Back in September we took a look at the topic of stock liquidity. We talked about how important it is to invest or trade in liquid stocks so that we don't get stuck holding onto a stock when we want to sell it. If we try to sell an illiquid stock, we might be left holding it for a while and at greatly reduced prices. You can see the September eNews material in the eNews archive - Sept 2011.
 
This months' eNews email is a follow-up to the September information, and introduces a new public web page on stock liquidity, and a new Premium Members web page in the Toolbox for Premium Toolbox members with more information about stock liquidity, and links to a list of about 400 stocks that comprise Roberts' Liquid List. This list is my own list of liquid stocks that I scan through looking for investing and trading opportunities. See the details and links below for more information and the downloads.
 
I should point out, though, that many people do invest or trade successfully in illiquid stocks. Many do this by diligently watching the stock, and perhaps holding for just a short period. But many people do this successfully with lady luck on their side. In many cases, these people do experience some losses amongst their gains. For most of us, we can reduce the risk of loss by simply avoiding illiquid stocks.

This month I am introducing what I call "Robert's Liquid List". Each month I run a scan across all the Australian stocks (more than 2400), to find those that meet my own liquidity criteria. For a few months now the list has contained about 400 stocks each month. Then during the month when I am scanning for investable or tradeable stocks, I only search through my Liquid List of about 400 stocks, and I ignore all the other stocks in the market. This means the scans run faster, and I don't even look at the so-called illiquid stocks.
 
Premium Toolbox Members can see more information about my Liquid List, and a link to download the list of stock codes, on this new web page. There are a couple of ways to navigate to this new web page - from the public Stock Liquidity web page; and the Toolbox home page sitemap (under the "Share Market" heading); and the Premium Members Gateway (there's a link to this on the top of the Toolbox Home page); and the Share Market web page Quick Links section (on the left).
 
There are actually three slightly different lists available to download, the first two of which are details in which you might not be interested:

1. The "Investors / Weekly Table" - A list of the stock codes with key price data and Fundamental Analysis data, based on the long-term version of Robert's Liquidity Rules.
2. The "Traders / Daily Table" - A similar list of stock codes and data, based on the shorter term version of Robert's Liquidity Rules.
3. An amalgamated list of all the stock codes from the two lists above, and containing only stock codes with no price data. This list can be easily imported into your own watchlist in a spreadsheet or in charting software like BullCharts. 

Robert's Liquid List will be refreshed on a monthly basis, within a few days of the end of each month, and available for Premium Members to download.
 
How to use this list? - We could take this list as it is, and use it for our Weekly Watch List instead of the XJO list of 200 stocks. This would double the number of stocks on our list. In this way we could look for rising stocks using the same Weekly Watch List criteria. Alternatively, you could adopt the methods used here to find liquid stocks, and adjust the search criteria, and look for a slightly varied set of liquid stocks.
 
This month there are no new or updated eBook (PDF) Articles on this topic; but the existing ones are:
 

• ST-6210 "Strategy considerations - volume and liquidity" - This Article is a good introduction to the topic.
  The free page 1 version for non-members is here.   
• ST-6215 "Strategy considerations - finding liquid stocks" - This Article provides some details about how to find liquid stocks for safer investing or trading.
  The free page 1 version for non-members is here. 

  

There are now a total of 109 Articles in this collection of eBook Articles - a total of 465 pages of information!
You can see the Master List of all Articles here (recently new or updated ones are highlighted), and the Detailed Topic Index here.
Don't forget to see the updated Table of Contents pages for the Share Trading articles (see links in the side-bar at right).  

 

As of early January 2011 with the change in publishing approach for 2011, I significantly revised the Introduction Article and the Overview Article for each of the three subject areas. You can see them here:

What if you have some sort of problem with accessing the Toolbox and any of these Articles? Or maybe the Username and Password doesn't work. If there is any problem at all, simply contact me by email or phone. The best email address for this is: support@robertbrain.com. Occasionally emails disappear - the system thinks they are spam, or the ISP might think they are spam. If I don't reply within a day or so, please contact me by other email address or phone.

 

 

Until next month,
happy investing or trading,