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# How to Find Stocks to Day Trade (A Beginner Routine)
- URL: https://www.daytraderincome.com/how-to-find-stocks-to-day-trade/
- Published: 2026-10-27T22:29:11.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-31T23:10:39.000Z
- Description: Most stocks go nowhere on most days. How to find the few that are moving: what "in play" means, a free screener routine, a short watchlist and how to pick the strongest.
- Author: Indy Karveli
- Tags: Getting started

**Short answer:** look for stocks that are **in play**: moving more than usual, on more volume than usual, for a real reason like earnings or news. Find them each morning with a free screener, keep three to five on a short watchlist, and favor the ones that are stronger than the market.

I trade MNQ futures, so my "stock" is the Nasdaq 100 itself. But plenty of people learn on stocks, and the routine for finding them is simple once you've done it a few times.

## What makes a stock worth day trading

- **It's moving.** A gap up or down from yesterday's close, or a big move since the open.
- **It's busy.** More shares trading than normal for this time of day (relative volume above 1).
- **There's a reason.** Earnings, a big upgrade or downgrade, company news. A move with no reason is a coin flip.
- **It's liquid.** Millions of shares a day and a price that isn't pennies, so your orders fill near the price you see.

## A 15-minute morning routine

1. **Check the market first.** Look at SPY and QQQ. Up, down or flat? Everything else gets measured against them.
2. **Run a screener.** In [TradingView](https://www.tradingview.com/?aff%5Fid=1173482&ref=daytraderincome.com) (affiliate link), open the stock screener and filter for price above $10, average volume above 1 million shares, a pre-market move of 3% or more either way, and relative volume above 1.5\. Full walkthrough: [the TradingView stock screener for day trading](https://www.daytraderincome.com/tradingview-stock-screener-for-day-trading/).
3. **Ask why each one is moving.** Read the headline. Skip anything without a real reason.
4. **Keep three to five.** Add them to an "In play" section of your watchlist. See [how to set up a TradingView watchlist](https://www.daytraderincome.com/tradingview-watchlist-setup/).
5. **Mark the levels.** Yesterday's high and low, and the pre-market high and low. That's where the action usually is.
6. **Watch which one is strongest after the open.** The stock holding up best when the market dips is usually the one to focus on. That's [relative strength](https://www.daytraderincome.com/relative-strength-day-trading/).

## What beginners should skip

- **Penny stocks and tiny floats.** The huge percentage moves are real; so are the wide spreads and halts.
- **Stocks you found in a chat room.** If you can't say why it's moving, you can't plan the trade.
- **Twenty tickers at once.** Three to five is plenty. One is fine.

## Practice it on paper first

Run this routine every morning for a few weeks on a paper trading account before you trade a dollar. TradingView's paper account is free, and on the free plan US stock quotes come in real time from a Cboe feed. See [how to paper trade](https://www.daytraderincome.com/how-to-paper-trade/).

Want the whole thing step by step? [the Paper Route](https://www.daytraderincome.com/paper-route/) is my free course: lessons 5 to 7 cover watchlists, the screener and relative strength, then you trade 30 sessions on paper.

*Education only, not investment advice. The stocks named here are examples, not recommendations. Most people who day trade lose money.*