How to Use Barchart to Trade Like an Expert

Every trader eventually runs into the same problem. There is simply too much information. Thousands of stocks, ETFs, options, earnings reports, analyst ratings, economic data releases, and technical indicators compete for your attention every day. The challenge isn't finding information—it's building a process that helps you identify the trades worth your time.

That's where Barchart stands apart.

Most investors know Barchart as a place to check quotes or charts, but that's only scratching the surface. The platform was built as a complete research and trading workstation, allowing investors to move from idea generation to trade execution without jumping between multiple websites.

In this tutorial, Barchart expert Rick Orford walks through the exact workflow he uses to research stocks, evaluate options, organize watchlists, and build trading ideas. Whether you're completely new to the platform or have been using it for years, understanding how these tools work together can dramatically improve your research process.

Start With Organization

Every successful trader begins with organization.

Instead of opening dozens of browser tabs each morning, Barchart allows you to create custom Watchlists, Portfolios, and Dashboards that bring everything together in one place.

Watchlists allow you to follow the stocks, ETFs, commodities, or cryptocurrencies that matter most to you. Once you've created a list, you can sort it by performance, technical indicators, volume, or dozens of other data points without rebuilding your research every day.

If you're tracking actual investments, the Portfolio feature lets you monitor gains and losses, analyze performance, and even connect your brokerage account to keep positions updated automatically.

The Dashboard ties everything together. Rather than switching between charts and watchlists, you can customize your workspace to display exactly what you need. For active traders, having every important tool available on a single screen can save significant time during the trading day.

Let the Screeners Find the Opportunities

One of the biggest mistakes new investors make is searching for trades manually.

Scrolling through hundreds or thousands of charts hoping to find something interesting simply isn't an efficient use of time. Instead, professional traders define exactly what they're looking for and allow the screener to do the work.

Barchart's Stock Screener includes hundreds of filters covering technical analysis, fundamentals, earnings, analyst ratings, volatility, dividends, momentum, valuation, and much more.

Looking for oversold S&P 500 stocks? Build a custom screener:

Looking for dividend stocks making new highs? Screen for it.

Need large-cap companies with rising earnings and bullish technicals? The screener can narrow thousands of stocks down to just a handful within seconds.

Even better, once you've built a screener you like, you can save it and run it again whenever the market opens. Instead of rebuilding your research every morning, your workflow becomes consistent and repeatable.

Research the Company Before Trading It

Finding a stock is only the beginning.

Once Rick identifies an opportunity, he immediately opens the Stock Profile page. This becomes the central hub for researching the company before risking any capital.

Here you'll find technical opinions, analyst ratings, earnings history, financial statements, news, insider activity, price performance, and dozens of additional data points that help paint a complete picture.

One of the most useful features is the Trader's Cheat Sheet. Rather than manually calculating important technical levels, the Cheat Sheet automatically identifies support, resistance, trend direction, moving averages, pivot points, and other key areas that traders frequently monitor.

Instead of asking whether a stock looks good, you're now asking much better questions. Is the trend healthy? Are institutions accumulating shares? Is the company approaching earnings? Has price recently broken through resistance? All of this information is available from one location.

Use the Options Dashboard Before Placing a Trade

If you're trading options, the Options Dashboard becomes one of the most valuable pages on the platform.

Before choosing any strategy, Rick reviews implied volatility, technical trend, expected move, put/call ratios, and overall market positioning.

Implied volatility is particularly important because it directly impacts option premiums. Higher volatility generally benefits option sellers who want to collect larger premiums, while lower volatility often creates more attractive pricing for option buyers.

The Put/Call Ratio offers another layer of insight by showing how options traders are positioned. While it doesn't predict future price movement, it provides valuable context about whether market participants are leaning bullish or bearish through their options exposure.

Rather than entering trades blindly, the Options Dashboard provides the information necessary to choose a strategy that fits current market conditions.

Build the Right Options Strategy

One of the strengths of Barchart is that it doesn't assume every trader should use the same options strategy.

Instead, the platform provides dedicated screeners for Long Calls, Cash-Secured Puts, Covered Calls, Bull Put Spreads, Bear Call Spreads, Poor Man's Covered Calls, and many others.

Each screener compares available opportunities while displaying probability of profit, maximum gain, maximum loss, return on risk, expiration dates, strike prices, and premium collected.

Whether your goal is generating income, reducing risk, or finding directional trades, the strategy screeners dramatically simplify the selection process.

Use Expected Move to Choose Better Strike Prices

Another feature Rick highlights throughout the tutorial is Expected Move.

Rather than guessing how far a stock might travel before expiration, Expected Move uses options pricing to estimate the range traders expect price to remain within.

This becomes incredibly useful when selecting strike prices for covered calls, cash-secured puts, vertical spreads, or long options.

For example, if you're selling covered calls, choosing a strike price just outside the expected move often creates a balance between collecting premium while giving the stock room to fluctuate normally.

Expected Move isn't designed to predict the future, but it provides an objective framework for making smarter decisions based on current market expectations.

Build a Repeatable Workflow

Perhaps the biggest lesson from Rick's tutorial isn't any individual tool. It's the process.

Professional traders don't wake up asking which stock everyone is talking about today. They follow the same workflow every morning.

• Start with a Watchlist.
• Run your Screeners.
• Review technicals and fundamentals.
• Analyze the Options Dashboard.
• Review Expected Move and Profit & Loss graphs.
• Then decide whether the trade fits your risk tolerance.

That repeatable process removes emotion from trading and replaces it with structure.

The Bottom Line from Rick’s Routine

Markets will always be unpredictable, but your research process doesn't have to be.

Barchart brings together stock research, technical analysis, options tools, watchlists, portfolios, strategy screeners, alerts, and market data into one platform, allowing traders to spend less time searching for opportunities and more time evaluating quality setups.

Whether you're investing for the long term, actively trading options, or simply trying to become a more informed investor, having a structured workflow can make all the difference.

Rick's tutorial demonstrates exactly how those pieces fit together. Once you understand how to connect the platform's tools into one seamless process, Barchart becomes much more than a quote page. It’s a complete trading command center.