How News Helps With Trading Hot Penny Stocks

We live in a world where algorithmic trading dominate the daily volume seen in the stock market today. With that said, there are a ton of news reading algos that react to headlines instantaneously, causing tremendous volatility in the company’s referenced in the stories, especially hot penny stocks.

Some traders who rely on technical indicators to make decisions will totally dismiss news all together. Their belief is that the news is already priced into the stock and the price action will dictate where it will go. They feel it’s extremely difficult to quantify the impact of the news so it’s more or less a waste of time to follow it.

Does this philosophy make sense, and how important should following the news be when trading hot penny stocks?

Let’s say the stock price of company ABC has had support at $15, if it were to drop to that level, a trader relying solely on technical analysis will buy some shares. The stock price drops from $17 down to $15, the trader goes long, and the stock quickly drops another $3. It turns out that a news story broke out that ABC is under investigation for accounting fraud and that the CEO has left the country.

Here is a situation where there is a dynamic change in the company’s fundamentals. If you’re an investor, you’re thinking worst case scenario, you’re not necessarily thinking about support and resistance levels. You’re mind is thinking, get out, and ask questions later.

Clearly, in a situation like this, knowing the news can be very helpful when trading hot penny stocks.

Let’s say you trade style utilizes a mean reversion strategy, and company ABC is down $6 and on average it trades in a range of $2. Again, not knowing the news, you might decide to buy some shares. However, if you paid attention to the news, you would have known they just announced their earnings and that additional volatility is not unusual.

This is another example where the news helps in making better trading decisions.

Now, you don’t have to try to quantify everything to make knowing the news useful. For example, let’s say a well known analyst upgrades company ABC and their stock price gaps up on the open. What is the upgrade worth? It’s really hard to say, clearly a positive sign, but hard to measure the impact.

Does that mean having that information is useless? Absolutely not – especially with penny stocks.

It’s when you try to overanalyze the news, in this case, it can causes problems in your trading. For example, let’s say Company ABC has announced that are expanding their business to more regions, this might be seen as a positive news. However, it might not be reflected in their stock price right away.

Letting your opinion get in the way can also be an issue. For example, this is good news, the stock price should be going up…or this is really bad news, the hot penny stock price should be crashing.

With that said, it’s still better to be aware of the headlines and what is going on in the stock you’re trading. Sure, it’s very difficult to trade off the news, and not what is being suggested here. But including the news in your decision making process is a choice many traders make and they fare better when trading hot penny stocks.