No guesswork required.

On the other side of the equation, you can set take profit orders – that will sell your position once the stock price reaches a certain threshold. This helps you realize profit and prevents you from having to sit in front of a screen all day manually monitoring your position. Trade smarter, not harder!

Final Thoughts on How to Pick Stocks for Swing Trading

That just about does it – we’ve talked all about how to pick stocks for swing trading. You now know there are two approaches to uncovering good swing trading stock picks. You can do it yourself, or you can rely on a tried-and-true approach that eliminates emotion and guesswork – while helping you win more trades and earn more profit. Try out the VectorVest system yourself today – and you’ll never look at investing the same again!