A Reader Writes "Why does the percent gain appeal to you?"
Hello Friends! Thanks so much for stopping by and visiting my blog, Stock Picks Bob's Advice. As always, please remember that I am an amateur investor, so please consult with your professional investment advisors prior to making any investment decisions based on information on this website.

I was checking my mail this evening and I found an interesting question from S.Y.L. who writes:

Bob,

Greetings from Minnesota. I have become a regular reader of your blog
recently, after finding a link to it from the blog at Wealthcast.com. What
interests me most about your stock picking ways is that they closely
resemble my own, except for one thing which I wanted to ask you about. A
good starting point for me is Yahoo! Finance's volume leaders list. It
interested me to learn you take a different approach, and look at Yahoo!
Finance's percent gainers list. Why does the percent gain appeal to you?
I'm very interested in reading your reply.

Good night

Regards,

S.Y.L.

First of all, thanks so much for writing! I have been fortunate to receive a link from Jack Rothstein who is a well-regard professional investment advisor, so this might be a great question for him as well :). However, since this is my strategy, I probably should try to tackle this question.

A few years back, before the dot.com "bust" I found that I could literally buy stocks on the top percentage gaining lists and sell them the same day a few hours later for a profit. What I realized was that many of these stocks have what we refer to as "price momentum" and after these large gains, would have a high probability to go higher yet.

More recently, I have used this "price momentum" screen, as we could call it, as a starting point. In other words, it is my belief that among these strong stocks, there may be things we can determine that will allow us to more safely predict that stocks like these will continue to advance. At least that is my working hypothesis.

Thus, after looking at stocks on the top % gainers list, I go on to check some very important fundamental issues, like earnings and revenue growth, free cash flow, and the balance sheet. With these looking positive, I make my educated "guess" that the stock is likely to be moving higher and that today's price action is not a fluke.

Is high volume a good or better indicator? I really don't know. I don't know if what I am doing will be successful long-term. I don't know if there are many better ways to pick stocks. There is so much that I don't know!

However, thus far, I have been pleased with the results I have experienced with this approach and if you go through the many stocks I have examined, I am sure that you will find among them some of the strongest stocks in the market the past couple of years!

I hope this answers your question. I am sure that you can tell by my answer that I am truly an amateur investor! If you have another approach, and think it is maybe "better", please feel free to email me and let me know how you approach stock picking and how your results have been!

Bob