Based on my experience (very short 6 months experience), I found 3 things to be very important when picking stocks to invest in, in a non-bear market. This short thread does not contain tips on how to manage your portfolio, it merely contains summary info helpful for stock picks

1. The stock's fundamentals: This is research. Here you find out if the stock has a good future. Is there growth? What is their growth strategy? Does policy favor it? How does it compete? Is the company aggressive? Essentially, this can be broken down into 2 parts.

Fundamentals intrinsic to the company i.e. Operational advantages, PE Ratios, etc.

2. The stock's Technicals: Here I look at things like 52-week highs/lows to give an idea of the Price range of the stock, and I check the news to see what coincided with these prices.

I also check the 3-month highs/lows, this helps me see if the stock is trading below its 3 month high price (meaning it has a potential to gain), or if it is at an all-time high.

I tend to mostly avoid stocks at an all-time high, except when I believe strongly that the stock is still undervalued.

Next, I consider my entry price and exit price. Here I decide what percentage gain I want to make on a stock. If a stock is trading at $10, but in the last 3 months it reached $17; this COULD BE an indication that the stock is trading at a discount due to some circumstance...

... of assumption. Thus, if I park money into it at $10, and it hits $15 in 5 weeks. I just made 50% on your initial investment in 5 weeks.

Here I discovered one thing. You could enter a good stock at a bad time and lose money. Or you could enter a bad stock at a good time and make money. Thus, it is VERY ESSENTIAL you enter ANY stock at the right time. Often, this is when the stock is unpopular.

When is a good time to enter a stock? Sometimes for regular companies, its when you see a price discount (trading at a comfortable % below it’s 3 month high), and YOU KNOW (from your research) that the company will beat its next quarter earnings.

So, you enter low, hoping to exit once they announce earnings and meet your exit price, during the rally that often accompanies the positive earnings announcement. So YOU NEED TO KNOW when the company will announce earnings.

3. Position Sizing. In my opinion, this is the most important factor once you have done your research properly. Why?

It is not easy to pick a good stock, that makes gains in a time period that works for you. Thus, when you pick a confident choice, it pays to bet heavy.

Why? 10% of $1,000 is greater than 50% of $75.

So, based your research segment your picks into Heavy, medium and Light.
For heavy, I choose stocks that have a growth upside above 25%. I go heavy on these.
For Medium, I choose stocks that may help preserve my capital with low risk. These stocks are heavy, and low-risk they...

...are sure to grow. Amazon is in this category.

For Light, I choose stocks that are very risky, and could do a 70%+ based on an assumption that has a probability of success/failure. An example of this stock is Nokia/Ericsson.

...There is a flip side to stocks in this category, which depends on my mindset at the time of investing. Sometimes I use Nassim's Taleb Hyper conservative/hyperaggresive strategy, which i will leave out of this already long thread.

This thread was made at the request of @MuyiwaSaka