Video Synopsis

In this video: Today, Matt’s talking to a different Tim — SteadyTrade Team lead trainer, Tim Bohen.

StocksToTrade was created by traders (including Tim Sykes!) for traders and includes some incredible tools of the trade. Charting software, proprietary algorithms, screening software, and more help make it easier to filter thousands of stocks to a manageable list of potential stocks to trade.

Bohen explains how the program works and offers some key tips for how to scan like Sykes. 

Throughout the conversation, you’ll see several key points highlighted. Take these lessons further with your “30-Day Trading Starter Kit” guide. Once you’re ready, answer the questions on the “How to Find HOT Penny Stocks: Using StocksToTrade Scanners: Questions for Review” area of the website. 

Several common stock market terms are referenced — they’re highlighted in orange text. You can find the definitions in the “30-Day Trading Boot Camp Glossary.” 

For traders, it’s not just about knowing the rules — it’s about having the right tools. A powerful stock screener like StocksToTrade can help you make the most informed trading decisions.

How to Find HOT Penny Stocks: Using StocksToTrade Scanners

Matt Monaco:

All right, today I’m here with Tim Bohen, who is the lead trainer at SteadyTrade Team (formerly StocksToTrade Pro). He’s going to walk us through StocksToTrade. This awesome, powerful software can help you find hot penny stocks. Let’s check out the cool tools that this platform offers. 

I’m going to turn it right over here to Bohen. Walk us through what StocksToTrade offers.

Tim Bohen:

One of the great things about StocksToTrade is we’ve got all of these prebuilt scans. These are scans that were basically designed by Tim Sykes to spot these big movers. 

I remember when I first got started before StocksToTrade existed. I subscribed to, I don’t know, six or seven different websites. I was running three or four different pieces of software just to get all of these simple scans. 

You don’t need crazy, exotic setups to find the types of stocks that Sykes likes. But if you’re new or part-time, it’s so difficult to tie all this stuff together.

Key Point: It’s Not Difficult to Find the Types of Stocks That Tim Sykes Trades! 

StocksToTrade is a stock screening platform that Tim Sykes helped design. Tim Sykes is also an investor in the platform. This powerful program makes it easier to scan for stocks based on criteria that you choose. For example, you can scan the top percent gainers and then filter the list to find stocks that fit your preferred setups.

What’s great about StocksToTrade is we’ve got built-in a top percent gainer scan. With one click, you get the biggest movers of the day. You can see it’s kind of over here in my upper left. IZEA was a great stock today. XRF went from $1 to $3 today. 

What you see is every stock, the biggest movers, and then we have everything filterable too. So this is what you’re going to lack on a lot of websites. If you just go to some free website, and you’re trying to find the biggest movers, you get overloaded with illiquid stocks.

One of the first things Sykes will tell you is to focus on liquid penny stocks. If you’re in a stock that’s moving big but on low volume, you can get trapped. It makes it really difficult to get in and out. 

When these stocks are moving huge to the upside or the downside, you need liquidity to get out. So I love focusing on high-volume stocks. I can do that with one click with these filters.

The other thing we do (I don’t have it filtered right now) but we can filter by float. I’m sure Sykes talked about float in this course, but the float is the freely tradable shares. 

At the end of the day, the stock market is a market. So it’s about supply and demand. The float is the supply. If your demand is high and your supply is low, you’ve got a high potential for a stock that can move.

We can even scan by market cap, number of trades, earnings per share, SMAs, price to earnings. So really quickly filter. You can get down to the minimum number of stocks to watch at once. It’s wild out there. I mean, I’ve been at this for 15 years, Sykes has been at it for over 20 … There have never been so many movers as there are right now. You need these filters.

Key Point: A Scanner Helps Narrow Down Potential Choices 

There are thousands of stocks out there. One of the biggest benefits of a stock scanner is that it can help you filter the many choices out there down to a manageable list of stocks that fit your criteria.

So the next thing I use every single day is the high of day scan. And actually CARA is a recent runner that just hit the high of the day. So you can see I’ve also got below there, over on the left side, that high of day scan. 

This is a great tool to find those stocks that are breaking new highs. I’m sure you can probably see by my clock on my computer, we’re heading into the afternoon right now. 

CARA is a little bit illiquid. But it caught my eye because it’s a stock that has run in the past. You can look up the chart. This thing’s made big moves several times over the last few years.

With that high of day scan, I can see this stock just hit the high. I can bring up the chart, and I can filter those as well and find these big movers. Because if a stock’s breaking the highs into that afternoon window … if there’s good volume and news … odds are you’re going to get a continuation move. And that’s something that Sykes uses all the time.

I’ll kick it back to Matt here in a sec, but the last scan I’ll cover now was specifically designed by Sykes. This was a request that he made, and it’s called the high/low ticker. This shows you stocks that are hitting the high of the day as well as the low of the day, and it shows you the count number. You can see how many times that stock has hit the high of the day.

Key Point: STT Features Tim Sykes-Created Scans

The STT platform features scans specifically designed by Tim Sykes, including the high/low ticker scan, which shows stocks that are hitting the high of the day as well as the low of the day, as well as how many times it’s hit.

MGNX today was one of the best earnings winners. Again, if you follow Sykes, you know he loves earnings winners. MGNX had earnings last night, and the stock ran like $10 a share today after earnings were already out. 

You can see that 738 times today this thing hit a new high. The other neat thing is you can see it’s highlighted in orange. That tells me it’s also at 52-week highs.

Then the last thing is you also get a bullish/bearish indicator. You can see these multiple time frames at the top. So you can see the relative new lows to new highs. So you can see today is a good day to be bullish. Markets are up nicely. We got a lot of movers.

I’m doing the math in my head … but we’re roughly 80% to 20% new highs versus new lows on this day. 

So that really tells you where you want to be bias-wise as a trader. When you see that ticker ticking like that, maybe you don’t want to short. Maybe you want to get long in some stocks.

I’ll show you MGNX. Earnings were out last night — and look at this thing move from $8 to $27. So earnings winner, big momentum. It traded 55 million shares today, it normally trades 600,000 shares. Textbook earnings winner.

Matt Monaco:

Yeah, you gotta love penny stocks. I also learned something here. I’m not going to lie … the high/low scanner. I’ve never used that and that’s really awesome. So I’m going to, certainly. I use StocksToTrade every day, I just never looked at it. So that’s really cool.

Tim Bohen:

Yeah. Again, the best thing I use is … Well, first of all, especially right now in these volatile markets, we love the 52-week breakout. So I’ll bring it back on screen real quick. 

I’m using MGNX because this was the best earnings winner of the day. But you can see a lot of information there. You can see without even looking at the chart. I can just look at that and know this thing has hit the high of the day the second most of any other stock. BYND is the most, and with that nice highlighting I can see that it’s also at 52-week highs. And we love to buy breakouts, especially on earnings winners.

Matt Monaco:

Absolutely. You talked about filtering the scanners a little bit, but could you break down custom scans that you can actually make in StocksToTrade?

Tim Bohen:

Sure. So speaking of breakouts, here’s one of the best, one of my favorite scans. I’m going to keep it simple for the sake of this video. I’ve seen some scans by people that are just crazy elaborate. But what I want to show you with the custom screener, you can get as simple or as complicated as you want. 

I can filter by hundreds of criteria. I’m just kind of flipping through price, percent change, higher day, lower day, two-day change, seven-day change. I can focus on liquidity, volume. I can drop technical overlays on … fundamentals, earnings. I can also filter by exchange.

I could filter by sector. I love filtering by sectors because a lot of the time with momentum stocks, one sector gets really hot. 

We’re recording this in May 2020, not long after the oil ETF prices went below zero, and we had this wild run in oil and gas. So you can actually filter by the energy sector and drill down to just those stocks in that hot sector.

Then I can even run a watchlist or run scans against my watchlist. So what’s neat about this is Sykes is known for spotting those former runners. So if you have a watchlist of stocks you know have run in the past, you can actually screen against them and be notified when they’re trading unusual volume. Or if they’re up big, or even if they have news. So it’s one of the great things.

Then back to a simple scan that I’ll show you. This is just what I call a 52-week breakout scan that’s looking for stocks like MGNX.

I use it every day. This scan looks for a stock that traded a million shares yesterday. Because with these breakouts, we’re looking for multi-day moves.

We — as in Sykes, me, and active day traders — don’t like to buy what we call one-and-dones, like that day one breakout. You like to see that confirmation on the second day. 

So this is just scanning every stock, all 16,000, and giving me stocks that traded a million shares yesterday that are above a dollar. That’s my criteria. I’m not a big 10-cent stock guy. It’s greater than $1, and this is where I like to say the magic happens, this last little code block here. 

This gives me stocks that are less than or equal to the 52-week high by 2% or less. Now I know that’s a lot. Basically I’m trying to find a stock that’s hit that 52-week high and pulled back a little. 

I don’t want to buy breakouts that are 20% off of their highs because it’s probably not going to get back there. This gives me stocks that have broken out, pulled back a little, maybe started to consolidate, and have volume.

So when I run that scan, you can see I’ve got 50 stocks, which is a busy day today. But think about it … I went from 16,000 stocks to 50 stocks. That’s a manageable number, and then I can then filter those. 

So let’s say I don’t want to trade over $20 stocks. Again, low-priced stocks are Sykes’ specialty. Let’s just filter that. So now I’ve got liquid stocks near the 52-week highs, less than $20 — six stocks. That’s a manageable number that I can then look into the news to see if this is a stock that I potentially want to trade.

I can see right away AUI is a gold stock that’s been breaking out like crazy. Zynga is an online gaming play, or what I’d call a stay-at-home play. AKBA is a biotech that’s run a bunch of times in the past. So now I can look at the charts and the news on these six stocks. But I can’t look at the charts and the news on 16,000 stocks. That’s the power of the screen.

Matt Monaco:

Awesome. In our last couple of minutes, could you walk us through Oracle? That’s one of StocksToTrade’s proprietary features that’s really cool.

Tim Bohen:

Yep. So the best thing about Oracle is with one click you’ve got the 15 most potentially volatile stocks. 

If you’re taking this course, congrats for looking to learn and improve yourself. But I’m guessing you’re new, if not to investing or trading, then maybe to low-priced momentum stocks. That’s why you’re here. 

One of the most intimidating things for a newer trader … How do I even get started? How do I even build a watchlist?

Every single morning, the Oracle algorithm pre-populates this watchlist of 15 stocks, then gives you a potential trade plan. 

Key Point: Algorithms Can Give Traders a Head Start 

StocksToTrade features Oracle, which generates a watchlist of 15 stocks based on a proprietary algorithm. This can help give you a head start on your watchlist.

Notice I did it kind of quickly … But I sorted by volume — I’m a liquid-stock guy — then I can look at each stock. 

What’s great about this is I know it’s a volatile stock. I know it’s got volume, I know it’s run in the past. The algorithm tells me that the stock is in play. Then with the Oracle bar down here, it gives me support and resistance levels.

Again, Sykes is a big technical analysis guy, a big support/resistance guy. I learned that from him. So am I. So you can now see I just picked the most liquid stock, IZEA. 

If you go down here, these bubbles are basically major support and resistance levels, and then the light green would be a major resistance level. You can also see how many times the stock has tried to break resistance and ultimately failed.

I’m sure Matt will probably zoom in, but you can see that the 67-cent level and the level stock is currently trading at, 58 cents.

The major resistance level of 67 cents has been hit 103 times and the stock failed. That tells you that this stock cannot break resistance and probably — well, not probably — is not a buy now. And that’s denoted by a red indicator under the ticker. Oracle’s telling you the stock is bearish. It can’t break resistance.

Now, vice versa, in real time if you’re watching this, say IZEA is your favorite play. When it breaks that 67-cent level, you’d see that Oracle indicator flip bearish. And if 89 cents breaks, which is the key resistance level, odds are you’re off to the races.

So what’s great about this is it’s a one-click watchlist. And it guides you through a trade, ultimately helping you learn support and resistance. 

I’ll bring up charts and people will be like, how did you know support and resistance was there? A lot of it is experience. But the other great thing is I can use Oracle and compare it to the chart, and it’s a learning tool. Even if you don’t use it as a trading tool, it’s a great way to help plan out these trades.

Matt Monaco:

StocksToTrade is super powerful. Thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through it. I think today will be a really great resource for a lot of the traders in this course.

Tim Bohen:

Thanks a lot, everyone. And thanks, Matt.