when to use a watchlist
an investor for example may be interested in purchasing stocks in a particular sector but if that sector is generally overvalued it may offer few stocks that are attractively priced an investor could create a list of all the stocks in that sector that would track various valuation measures including ratios like trailing price to earnings price to sales and price to book among others when a company on the list met a specified valuation criterion such as a pe ratio less than 15 it would then be known that this stock was a possible candidate for investment many investment oriented websites and brokerage platforms allow visitors or customers to create watchlists online often for free if you re interested in keeping track of any securities you can build your own watchlist on most brokerage platforms many novice investors are tempted to track as many stocks as possible but a watchlist with hundreds of entries is too broad for any one investor don t try to track everything at once special considerationsas a general rule the watchlists provided by brokerage platforms can accommodate around 25 to 75 names depending on space taken up by charts scanners news tickers and market depth windows a longer watchlist of say 200 stocks is likely to be too broad for almost any investor to monitor or maintain investors should refresh this list at least a couple of times per month after all this is generally supposed to be a list of names that an investor is simply waiting to get cheap enough to buy it s a good idea to devote at least one screen entirely to watchlist tickers with each entry displaying just two or three fields including last price net change and percentage change some traders add a single chart to this linking the tickers to allow a quick review of price patterns during the trading day example of a watchlistfor examples of stock watchlists yahoo finance offers several curated watchlists with preset criteria like most active penny stocks and most shorted stocks these lists have the added advantage of automatic updates so that users do not need to manually add or remove stocks that no longer fit the list criteria 1the bottom linewatchlists are an easy way for investors to track the market for trading signals and opportunities there are now many tools for investors to create their own watchlists or follow curated watchlists by other parties by narrowing the market down to a list of key securities traders can focus their attention to closely watch the securities that they are interested in 