Wide Bands 3 Days Up/Down Combo Scan / Etc.

by SwingScalp over 1 year ago

As a fairly recent subscriber, I continue to be amazed at the sheer power of SwingTradeBot (STB) to filter out signals based on ideas I am working on for the next trading day or week. Today, I used Wide Bands + Up 3 Days In A Row. And Wide Bands + Down 3 Days In A Row. Found some setups that I will be stalking on April 10th. One super powerful aspect of STB that I had overlooked (my bad!) is under Research > End of Day Scans > All Scans.

I have no idea why I overlooked it because it is truly a gateway to rapidly scanning for ideas and because the user has the option to create tailored Filtered results the user can drill-down rapidly to results and then use the wonderful pop-up Charts by scrolling over the symbols. So now I make sure to include All Scans in my daily/nightly Routines. By the way, have I mentioned that I love the My Routines feature under My Stocks? Really does help with focus and consistency. As I drill-down and filter out setups, then they can go directly into a Watchlist and from there I use the Intraday Alerts frequently throughout the day (keeping a STB window open in a browser and just hitting F5 to refresh). One key aspect of Alerts I have found VERY USEFUL is the breakout of the 60 minute opening range alert. I've used that quite a bit to enter into trades (and to occasionally to fade the breakout).

TraderMike over 1 year ago

I'm glad you mentioned the "All Scans" page. That was one of the first pages I made and I've fallen out of the habit of checking it. I'll have to add it to my routine(s) as well.

One clarification about that page is that the "filtered" column is based on a system defined set of parameters (minimum price & average volume) and is NOT adjustable on a person by person basis.

Thanks for sharing your combo scan. I've been meaning to start a thread for people to share their favorite Combo Scans.

I see that ENVX popped up on "Wide Bands + Down 3 Days In A Row" & I'm wondering if that's one you'll be stalking on the Monday. I added ENVX to my "Ready for Entry" watchlist last night based on seeing it in the Calm After Storm scan results.

I'm also glad that you like & are using the routines. The idea for that was sparked by a couple of things:

I had so many instances of missing stocks / setups solely because I forgot or neglected to run a certain scan the night before.
Something I read in IBD or one of William O'Neil's books about the importance of having a routine.

SwingScalp over 1 year ago

On ENVX, my bad thought it was a biotech. I dug deeper and now know it is a 3D printing / silicon lithium-ion battery company. Has pulled back to its 150 day moving-average. Next floor-trader pivots down are 11.99 and 11.11 on the daily chart (from Barchart.com). Interesting funnymentals though with Fab-2 opening in Malaysia with a "step-function improvement in production capacity." Given my bearish outlook I would look to buy on a deep pullback, perhaps floor-trader pivot on the 3Y weekly chart using weekly pivots (Barchart.com) around 9.38 which is the next pivot point down from its current level if it breaks hard below 12.31.

TraderMike over 1 year ago

I should add that the primary reason I fell out of the habit of using the All Scans page is because my primary usage of that page was to sort it by the "vs. Avg" column in order to see which signals had an unusually high number on a given day. Once I created the Market Recap / Overview page its "Unusually Active Signals for the Day" & "Top 5 Technical Signals for the Day" sections gave me a highlight of the same info. But I do think it's worthwhile to go deeper into the list of unusually active signals.

SwingScalp over 1 year ago

Thanks for the further insights / feedback TraderMike. Yes, system defined minimum price and average volume, but those are user-defined under Account > EOD Scan Filter Settings, right? In my case I currently have those set to minimum $4 and 400,000 volume. So when I look at the All Scans page and look at the number of symbols that are Filtered the number reflects my EOD Scan Filter Settings? Or are they filtered on a basis that you define to the system and I am not correctly interpreting how it works?

I did not select ENVX, but noted that you are following it, and why, and I will follow it on a different watchlist. I trade a lot of biotechs and they can be especially good for swings when they gather a bunch of attention.

The Market Recap / Overview page is really useful.

A new twist I did in creating a fresh Watchlist for Monday the 10th (I am looking for shorts) is I used several different bearish scans and selected about 25 names. In the Notes area in the Watchlist I put a note in for each symbol so I could then sort by 180 Bearish; 20 Day Resistance; Bearish Engulfing; Jack-in-the-Box Bearish; Lizard Bearish; etc. and start to track and get a better sense of which signals work best for me under different market conditions.

There is so much Power in your database that I feel I'm just scratching the surface in these first few weeks of being a subscriber. Works great for review, for idea generation, for intraday monitoring, etc. I'm finding that if my review and idea generation are pretty good, and if I use the intraday alerts well, then I am better able to stalk trades and get better entries and, importantly, I'm not missing some great trades because the Intraday Alerts, like breakout of 60 minute opening range or volume spike keep me abreast of price movement. When I see something in the alerts that I want to delve into it takes like 5 seconds to pop-up the chart with a mouse rollover, get a strong visual and then I can put the symbol into my broker's platform and take action.

TraderMike over 1 year ago

So there's a system default set of scan parameters that gets applied by default (for a non-subscriber or a person who isn't logged in). I think of that as a reasonable default tradable universe of stocks. That's what it uses for those filtered counts. For the US version of SwingTradeBot it uses a minimum average volume of 250,000 shares and a minimum price of $10.

It's that way because otherwise that page would take forever to load. The system would have to run every single scan with each user's particular filters to get all the counts. It would probably take a few minutes for the page to load. And if a few people tried to load that page at the same time my web server would probably freeze up. Instead, the system calculates the counts once using the default parameters & stores them so the page will load quickly.

Now if you actually click on one of those filtered counts to run the scan it *WILL* apply your particular default params. So you'll likely see a different number of results than the number that you clicked on. I know that's kinda weird but it's something I had to do for performance reasons & I think it's "good enough" to get the point across of what the market did on a given day.

If you click one of the *unfiltered* counts, that runs a scan with the params set to a minimum volume of 0 & a minimum price of 0 & then it merges in your other default params (max price, market cap, ETFs or not, etc).

SwingScalp over 1 year ago

Got it, very clear explanation and totally makes sense from a system design/performance perspective. I did notice yesterday when I focused on the All Scans page that I got "a different number of results than the number that I clicked on." But I was quite pleased with the data extracted. Saturday morning now and reviewed my list of possible shorts again for Monday and I'm pretty happy with it. I know the indices reflect a bullish bias, but the market breadth, as several sharp pundits have pointed out this weekend, is pretty weak. I sense the "long and variable lags" of interest rates going from ZIRP to a 5% world are now starting to bite and bite really hard.

SwingScalp over 1 year ago

I meant that I could sort notes and then the sort would be alphabetically arranged by the bearish signals I used. I can quickly see how many of each signal. Then when I do end-of-day review and I can quickly see how each symbol and each signal performed.