Are Weekend Trades High Reward?

It’s a loaded question, right?

Not every weekend play is gonna work.

Still, I’ve been trading this pattern for over 25 years and it just keeps happening.

And when you get it right, it has the potential to be a solid win.

For me, the key is to be meticulous (and ONLY choose stocks that meet all my criteria).

That means paying attention to more than just “the stock is up on a Friday, so I’m gonna buy and hope for the best.”

And it also means not getting greedy, because even winners can fail fast when the market opens again on Monday.

Let’s take a look at my recent weekend for a better understanding of what I’m looking for…

Breaking Down My Latest Weekend Winner

On Friday, July 17, Southland Holdings Inc. (SLND) had a big contract win through its subsidiary Oscar Renda Contracting of Canada…

Source: Businesswire

SLND spiked nicely on the news and held near its highs for most of the day.

One of my criteria for a weekend play is: The stock should be closing near the high of the day.

SLND’s regular hours high was $1.22 per share.

It wasn’t the most volatile stock (another thing I look for), but it built support near its volume-weighted average price (VWAP) and kept testing the $1.18 area.

But is that enough to take the trade? Maybe.

Even though this 1-year chart looks terrible, you can see two things that caught my attention…

Source: Stocks To Trade

SLND 1-year, daily candle, highest volume in a year, 52-week low hit July 10.

1. Friday’s volume was the highest in the past year by FAR. With a float of only 14.42 million shares, SLND traded 205 million shares on Friday (14X float rotation). In other words, traders were paying attention.

2. It hit a 52-week low on July 10.

That’s counterintuitive, right?

Why would I be interested in a stock that hit a 52-week low only a week before it had news about a contract?

Even if it WAS spiking, is that a high-reward setup?

Think about it this way…

The Company Had Extra Incentive To Close the Deal

I know I’ve said this at least a thousand times, but I’ll keep saying it because you need to know…

Penny stock companies are terrible.

They all need to either raise money or have some big catalyst to keep traders interested (or both).

There’s also an important psychological level at $1 per share. Not to mention the possibility of getting de-listed.

There’s no reason to think SLND was at that point, as it trades on the NYSE American (formerly AMEX).

So there’s no $1 per share minimum bid like Nasdaq stocks. But even the AMEX can de-list a stock eventually if it trades too low for too long.

Also, no company wants to be a true penny stock.

Which means that if it can get a solid contract win, you know it’s going to hype the news going into the weekend.

And that plays perfectly into my Weekend Trader strategy.

Why?

Because even though a lot of traders were paying attention…

Less meticulous traders wouldn’t see the news until the weekend.

My Winning Weekend Trade

Part of the reason I took the trade is because the contract the company won is rather large.

It’s also a multi-year project, which gives it a ton of credibility for similar projects in other communities.

My goal was for it to break the day highs in the $1.20s and cut losses if it couldn’t hold $1 per share.

Source: Stocks To Trade

SLND, 7/17/26 to 7/20/26, 1-minute candles, Weekend Trader strategy.

As you can see, SLND did manage to hold $1 in after-hours and premarket trading. And it did exactly what I wanted it to do at the market open yesterday.

What’s happening THIS weekend?