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Building Your Watchlist

Rules for what to track, how to compose by sector, and ten starter tickers if your list is empty.

4 min·

The Watchlist is where the rest of the product lands. Calendar, Top Picks, and Performance all funnel into here. Build it well and the platform saves you time. Build it carelessly and it's just another list.

Capacity

  • Free: 3 tickers. The constraint is intentional — it forces you to pick carefully.
  • Plus: unlimited.
  • Pro: unlimited.

Most active investors land around 15-30 names. Beyond 50 the list stops being useful because you can't actually pay attention to that many prints. Upgrade or check capacity from your account page.

What you see for each ticker

Logo, name, sector. Current price and today's change. A 90-day trend sparkline. EPS, revenue, 52-week range. Next earnings date (BMO/AMC timing shows up in the reminder email). And an "AI Report" badge that opens the modal directly. Click any row to open the ticker detail page — see the Ticker Detail guide for what's on it.

Three rules for building the right list

Mix conviction names with watch names

Half the list should be stocks you own or plan to. The other half are names you're tracking to understand a sector — even if you never buy them, their prints tell you what's happening in their corner of the market. If you own NVDA, also track AVGO and AMD. Their prints set context for NVDA's next call.

Cover your sector exposure

If you're 40% tech, the watchlist should be roughly 40% tech. The watchlist is your radar — its composition should match the surface area of your portfolio.

Include at least one in every sector you're underexposed to

Even if you don't own Energy, having one Energy name (XOM, CVX, or the sub-sector leader) keeps you honest about whether to rotate in. If the Performance page tells you Energy is leading and you have no Energy ticker on the watchlist, you'll miss the signal.

What the watchlist does for you automatically

  1. Calendar filter — toggle "watchlist only" on the Calendar to see when your names report.
  2. Evening reminders — opt in and our jobs fan out earnings notifications during the 6 PM to midnight ET window the day before. You won't wake up to a watchlist ticker that already reported BMO.
  3. AI Reports — for Plus and Pro, every watchlist ticker gets a bull/bear breakdown that opens from the row. Read it before the open on report day.

Starter list for active traders

If you're new and need a starting set, these 10 names move the largest dollar volume in their respective sectors:

SectorTickerWhy
Mega-cap techNVDAAI bellwether
Mega-cap techMSFTCloud + Azure capex commentary
Comm ServicesMETAAd market read-through
Comm ServicesGOOGLSearch + cloud
Consumer DiscAMZNE-commerce + AWS
Consumer DiscTSLAEV + autonomy
TechAVGOCustom silicon + Ethernet
SoftwarePLTRCommercial AIP
SoftwareSNOWSix consecutive beats
IndustrialsAXONSix straight beats, classic compounder

Long-term holders starter list

If you don't trade earnings, you still want to track them. Build the watchlist out of names with proven beat streaks. Examples of 6-for-6 beat streakers ($50B+, ex-healthcare): PM, BUD, MDLZ (staples); RY, KKR, MFG, IBN (financials); GLW, DELL, APH, MSI, KEYS, SNOW (tech); PWR, TT, RSG (industrials); SU (energy); HLT, RCL, RACE (consumer disc). Not buy recommendations — a starting universe for a quality-bias watchlist.

Where to go next

Once your watchlist is set, the flows do the work:

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Performance — The Drift Screener

Post-earnings drift across 1d, 1w, 1m, and to-next-ER. The real edge in our own data.

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The Ticker Detail Page

Every print, every reaction, on one page. How to read the earnings history table and what the AI block does.