Tutorial: set price alerts that make you act
Set the alert at the price where you already decided you would do something. Not at a round number.
Turn a vague intention into a decision that fires without you.
How set price alerts that make you act works, in one picture
The same argument as the text, as a chain. Each step is what makes the next one possible.
The market moves first, and recovers first
Shares fall before the data does and start climbing while the news is still uniformly awful. Waiting for the news to improve means buying after the recovery has happened.
- 1
Decide the action first, then the price
AlertsAn alert with no decision attached is just a notification that makes you anxious. Before you set it, finish this sentence: 'if it reaches X, I will do Y.' If you cannot finish it, do not set the alert.
- 2
Set it where your thesis changes, not at a round number
£100 is not a meaningful level. The price at which the company would be trading below your estimate of fair value is. Round numbers feel significant because humans have ten fingers, which is not an investment case.
- 3
Use them on the way down, not just up
The alert that matters most is the one that tells you a company you have researched and wanted has finally become affordable, on a day when the news is frightening and you would otherwise not be looking.
You will not want to act when it fires. That is precisely why you set it in advance.
Every alert you hold has a written sentence attached saying what you will do when it fires.
Read next
Set the alert at the price where you already decided you would do something. Not at a round number.
Every one shows its exact method, and the circumstances in which it is wrong. Free, and no account to look.