Although I do agree that creating watch list scenarios is a good way to start, I got a little over-eager to jump in because I had some tips from some (hopefully) savvy traders. That being said, I learned a very important lesson from an earlier post on this forum (When you use a limit order, you want it to be a reasonable price. So, you might look at a chart and put it somewhere between its current price and its lowest last price, lowest last two prices, lowest last five prices, lowest of the last 10 prices, etc. For example, if the last lowest price was 8%, 6%, 4%, 10%, 12%, 3%, 8%, 12%, 9%, 7%, 14%, 16%, and 5%, and 6%, you might put in a limit order at between 5-16% below the current market price, GTC order. You might change that limit order to reflect market conditions so with the banking crisis, having a limit order of 20-25% below the market price might have still resulted in an execution. If you really want to own a stock and don't care about the price you wish to pay for that stock; in other words, you really want an execution, than I'd put a limit order between 0-5% below the market price as a Day or GTC order. The reason why I suggest as low as 5% below the market price is because trading might be volatile. So you might put in 10% at current market price, 10% at 1% below, 10% at 2% below, 10% at 3% below, 10% at 4% below, and 50% at 5% below. ) Thanks to the person who wrote that!
Instead of doing that, I went with the ask price in 3 instances, in the other 2 trades I did a limit order a very small percent below the bid price. One thing that concerns me about stock trading is that a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. How do you really know that you know enough? A lot of smart people lose money, don't they? Maybe somebody should come up with a stock trading IQ test.