From Good to Great: 5 Habits for Smarter Stock Trades
Updated: 30 Dec 2025
Written byAlevin K Chan
Freelance Contributor & Advertorials Writer
The US stock market has been on an astonishing bull run. Since 2023, the S&P 500 has risen by a staggering 75%. This year alone, the index is up by 14.46% as at Dec 2025, looking set to end the year with double-digit gains.
With the markets in such a strong position, this is a great opportunity to optimise your US stock trading. Here are five things you should look out for to help you improve your trading outcomes in 2026.
Habit no. 1: Mind your trading fees
With US equities making new highs every day, it can be easy to lose sight of one very basic, but important factor: Your trading fees are impacting your returns every step of the way.
While they may appear to be a minor sum per trade, remember that trading fees (commissions, platform fees, other charges, etc.) are applied on every trade you make. Over time, this adds up, eating into your overall returns.
Solution: Choose a broker that gives you the lowest fee possible for your chosen market. In the case of US stocks, moomoo stands out as among one of the lowest-cost brokers in Singapore.
All moomoo members enjoy 0* commissions on US stocks, which means you get to keep more of your returns. And to keep trading costs low, the platform fee is charged at US$0.99 per order. This is a flat rate, which means you don’t have to worry about paying higher fees for larger orders!
Habit 2: Use real-time market depth for potentially best buy/sell points
Many traders rely on technical indicators like Line of Support/Resistance to help determine entry and exit points. A more advanced method would be to use Level 2 data to help identify suitable price points, or price points that can help you buy or sell a certain stock with greater certainty.
Solution: moomoo provides you with access to Level 2 order book data in real time, where you can observe key price levels with the accumulation of large numbers of pending orders.
When pending orders are clustered around a particular price level, this is a strong indicator of other traders’ expectations of the market. Importantly, Level 2 order book data can help you choose optimal price points when you’ve decided to make a buy or sell order.
For example, if you want to buy a stock at around S$100, Level 2 shows how many shares are queued at S$100. If there are 100,000 shares already in the buy queue at S$100, your order might not be filled immediately because it has to wait behind those 100,000 shares.
However, you can skip ahead of the queue by strategically placing your order slightly above the current best bid (e.g., S$100.01). Thus, by looking at Level 2, you can get priority and increase the chance of execution.
In addition, large buy or sell orders visible on Level 2 can act as support or resistance levels, giving traders insight into potential price movements. By noting substantial buy orders at the bid price, or significant sell orders at the ask price, you can readily identify potential points of entry or exit for your chosen stocks.
Be sure to cross-check the levels shown on Level 2 order book data with relevant technical indicators for more targeted trades.
How to use Level 2 data
-
On desktop, you can view Level 2 data to find the price level you want to trade. When placing a trade, select “Book Trader”, and you can quickly create an order. Note that this is only applicable to Limit and Market orders
-
On mobile, you can tap the price level on the order page to quickly set the trade price. Once done, you can place the order.
Habit 3: Learn how to use conditional orders
Traders may feel compelled to constantly keep watch over the markets, in case of unexpected developments or the emergence of new trading opportunities. However, this is simply not sustainable for most retail traders, owing to the need to spend time on other commitments.
Traders commonly use orders to help manage their trades, but what can be accomplished depends on the type of orders available.
Note that not all brokers offer the same range and types of orders. For greater control over your trades, be sure to choose a broker that offers the right orders.
Solution: moomoo provides a selection of conditional orders you can apply to different market conditions. They enable you to respond to market changes, execute market orders, or cancel orders when the market turns against you – even while you’re away.
For example, you may worry that an upcoming US Federal Reserve meeting may trigger a drop in the US stock market. You can use moomoo’s conditional orders to manage risk without staying up late to watch the markets.
By setting a stop order in advance, a sell order will be automatically executed if the market falls. This lets you control drawdowns without monitoring the markets around the clock.
To help you better manage various market conditions, moomoo supports 10+ types of advance orders. This includes stop order, stop limit order, market if touched order, limit if touched order, trailing stop order and trailing stop limit order.
Additionally, moomoo also offers GTD (Good-to-Date), which sets a time limit on your order; and GTC (Good-till-Cancelled), which keeps your order active until you cancel it.
Habit 4: Use SmartSave with Options trading
If you’re trading options on moomoo, you can earn extra returns on the premiums you receive from selling options.
With SmartSave, premiums received are automatically invested into money market funds and other lower risk instruments so you can earn passive returns. This way, your idle funds can work harder for you as you wait for future opportunities.
Don’t worry, funds in SmartSave remain liquid and ready for your next trade – giving you the best of both worlds.
Solution: Login to your moomoo account and enable SmartSave. Then, start selling put options to earn premiums. You can sell options on popular US stocks and ETFs.
With SmartSave enabled, the premiums you collect will be automatically invested on your behalf with no further action required.
Habit 5: Elevate your valuation skills
Knowing how to gauge the intrinsic worth of a company is an important skill. This is known as the valuation of a company, and can help us determine if a stock’s price is too high (overvalued) or too (low) undervalued, providing a crucial datapoint to guide our decisions about when to buy or sell.
Conventionally, traders rely on P/E (Price-to-Earnings), P/B (Price-to-Book), and P/S (Price-to-Sales) ratios – but relying on these metrics alone may not give you sufficient details.
Solution: For a more comprehensive look at a company’s valuation, make use of moomoo’s Company Valuation feature.
Here’s how: Open moomoo and tap a stock > Detailed Quotes > Company > Financials, and scroll down to Company Valuation
This will display:
-
the stock's current P/E, P/B, and P/S ratios (depending on the company’s characteristics and business cycle)
-
historical average of price of the latest 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years
But that’s not all. moomoo will also display how the stock has performed relative to its peers and the broader market, providing an additional metric to gauge the company’s valuation. You can view visualized charts on P/E, P/B and P/S ratios, comparing against the S&P 500 market benchmark, as well as across specific industries or sectors.
Here’s why that’s important: Being able to compare a stock’s P/B, P/E or P/S ratios against similar ratios of stocks in the same industry gives you a clearer gauge of the company’s valuation. This will allow you to fine-tune your trading strategies for optimized outcomes, alert you to potential trading opportunities, or better hedge against risk.
moomoo also provides additional metrics that can help improve your trading game. These include Forward P/E, Index P/E, and Market Value Change vs Earnings Growth, among others.
The platform lets you compare up to six different stocks side-by-side, allowing clearer analysis.
Most impressively, you can also receive some help from AI. moomoo will provide detailed analyses of the valuation ratios for stocks you’re interested in trading. This can help clarify or strengthen your trading decisions.
Elevate your US stocks trading with moomoo
moomoo caters well to US stocks traders with low fees, Level 2 data, comprehensive conditional orders and access to powerful valuation tools. And let’s not forget that options traders can automatically enjoy passive returns thanks to SmartSave.
All these can positively impact your trading outcomes, making moomoo the ideal choice for anyone seeking to elevate their US stocks trading
Ready to bring things to the next level? Don’t miss this exclusive sign-up offer!
-
Sign up for moomoo via SingSaver and get up to S$1,454 welcome rewards*
-
Deposit S$2,000 to get the following (choose one):
-
Apple AirPods Gen 4 (worth S$199)
-
S$120 Cash via PayNow
-
S$150 Grab Vouchers
*Terms and conditions apply
Disclaimer
*T&Cs apply for all campaigns. For Moomoo SG's welcome reward, asset maintenance and trading requirements apply. For 0 commission, platform and other fees apply. All views expressed in the video are the independent opinions of Kelvin Learns Investing. Neither Moomoo Singapore nor its affiliates shall be liable for the content of the information provided. This advertisement has not been reviewed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
About the author
Alevin K Chan
Alevin loves helping people make good money decisions. He briefly flirted with being a Financial Advisor, but quickly realised writing about personal finance is the better way to go.