Hi, all.
I'm an unabashed momentum/performance chaser. Used to hope for a month or two of continuation, but as I've aged and mellowed I'm looking more for 6 months to 1 year out.
I started a thread a few days ago called [How I Pick Stocks](https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/1iprnuo/how_i_pick_stocks_anyone_else/), hoping to find like-minded people. I found a few, but in general I got negativity. Even a recommendation to "VOO and chill"; here in r/Stocks and not r/Investing, I couldn't believe it.
I also asked some of the nay-sayers to tell us how they pick stocks, but none did.
So here's my thesis: picking winning stocks doesn't have to be hard. Look at a chart and if it's going up smoothly over a year or more, that company is probably a pretty good one that's doing good things in the world.
My benchmark these days is Walmart. Here's its [1-year & 5-year charts](https://imgur.com/a/walmart-1y-5y-gHcW2K8). Just steadily up and to the right. [FOX](https://imgur.com/a/fFAXqeF) is even smoother on the 1y, but not as good on the 5y.
Those are the kinds of stocks I'll be looking for: up and to the right, smoothly. Probably for a year or more. And they'll need to be companies I've at least heard of, which generally means they'll be "large enough." I won't be looking at Fundamentals or P/Es or dividends or anything else. *Just price action.*
If you explained very basically a stock price chart to a 5th grader, and then asked them if they'd rather have their report card money in [AMD or WMT](https://imgur.com/a/Zz6hZee), those are the kinds of choices I'll be looking for.
If it's going up, buy it. When it stops going up, sell it and buy something else.
And this isn't something that should take a lot of time. To that end, I'll post updates twice a month: at the beginning, and in the middle. This starting one is in the middle. Being that it's the first one, the 5 picks I make will go on at the Opening price for each ticker.
In practice I'd put a 10% trailing stop on each one, so I'll do that here, virtually. Those would track intra-day highs, but I might not track them to that level of detail. Closing-to-closing should be close enough. And I guess that's about it for the rules. I'll post percent gains or losses for each position each update.
My first 5 picks, in alphabetical order:
**HWM HOOD FOX IBKR WMT**
Feel free to follow along if you're like-minded. I'd love to hear if you do something similar, or if you have different/better picks than mine.
If you're *not* like-minded you can follow along too, but please no "VOO and chill" comments. Tell us how *you* pick stocks. Or just wait a few weeks or months to see how it pans out before you say it won't work.
