Recently, a friend asked me what to do when long-term positions haven't moved for a while. I suggested trying short-term trading. Short-term trading involves buying and selling within a few days or even within a day, profiting from price fluctuations. The advantage of this approach is quick capital turnover and a clear rhythm. The downside is that it requires especially high discipline and risk control; once a judgment is wrong, losses can come very quickly.

So how exactly do you pick stocks for short-term trading? I found that many people fall into a misconception, thinking that short-term trading requires analyzing fundamentals. Actually, that's not the case. The core logic of short-term trading is to profit from rapid turnover and price volatility; the fundamentals are not the main focus. Even companies with strong long-term prospects can experience sharp rises and falls or consolidation, during which there is no significant volatility.

Stocks that are truly suitable for short-term trading usually have three characteristics. First, they have a theme; current hot topics can attract investors to buy and sell, generating trading volume. Second, the trading volume must be sufficient; being able to buy in and sell out is essential. Stocks with poor liquidity are easy to get trapped in. Third, the stock price should have large fluctuations. Some stocks, even if they have themes and trading volume, have small price swings, making them unsuitable for short-term trading and more appropriate for long-term holding.

When it comes to stocks with large volatility, NVDA is definitely the top choice. As a leader in AI chips, it often experiences sharp fluctuations due to market expectations about AI prospects. Similar stocks include SMCI, a core supplier for AI servers, whose volatility often exceeds NVDA. The average daily fluctuation around earnings reports can reach over 12%. TSLA is also a classic example; a tweet from Musk, delivery data, or progress in autonomous driving can trigger 5% to 10% large swings within a day.

If you want to participate in cryptocurrency volatility but don't want to trade Bitcoin directly, COIN and MSTR are good alternatives. These two are usually highly correlated with Bitcoin but tend to have even larger swings because they add premiums and sentiment from the stock market.

From my observation, the clearest capital themes in the current market are AI and semiconductors. As long as the AI story continues, these chip-related stocks will be repeatedly traded. Compared to software stocks, chip design and server-related stocks have higher volatility and faster capital flow, making them the most efficient.

Besides these giants, there is another category of high-volatility thematic stocks worth paying attention to. Although their liquidity isn't as good as the leaders, if you set proper stop-losses and treat them as trading tools rather than beliefs, there are plenty of short-term opportunities. Quantum computing concept stocks like RGTI are typical; news can cause rapid surges and crashes.

Another category is event-driven stocks, such as ORCL. They may not move much normally, but implied volatility can spike before and after earnings reports, often causing gaps of over 5% on the day. These stocks are suitable for positioning volatility before earnings or waiting for confirmation of direction before following the trend.

High-profile leading stocks like PLTR also fit this category. They have relatively clean technicals, clear support and resistance levels, good liquidity, and daily discussion and trading volume. The reliability of technical signals is relatively high.

Discipline and cost control are the most important aspects of short-term trading. Due to high trading volume, no transaction fees, and allowance for multiple trades of the same stock within a day, the US stock market is the most popular market worldwide for short-term trading. If you want to test the strategies recommended for these short-term stocks, I suggest starting with a demo account to familiarize yourself with the volatility rhythm of each stock, then gradually use small capital for real trading.