What comes 1st: trade analysis or security?

Using MetaStock, I created a reasonably good trading "system" (well, at least for a novice still learning), based on Bollinger Bands and moving averages for JSE SSFs, over a +- 3 week period. Now I can just run the system on the available stocks, and it will list the results. The problem is there aren't always tradeable entry positions. Meaning I have to wait a couple of days & rerun my system every day, to see if new starting positions are available.

As you can see from my approach I started with the trading "system", and then try to find stocks/positions that fit it. I'd like to know how other traders approach this? Is it maybe a better idea to pick a stock & then try to predict where it's going, or maybe to expand my trading "system" to include more calculations, as to increase the chances of finding a tradeable stock?

As long as you have a system that provides a sufficient number of trades of the holding period you favor in a trading style that works for you operating in a market which suits you, it doesn't really matter which way you approach things. It many ways it's a recursive research process. If you have a trading system that works well, but isn't producing enough trades, maybe you could expand the universe of stocks you're looking at, add in other markets, or use a shorter time frame for your inputs (use hourly data rather than daily, for example).

Rhody Trader said:

maybe you could expand the universe of stocks you're looking at, add in other markets, or use a shorter time frame for your inputs (use hourly data rather than daily, for example).

Click to expand...

Expanding the universe of stocks is slightly more difficult at this stage, because for various reasons I'm limited to JSE SSFs. The JSE is a smaller stock exchange + the list of SSFs to trade isn't large. But I can definitely shorten the timespan. I will give this a try. Thanks for the help.

I would also wait and follow the system to the T
You could always use a portfolio theory to determine what stocks the system should be trading. This allows for a robust method for choosing you basket