Have you ever wondered what it's like to succeed as a day trader and what exactly is a step-by-step process every single morning to generate consistent returns? Well, I'm here to Spill the Beans Today To me, the most crucial part of my trading career definitely has to be the hours of preparation during my morning pre-market trading routine. In this video, I'll be sharing exactly what I've been doing as a day trader during my pre-market preparation. I'll be guiding you step by step on how I scan for stocks and do news analysis How I perform technical analysis on the most profitable stocks How I create my watch list from scratch How I trade my plan once the Market opens, as well as some Pro tips based on over eight years of experience that I'll be sharing with you today. So if that sounds good to you, please remember to smash the like button and now let's get started with my pre-market planning routine.

So my day usually starts around 4 30 a.m in the morning since I live in Vancouver here on the West Coast I wake up without snoozing the alarm, do my morning routine really quickly in 10 minutes, and then I'm at trading desk by 4 45 AM Yes, I used to wake up even earlier and do the morning stretches, yoga, and all that stuff, but uh, no. I'm getting old. Okay, 4 30 a.m is enough I can't do that much in the morning anymore, but good thing is my office is literally 10 steps away from my bed once. I Get to my trading desk right here.

This is where the real work happens. My first step I do during my pre-market hours planning is scanning for the best stocks to trade. Selecting the right profitable stocks to trade is very important because you need to make sure you're choosing stocks. That's going to give you a lot of range, volatility, and volume to profits from today.

I'll be showing you my strategy step by step on how I find the best stocks to trade during pre-market hours. So over here on my screen you're looking at my trade Ideas scanner. This is the scanner I use to find Gap UPS or Gap Downs on the stocks every single morning and you can see over here we have this window here. pre-market Top Gainers This is what I used to scan for cheaper stocks or small cap stocks to trade.

This window is for large caps that includes mid caps, big caps, and also the mega caps in this window I don't use as often but this is why I used to find the stocks I've gapped down instead of gapping up. so let me show you how I set them up. So really simple here. If you go, click the right hand side and configure, you're gonna see my filters I have my filter set super wide.

This is a small cap filter which we're not going to talk about, but let me just show you kind of what it looks like I want to scan for small caps? that's you know, minimum price at a dollar and then change from close 15 percent minimum. I Used to have a market cap here which you can still do but I think I just removed it. but for large caps, that's kind of the focus here. So my large cap criteria window is like so uh, minimum change is only two percent uh price five dollars to four hundred dollars.

sometimes I'll increase it to 500 price range. that's okay range and volume I Want uh, pre-market to be trading at least 20 000 shares in market cap I Have of course over here that's my criteria. So whichever scanner you use, you want to make sure you have obviously the symbol, price, the float percentage change, and volume today. Um, that's gonna be the pre-market volume um, average daily volume and the market cap institutional ownership.

Um and then if you click. um so for example, let's say I want to see I traded Google On this day, if you click on the stock, you open this up window to see the details about the stock analysis so you can see that uh, it shows you the float. the huge float Micah Cap 1.3 trillion only. Um and then and really important is like the short float for large caps.

Generally they're really small. like less than one percent. but when you're trading a small caps, this, this shorts float is more significant. so it's from these three scanner.

Windows Now I'm gonna choose the stocks to trade so normally yes I care about percentage change as well as volume today, which at the time when you're doing this planning pre-market is pre-market volume. so I always lean towards trading stocks that trade in really high volume pre-market. Now for a large caps. same idea I Want to see stocks that are trading really high volume with a huge gap up so you know I color coded my large cap window so the ones that are trading really high volume will stand out with highlighted colors.

So I'll trade this one this one. Um, Gu is a potential as well. Again, seven percent. Gap Up 300 000 shares uh Robin Hood This one will also be a good one.

Um, as well as Google down here you can see trading 2 million shares pre-market so that's really high with a 2.7 Gap up The scanner I used to find my stocks to trade every single morning is Trade Ideas scanner. Yes, it's a premium scanner so it does cost I think 100 per month. If you are more experienced though, I definitely recommend using them because it's Gonna Save You so much time during the pre-market hours when you are building a watch list and once again, remember it's a tax write-off However, if you're relatively new to trading, you really don't need to purchase any of these fancy premium scanners. I was once a new Trader many years ago and I definitely didn't pay for any premium scanners until my year.

Number Two: if you're just starting out: I Highly recommend you to minimize your expenses like these and leverage free Tools. So instead of Trade Idea scanner, here are three free tools for you to scan for stocks and build the exact same watch list. option. Number one: Weibo platform on desktop version.

The desktop version of Weibo has a screener feature. Not all of these details like the floats average a volume or short interest are there, but it gets the job done basically just scanning for the highest percentage gapper on the day each morning during pre-market sessions. Free option number two is think with Swim platform. Thinkwell Swim has a built-in scanner that's even available on the paper trading version.

I Believe Again, it's not perfect, but the scanner would be able to scan for most gappers every single morning. The same could be said about interactive brokers tws as well. The third free option is Finvis, but the free version of Invis will only be able to show you the percentage gappers after the markets opened and it's a 15 minute delay, so keep that in mind. So now that you know how to scan for stocks, gapping up overnight to trade with either the free tools or the premium options like I have, there's no excuses not to do these simple steps during the pre-market hours.

And for those interested in The Trade Idea scanner, you can now download my exact trade Idea scanner settings in the link down below. All right. Once I'm done scanning for stocks in play that have gapped up overnight and have narrowed down the selection to four or five stocks in the next process is where I'll do my fundamental analysis to build my watch list. Step Number two: Fundamental Analysis: Most of you probably already know.

this fundamental analysis is a method to find the intrinsic worth of a company stock by checking its finances filings. Etc It's very crucial if you're investing in the stocks long term. However, when you are day trading these stocks, your holding period is really short. You're buying and selling the stocks within the same day.

So yes, while fundamental analysis still matters, but as a short-term Trader you don't need to perform this analysis as in depth as you would if you were an investor. During my pre-market's fundamental analysis and basically reading all the news catalysts on the four or five gappers that I've selected from my scanner. essentially I Want to know why these stocks are gapping up overnight with so much volume? When you're reading the news, you should note any earnings, major geopolitical events, corporate news mergers Acquisitions changes in management, basically anything that's contributing to the stocks gapping up or down. I Know the Internet can be a huge dock pile of unsorted information and all that mess.

so to scan for the news fast enough and get all the information I Want as a Trader during pre-market hours I Use two tools to help me. Number one is Benzinga pro and number two is Briefing.com Let me show you how to use both of these news platforms. So over here you're looking at Benzinga. Pro This platform is web-based and it's essentially a news feed service for Traders but also has some scanner components to it.

So on the right hand side on the details tab, that's where you see all the news news tab over here for the individual stocks and I use a calendar function and earnings over here. a lot to look at the stocks earnings reports. On the left hand side is a scanner I Don't like their scanner as much as trade ideas so I mostly use Benzynga just for news research. So if we go to earlier on some of the stocks that we looked at for example, Google on the Gap up I think like three percent gappa that we saw we can see look for why the stock is gapping up so you can scroll down on the with news window and see all the historical news events for the stock.

So if you miss one day of trading, it's really easy to find the information you need on any given day you can see. On this particular day, Google Stocks gapping out a lot higher on continued momentum following the company's event revealed yesterday and it's during that events that they talked a lot about AI including searching including Gmail over here. so you can see from a lot of these news headlines. Analysts love what they saw and that's why you have a lot of upgrades from Oppenheimer Bank of America and JP Morgan the next day.

That's also helping with the overall Gap up. As you probably know by now, some of my favorite stocks to trade are the ones that are gapping up or down after earnings and using Benzinga and Briefing are just really quick ways for me to read the earnings news, the headline, as well as the summary and remember earning Seasons happen four times a year. So basically I use trade ideas to select a couple stocks and I use Benzinga to find out why the stocks are gapping up or down and then I'll paste everything that I have got gathered into a Word document so it'll be something like a ticker price and the reason why the stock is gapping up or down. so I can really quickly see it and remember.

So this is how I start putting together my trading plan. So basically all these watches are in this little folder I have years of these like watch lists in my little notepads uh, with the tickers, the summary, and the trading plan and basically these same watches is shared in Humble trailer community on Discord so you see the exact same thing that's posted every single day pre-market at nine o'clock Eastern time. So basically you can see all these watches as text commentary over here. That's the game plan for the day and as well as a recording of the trade planning process over.

Zoom Besides the news, Catalyst Research that you just saw on Benzinga Pro Another extremely useful feature is a Squawk Box over here on the top left hand side. Now this is where you're gonna hear Benzinga Charlie AKA My One Shoe Love announce out loud the real-time news alerts, headlines, and any breaking news and most times he's gonna be saying it really fast before anything can be written or published online on the online article sites. Once again, every millisecond counting trading and the reason you're paying for these tools is so it can save you time. You can use that time to make money I Know this pre-market Street planning process may not sound sexy nor fun, but trust me, if you do just this one thing every single morning, you are already off to a way better start than 90 percent of other Traders out there.

The truth is most of the work in trading is done outside of Market hours and definitely before you enter a position. it's a preparation that you must put into your trades either pre-market after hours or before bed. That's going to give you a better chance of making it in this game. The next tool I use for stock analysis is briefing.

Bring Living is another premium subscription service for news and fundamental analysis. But I would say the research on briefing goes a lot more in depth for the large cap stocks, especially if I want to research stocks that are gapping up due to earnings reports every single morning pre-market they provide you a very detailed pre-market Gap up and gap down summary with key stocks in play and the headlines. so it looks something like this. you can see all these stocks are gapping up and they give you a summary of why.

So that's also a really quick way to just scam for stocks and get the new summary at the same time. Both of these news platforms like Benzinga and Briefing they are premium paid resources and essentially you're paying for the convenience to save time every day during pre-market hours. But you know me I always provide you my subscribers with a free alternative. These three options.

They may not be as fast because they are often at least 15 minute delayed, but they do get a job done when it comes to news analysis. These free resources are stock market Watch and Film this once again. By the way I Know I Don't talk about fundamental analysis that much on this channel, but if you want to see me going over in-depth fundamental analysis strategy, then comment my ex-husband's name Mike bag holder down below because I fundamentally should have ended that marriage way sooner. Now it's around 5, 15 a.m or 8 15 Market Time with my stocks and news fresh on my notes, it's time for us to do some technical analysis.

So exciting! This is a time where playing out my trades, do some charting and plan out my overall trading strategy before the Market opens. So what I'm about to show you is a step-by-step process for creating a trading plan that includes entries, exit and risk management for regular hour trading as well as pre-market trading. So over here back on my trading view platform let's take a look at Google once again so you can see this day when gapped up and showed up on a scanner. like earlier, it was trading at around 115..

Now if you look at on a daily chart over here, if you zoom out on the daily chart you can see the stock is gapping up to some major key level on the deity. Now this could act as resistance, but if it's broken out and held above it, it's gonna become new support. So that's the reason this is the most important area. and that's going to be what I call the key level on the stock.

and if the stock is able to break above that level and hold above it, then you're upside to the next level which is around 117 over here on the upside for the stock. So when I'm planning for this strategy, by the way, this is also a strategy that I've talked about many times before on the channel. the gap of long strategy. If the stock that gaps up with positive news is able to hold above daily key level, then it's a long every single dip.

especially about V-wap to the upside. So once you've done the basic technical analysis on the daily chart and find the overall sentiment and thesis, step number two is to find your perfect entries and exit levels. This step is very important because while yes, you want to see the stock going to hit your price Target in this case 117 118, you also want to be prepared in case it doesn't go according to your plan. So that's why you need to have a stop out area for risk management.

So in this scenario earlier we talked about the entry will either be a break of the key level 115s on The Daily or every single dip at view up here or here and the price Target will be on the daily resistance levels all the way around. This is what 1 16, 80s and then 118s all the way up here where you see some resistance for the stock and the most extreme one will be 121. So those will be your price charge gets and the stop loss in this case. Overall big picture I Prefer to use 115 however as the stock gets further and further away from the key level, you want to use V-wap as your next stop.

You don't want to risk all the way down here, so I'll be loaning here over 115 still upside and have V Y be the stop loss area. And once I have the basics of my plans with the fundamentals, the technicals, key levels, and entry points. That's when I'll quickly type them out on the watch list notes like you've seen earlier which I'm gonna be sharing with my humble Trader community members in just a little bit at 5 30 a.m local time or 8 30 Market time each morning, my team and I do a live pre-market trade planning session with everyone in my Discord community so all the Traders can truly understand our thoughts, process, news analysis, and overall technical analysis sentiment of the stocks in play at 6 am at local time or nine o'clock Market time. Once the pre-market trade planning is done, the written watch list is then posted to my Discord trading.

Community Very important to note here. Learning to build an actionable watch list is not the same as just following buy or sell alerts. When you follow alerts, you're just blindly getting in and out and you'll learn nothing and will never be able to trade on your own. But when you learn the right process and plan for your own trades, all the entries, exits, key level, and of course risk management area, you're learning to think for your self and warming up your trading skills the right way every single morning.

Okay, so now that all the hard work is done during pre-market hours, we have our stocks to trade. We have the technical analysis, fundamentals and the written watchless and trading plan. It's time for us to start trading at 6 30 A.m or 9 30 A.m Market Open. So I'll trade from the market open 6 30 a.m my local time to about 8 o'clock and execute on all the strategies I mapped out beforehand during my pre-market trade planning session.

And what's so great about trading the open in the first 30 minutes of the day is that you almost always get immediate price movement on the pre-market gappers. So basically all the planning and thinking was already done before the market even opened and atom opened when the bell rings. I Just click. Buy or sell or stop out when the stock crosses the key levels I Planned out.

That's why it's so important for you to learn to plan your trades and trade your plans. Trading in the stock market without a plan? Is that going to war without a weapon or getting married without prenup? Okay, I'll stop. and if you're a part-time Trader Who has a limited amount of time to trade before having to go to work? the opening 30 minutes to an hour will be perfect for you. That's when you can make the quick trades, execute the plans you prepared for during pre-market and be done with trading for the day, and get on to work hopefully on time usually.

I'm done with most of my trades by nine o'clock my local time well, 12 o'clock Market time after this, I'll take a 30 minute power nap, grab a snack, and come back to my trading desk Because even though I'm done with most of my own trades, I Planned out earlier this morning, my day is far from over midday. During Mica hours is when I spend the significant amount of time helping other Traders within my community I Answer direct messages, reviewed trades, and provide feedback on all the charts that's posted on the channel. I Know some of you might be asking right now. Really humble.

Trader You're done trading at 12 o'clock you still have the entire afternoon Empower hour. Don't get me wrong when I first started trading I will find time during my lunch break from my nine to seven job to try to trade on my phone during the afternoon Empower hour. However, I've discovered that after a certain time in the market I start boredom trading or Revenge trading. And just like my marriage, my ex-husband that leads to disasters and empty bank accounts.

Remember, trading full-time doesn't mean trading all the time. It means to fully optimize the hours where you are the most profitable and stop trading when you start giving back your profits. That's why I allocate most of my hours after 12 pm. Market Time to mentoring other traders in my community about once a week or so.

I'll go check out a brand swing Trading watch list and if I see a stock that aligns with my strategy, risk tolerance, and trading plan. I'm gonna take the swing trade idea from his Swing Trading Watch list. Okay, I know I just do a lot of information at you. If all these pre-market trade planning process seems overwhelming, don't worry.

Well, you're learning robes on how to build your own pre-market trading routine. I Can help you at least narrow down some stocks to trade I have a free weekly watchless email that I send out every single. Sunday The link is in the description below. Now that you know my exact pre-market trade planning routine, who would I be if I didn't provide you with some bonus.

Pro Tips: Pro Tip Number one: Plan your trades the night before to save some planning time for you the next morning. I Recommend you to start narrowing down a list of potential stocks in play for tomorrow. These will often be the top gainers on the day. basically the stocks that's holding the strongest breakout at the end of the day each day.

Again, you can easily find these stocks on your trade ideas scanner or even on the free resources as well. Second: Pro Tip: Keep a trading journal. Well, if you've been following my channel for a while, then you know I'm a big proponent of keeping a daily trading journal. It's important for you to track your trading performance as well as key data about your behavior.

Remember what gets tracked gets improved? If you're looking for a free journal to get started, you can get 1 for free. Down below, If you enjoyed the video, please remember to drop a like And subscribe If you're looking for a training mentor to work with you one-on-one we have a few very limited spots open. You can book a free strategy session with my team down below. Thank you guys so much for watching! As always I'm the humble Trader and I'll see you guys next time.