[funklute]

Your first suggestion is basically momentum investing [1]. But as the wikipedia article alludes to, there are some issues with this, such as a potentially high risk, that one would need to carefully consider.

I think there is a big difference between merely applying critical thinking, versus investing the necessary time into essentially becoming a semi-professional day trader.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_investing

[breezeTrowel]

Hence my focus on an index instead of trying to pick individual stocks. It's more like index investing with guard rails.