Searching for trades

What methods do people use to search for good trade opportunities?

Obviously there is the manual option of simply loading (for example) every chart in the FTSE350, drawing the basic S&Rs and seeing what there is...

There's also the option of using chart software scans...

In my experience the first is very time consuming, the second often fruitless and not really less time consuming. So, I was wondering if anyone has any little tricks for searching for and monitoring charts with up-coming trade oportunities?

Perhaps we could collectively come up with some method/system to root out all the good chances while sharing the workload? I must admot that this is a particular area of weakness of mine and I want to improve it in the most efficient way possible.

Thanks in advance.

Manual, watchlists and frequent checking, plus news updates, big movers etc. I also alarm those trendlines, supports/resistances that look promising so I don't have to have too many charts open on my screen.

Thanks Shotry.

That's similar to my current, rather ad-hoc, method though yours is probably considerably better

I'm not the most organised of people so I find it strangely hard to do and maintain lists. Perhaps there's scope on CV for a community watchlist whereby upcoming trades/charts can be listed and then removed when the target gets hit?

At the moment there are quite a few good chances being posted (mainly be remo of course) but do we all keep track of them in a timely manner?

I realise that this would be additional administration and we'd have to be fairly selective as to what went on the list so as not to overload it with very speculative chances but I think it would be a great help to many.

Just a thought.

My alarms facility is limited (20 alarms)and I sometimes use more than one per security (e.g. SP and RSI). That would seem like an area where collaboration would be useful for those who can post reasonably quickly if an alarm is triggered.

Nothing beats manual scans.Scans from a charting software also work if your looking for a particular type of pattern.
To look through the ftse100 companies manually takes me about 5-10 mins.
The reason i can do it so quickly is down to my software i use(metastock)and also my knowledge
Metastock stores every change you do on a chart automatically. So if i drew a trend line it will always be there until i remove it.same for support and resistance lines.So any thing i draw will automatically be saved on a live chart. This is a great feature as i dont have to save a watchlist as such.So if i manually go through the ftse 100 companies i dont have to keep drawing the trend lines as they will already be drawn so i can tell when a company is approaching a trend line if i manually scan every day.
This is the main reason i love metastock over other charting packages. Also the fact that you can go through the scans on live charts.They have some how made it possible to load a live chart in around a second.Other charting packages takes about 10 sec or more for a chart to load up.

So for me a manual scans is the best way to go as once you get used to looking at a chart it should take you less than 5sec worth of viewing per chart.Any more than that is pointless. Thats why a chartist will trump a fundamentals person hands down every time. A fundamental will take about 30mins or longer to research one company (few hours even)where as i can look at 350 companies in 30 mins
i may write a blog on this now Thanks for the idea

I think one of the best method to find opportunities is to stick together in the forum like this one.
Let say is about 100 of us, surely all of us can come up with something once a while
And then u can DYOR on this
If only everyone was willing to post/share…………