There's not one right answer to this question. You look at everything. You look at the 52 wk high and low (if you're looking to buy, don't buy near the high), you look at market cap, you look at volume (number of public shares), you look at the company's underlying finances, you look at how society and technology is changing as a whole (are people eating more organics, will people buy electric cards?)... but the point is, the more information you have, the better your decision will be and you decide based on your objectives. Do you want long-term growth, or do you want to make some quick cash buy buying, holding for a few days, then selling?
If you're doing the latter, you look for high volatility stocks that move up and down in short amounts of time. Some stocks will jump a 3-10% in a matter of days (look at DDD or TWTR in the last few days) . If you want long term growth, you will have to hold on for a while (look at GOOG, AAPL, FB). For example, I got into FB at IPO and paid $41/share (yes.. noob move.. I overpaid, but it was the first stock I ever bought). Now it's worth $60 after 1.5 years.
To get an overal view I would look at 5 years fisrtly to see how it had performed since the banking crisis. Within that 5 year you will see trends probably down to 1 month anyway. Short term I suppose is 15-25 days. The speculators will be trading T+10 up to T+20 or so.
Also look at different moving averages (15 against 30? and see where they cross.
Don't get too hung up on tecnical analysis and keep an eye on fundamentals.
If you are looking at trend charts and breakout patterns for a day or a week or a month, why are you posting in the Investing section? Because you are not investing, you are gambling.
I have no idea
Lets say I'm looking at when a stock will 'break out'
Do I look at the chart for the last day? Week? Month? Year?
You know what I mean? If your looking for a profitable trend what time space do you search in?
Thank you.
