Investing in Stocks-A Strategy?

Hi,
I have about 50,000 dollars to invest in stocks.
What do you guys think about this strategy...

I would buy 10 mid cap-large cap stocks (5,000 worth of each) and try to sell them off within a 2 week period..if I find the price of one of the stocks rise a few points on teh same day, I would trade it off the same day.

The stocks in which I don't at least break even by the end of 2 weeks I will just hold on to them-long term.

What do you guys think? Is this a good idea?
Additional Details
the place im gonna do my trading charges me a flat fee of 10 bucks per trade and i can trade as many times as i want in the day or week or month...

and my money would be in my account the next day at 8 am...

im doin this thru bmo investorline.

It sounds like you are gambling and not investing. Also, you might want to research the concept "cherry picking," which is what your idea comes across as.

Good luck

No. Not good.
For one, it takes three days for a transaction to clear. So when you sell something, you would have to wait three days for the funds in order to clear another transaction. Now you could do a cash option, meaning you could possibly get the money the next day, but that costs extra....technically the brokerage is giving you that money and then waiting til your transaction clears to get paid back...thats where the extra fees come in. Now these extra fees will then put you at a loss for your next transaction.
Plus, breaking even may never happen, which means within the first few weeks you are frozen up. And the constant churning of your own account (thats what this is called, Churning or day trading if there are more than 4-5 transactions a week) would incur increased transactions costs that would leave you in the red.
Look, if you want a day-trading strategy, look into this.
I AM NOT RECOMMENDING THIS. I am just saying it is something to look into.
1) go onto cnbc.com and look up the earnings calendar for the following week. You will see stocks that are reporting earnings (as there is always a company reporting earnings). I would look for whatever is reporting on monday.
2) Scroll through each company to determine which company is in a strong sector.
3) Then narrow your selection even further by looking at the Return on Equity (ROE) of each company for the past 3 months and glance at their past earnings report history (this would be on Yahoo! Finance, under the Analyst Estimate section. You want a company with a history of earnings surprises.
4) take a look at their debt and cash/share (key statistics section). You want cash on hand and you want little to no debt.
5) Check out their beta, this will tell you how volatile they COULD BE, relative to the S&P 500.
6) Check out their P/E relative to their peers (COmpetitors section). You want a company with a lower P/E than their peers, or at least the industry.
7) You want to focus on a stock that is at least over 15 Billion, as anything too small will have a serious hurt if the market drops on monday, regardless of how well they did.
8) Once you find that stock on Friday, for the following monday, buy it.
9) On monday, even though you won't have it...you will still have a transaction record that says you own it. Sell it on tuesday, and look for a company that is reporting on wednesday and do the same.
10) Keep the cycle going from Monday, wed, and fri.
I did this for a very short amount of time, 6 weeks, as it is time consuming and can be quite expensive.
But you seem like you want to burn money...so give it a shot..
in fact, you could just pretend you have money and try it all out on paper.
Good Luck, though, cause you will need it.
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the flat trading fee is irrelevant. unless you do the cash out option, which DOES cost more, than your process for your trades will take 3 days. I know this because I am licensed and this is very much so on the exams. Trust me on this...i have been doing it for a while and am pretty good at it. You are simply doing a day-trading strategy, which has various ways of being deployed, like the one i mentioned. you still have to face the reality of the system you are operating in.

Depends on what you buy.

I'm trying to figure out if you are attempting to be a day trader with long term holdings or a long term investor, who is an opportunist, when prices rise by a couple of points. I admire a simple approach, but there are no get rich quick schemes.
Having said that, Let me rephrase your words a bit and see if this works for you: 1 Buy a portfolio of quality, high potential, growth, leaders in their industry stocks 2 Set a sell price target of X value or % for 12 months forward (on a rolling basis) 3 If one of your stocks has a hugh run up and no particular reason attached, put a stop in. This will allow the stock to continue to run, if theres any steam left, if not you will be cashed out automatically at the stop price- like insurance. 4 If all your other holdings are on track to hit your target, which you should assess regularly, keep them. If you find, one or two dragging, you should know why, is it a temp. situation or more severe, can it recover, how long? If its going south, pull the plug and take your losses. 5 SO your are managing 10 stocks, and say you sold 2, what have you done with the proceeds? The point is to always track an additional # of stocks so you have the option to reinvest in other opportunities. 6 Last point, ALWAYS DO YOUR HOMEWORK! That means research before you buy, before you think of selling and how the overall market may impact your holdings. Its a tricky business this stock market!

Your plan is basically the same one that I use successfully, but you have way oversimplified it. First, finding stocks that are likely to go up in price is easier said than done, finding stocks that are likely to go up in price in the next two weeks is even harder. So the first thing that you need to do is a lot of research. You need a list of stocks that you are absolutely certain will go up in price. It's not good enough to think that they should go up in price, it has to be almost inevitable. Because even then, a good percentage of them will either just sit there, or go down. And any unexpected bad news can kill even the best stock's price.

Always have a plan for selling the losers. Don't just plan on holding a loser until it becomes a winner. You'll end up with a portfolio full of losers that you're waiting to turn around. Re-assess every stock at least once a week.

Which brings me to the next point, which is, always have a list of stocks that you would like to own. With $50,000 and $5,000 in each holding, you can only hold ten, at most, so have a list of 10 more, that you would like to own. That way if one of your holdings isn't performing, you can sell it and buy one of the others on your list. This makes cutting out the losers much easier, if you have another potential winner that you can switch into.

Instead of putting 5,000 into one stock, consider dividing it among two or more. For example, if you think that oil stocks will be going up, don't just buy one oil company, divide the 5,000 up among two or three. That way you get the benefit of any rise in oil company prices without exposing yourself to the risk of bad news in any one company.

Know what the value of your holdings are. You don't want to sell a stock simply because it has gone up 10% in two weeks. Perhaps it will go up another 10% if you are patient. You need to know its value compared to its peers, so you will know when to sell. This comes back to research, do your research. Know the companies value, and why. Most people end up selling their winners and holding their losers. You want to do the exact opposite, sell the losers, and hold the winners. After all, aren't you buying these stocks because you think they are going up? Don't sell them simply because they do. Sell them when the risk of them going down, outweighs the benefit of them going up.

$10 is too much to pay in commissions. With only 50,000 in your account you will be making a lot of trades of 100 - 200 shares each. You need an account that charges you by the share, not by the trade. That way you will be paying only $1 or $2 per trade.

There are a lot more things that you will learn as you go along, so try not to lose too much money as you are starting out, if you do your research, and buy stocks with good value, you should do fine. As you gain experience you can buy a more diverse range of stocks, but for now, stick to companies with great fundamentals and value.

I use a strict quantitative model called the Intrinsic Strength Model of Fundamental Gamma. You can see my model and results at... http://caps.fool.com/MyPlayer.aspx?source=ifltnvsnv0000001

Read the blog, see the picks, and algorithmic results.

I am very strict and seek to lower my risk as much as possible while increasing my gains inversely. I want a high alpha. But as always, do you're homework before you do this. I'm just showing you my own homework, use it or lose it, it's a view of things..

To answer your question, no. I don't think is a good strategy. It is very difficult to time the market. If you are looking at making a short-term buck, then this may work, but it is a gamble. There has been quite a bit of recent volatility and if you catch one of these companies on a down trend, you may make some money when their stock rebounds. This is no guarantee. If you are young, then definitely invest this money for the long term.

If you are afraid of losing this money, then you can place what is called a "trailing stop" on each of your trades. If the market takes a rapid downturn (and you can choose $$ or % for the trailing stop), then your shares will be sold before you lose too much.

You can also go to investopedia.com. This site will provide you with a lot of answers to your questions. Also, if you want to try out this strategy of yours, just register for one of their many games. You are given a set amount of fake cash to invest in real companies. Their games are very similar to having a real investment account. People new to investing can get a feel for the market and to some extent their tolerance for risk.

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