base.report | How to Use ChatGPT and base.report to Build Your Themed Watchlists

Creating and monitoring your own themed watchlists is one of the best ways to build situational awareness — but it can quickly become overwhelming if you just rely on regular watchlists in software like TC2000 or TradingView.

While this approach makes it easy to check whether an entire group is setting up when doing your homework on a specific stock, checking how that group is performing against all other groups is another matter — particularly if you’re new to theme trading and/or a part-time trader.

Here’s where the new custom themes feature in base.report can help:

Though multiple users have been taking advantage of this new feature — myself included — no one has used it more than Whos_Agent. In his own words:

“I’m probably the biggest user of base.report. I’d be surprised if anyone uses it more than me. I’m definitely a power user — I just get extreme value out of the software.”

We sat down for a chat about theme trading.

The importance of themes

Why are themes so important in trading?

I think themes are by far the biggest edge you can get in the market as a swing trader, particularly if you combine them with risk management and execution.

Themes are constantly around. They’re present during all market cycles — including bad markets. And if you can catch a ‘super theme’ early enough [each year tends to have at least two], and ride it out, this alone could double or even triple your account.

But regardless of whether the theme is ‘super’, there’s always a reason for an outbreak in the stock market — for momentum to pick up in a stock. And when you’ve got a strong move in one stock, you should be looking for other potential plays — other stocks with a similar operation to that initial strong mover.

From what I’ve seen, if a theme is at play, at least two more stocks will make a strong, correlated move. You want to capitalise on that. But it can be tricky to figure out the theme.

Why can figuring out the theme be challenging?

Because industries and sectors don’t necessarily correlate to themes.

For example, not so long ago, the nuclear theme was in play. Stocks from utilities, energy, basic materials, and other sectors were moving. There was even a stock in machinery — $SMR — that was going because it develops and sells reactor nuclear power plants.

Themes aren’t limited to industry ties, either. They might be grouped by objectives, or even be news-driven — like Chinese stocks a couple of months ago, which were getting a pump due to the government bailout they received.

Mind you, ‘China stocks’ is a wide grouping, but you could break that down further — ‘Chinese EVs’, for example.

Why do you think traders — particularly beginners — tend to prioritise technicals over themes?

I think most traders overlook how important themes are because low-effort technical trading works well enough by itself during the right periods.

You can literally just run your scans, add stocks to a watchlist, set entries and stops, and follow some ‘magical’ moving average. No further thinking required, because this makes you millions — or so we’ve been told. And it does, but only if you trade during all the right periods.

The ‘catch’ is that this is a super inconsistent way of trading — it works maybe 20% of the time. Which is reflected in the typical win rates of breakouts traders: in the 20–25% range.

For me, that just wasn’t good enough. I felt I could do better — which is when I properly committed to theme trading, some two-plus years ago. But it took me so long to commit because I believed it was possible to get great returns with far less effort.

How to identify themes

How can you identify themes?

The key to identifying a strong theme is to find momentum within a group of stocks that’s driven by a clear, identifiable reason.

Again, themes in the market are diverse and complex. They can also be obscure. My recommendation, particularly if you’re new to theme trading, is to focus on themes driven by objective factors, like industry connection or news.

I usually identify themes by comparing the biggest moves of the day or the week and looking for similar chart patterns. Ideally, you create pre-existing themed watchlists — which I do within base.report — and then scan within those lists to see which stocks are moving in sync.

Looking for similar charts within a theme makes way more sense than scanning an entire sector or industry, because themes often cut across them.

How exactly do you approach finding themes?

I have two main approaches.

My first method is to scan for the biggest moves of the day, and add stocks with strong, linear moves to my back-watchlist. I update that list daily, after the market closes, adding new strong names and removing stocks that no longer show signs of follow-through.

In terms of theme identification, when I notice multiple stocks in one sector or industry showing strong momentum, that signals to me that I should investigate further.

My second method is to go over the biggest moves of the week. Again, I’m looking for themes: where are multiple stocks from the same group making a significant move? What theme or themes are coming into play?

Then, once I’ve identified the theme[s], I check whether other stocks in that group are developing similar chart patterns — through consolidation, for example. Where I’m seeing clear setups, I add those stocks to my focus list.

And if I see multiple names in one group breaking out on the same day, that’s an even stronger signal that the theme is in play. That’s when I start looking for entries.

How to build themed watchlists

Earlier, you mentioned pre-existing themed watchlists — like the custom theme lists you can build within base.report, I presume. What themed lists have you built, or will you be building?

In the base.report Discord, I shared a list of themes I used as my starting point.

I’ve since expanded the list, but I still think it’s a good place to start if you’re just beginning to get into theme trading — in part because it concentrates on objective factors, like industry connections.

But no matter your approach — broad or detailed, focused on objective themes or not — I strongly recommend people build their own lists. Do the work yourself. That’s how you’ll truly improve your overall awareness of how stocks fit into each other, and how the market is doing.

That said, I also recommend using ChatGPT to help with this process.

How do you use ChatGPT to help build your themed watchlists?

It’s a great tool to help fill out your lists, and to figure out what companies do. While ChatGPT isn’t smarter than you — not yet, anyway — it’s certainly faster than you.

What I do is I copy my back-watchlist into ChatGPT, prompting it:

Please tell me what themes these stocks fall into and what they have in common. Also give me a
			breakdown of the main operations of the company and group the stocks by operations.

ChatGPT will then spit out like themes, like this:

Of course, ChatGPT gets things wrong, so always verify its outputs, but it’ll set you on the right path. It can also help confirm biases — like, with this back-watchlist, my bias was that oil and gas equipment seemed really strong, which ChatGPT confirmed:

I wasn’t convinced about it including $CRGY and $CRK in oil and gas equipment, by the way. And ChatGPT can miss stuff, too! But it can also catch the odd name I’d missed from my themed list.

Again, ChatGPT just puts you on the right track. It’s then your job to do the rest of the legwork.

Besides confirming your biases, how else might ChatGPT help you with theme trading?

ChatGPT can also pick up on themes I’d missed — for example, in that same week when I thought oil and gas equipment was strong, it picked up on the strength of real estate:

But, again, the big benefit of ChatGPT is that it saves you time and puts you on the right track. I really believe this is one of the fastest and simplest ways to get you started with themes.

It’s certainly way better than relying on TC2000 for themes — it’ll only tell you sector and industry, not theme.

How do you form your biases around themes to begin with?

From going through my day-to-day process — my day-to-day preparation, as outlined earlier.

I look for the day’s [and week’s] biggest movers, add those to my back-watchlist, and look for multiple strong names belonging to the same industry group — that suggests a theme may be at play.

Using custom themes in base.report

How do you use base.report’s theme feature?

The main way I use it is to confirm my bias. A quick check is all it takes:

Themes table — **Note**: This table provides Whos_Agent (and other users) with an overview of how well a theme has performed over different time frames.

I don’t think technology has advanced enough yet for traders to be able to 100% rely on software — any software — to identify themes, but tools like ChatGPT and base.report certainly help speed up the process. And they can help you catch names you may have missed within a theme!

How else does base.report help with your trading in terms of themes?

I can go into an individual theme to see whether all the stocks within it are going the same way. Here’s crypto as an example:

I can just scroll through all the charts to see whether the individual stocks I added to a specific theme are heading in the same direction.

You can only benefit from these base.report features after you’ve created [or imported] your themed watchlists. How do you go about this part of the process?

If we take energy as an example again, I’d start with the theme group: oil and gas.

Then, I’d add the individual oil and gas themes:

Drilling
Integrated
Midstream
Equipment
Natural gas
Alternative energy
Traditional processing
Refining and marketing

Themes are going to cross over, by the way — that’s just unavoidable. Big companies often deal in multiple things: $TSLA fits into multiple themes, $NVDA fits into multiple themes, and so on.

The same thing applies to oil and gas: you’re going to get companies that fit into both, say, traditional processing and natural gas.

How long does this process take you?

Doing my own research and verifying my lists with ChatGPT takes me perhaps an hour per theme — at least, it did historically.

But base.report recently added an ability to scan for stocks based on a keyword in the description of what the company does — “drone”, for example, or “sports betting”:

For sports betting, I wouldn’t include all those names — I’d remove the casino names, for example. But my old approach took me an hour — whereas this base.report filter, combined with ChatGPT, took me five minutes. Plus, it caught a name I’d missed: $SRAD.

I’d want to do more testing first, but this looks like a very promising approach — at least for certain themes. It’s like an easy ‘starter pack’ for creating themes.

Five minutes is insanely fast for creating brand-new theme lists, and the result wasn’t noticeably worse compared to my hour-long approach, despite having a couple years’ experience theme trading.

Maintaining your themed watchlists

You’ve taken us through the prep work. What about watchlist maintenance — does the work diminish with time?

Nope, my work practically never ends.

I’m always checking my themes and looking for new ones. I’m always looking to figure out why stocks are moving.

That said, while themes rotate, old themes do return. And when they come back, your previous work gives you a head start. Nonetheless, you have to stay on top of your work to catch the latest themes.

Again, this is arguably your biggest edge as a swing trader.

Try base.report for free

Are you ready to give base.report a go? You can use our screener right away here — no strings attached.

If you also want to start building custom themed watchlists and saving scans, sign up for free here. You’ll get full access to all features for 30 days. We won’t ask for a credit card, so your trial won’t auto-renew.

Give us your feedback!

We’re always looking to improve base.report. Many enhancements are a direct result of user feedback. And we incorporate most feedback within weeks, if not days!

Please email us at [email protected] or join us on Discord. Whether you want to share feedback or have a question, we’re always happy to help!

How to Use ChatGPT and base.report to Build Your Themed Watchlists

Interview with Whos_Agent on theme trading and its importance