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Looking for a good scanner to find trending leveraged instruments/ ETF's like the eMini... for day and swing trading. Im reading: The Trading Book, Anne-Marie Baiynd ... In the intro she mentions her go to scanner at the time of writing ... alphascanner.com ... The site no longer exists. Anyone know about this site? Did they change or completely go away? If it went away completely... is there another scanner that works well?
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Thank you for the link. I will dig down and try to figure it out.
I am brand new at this. I want to find trending futures with high volume and liquidity.
I use TOS and just now found their scanner as well.
I am not sure which criteria to input in the fields in order to bring back useful search results... Any feedback in that area would be much appreciated.
I am studying the eMini and light crude ... and want to research other futures to swing and day trade.
My study material tells me not to start out learning/ paper trading in a choppy situation. Look for trending instruments for ease of learning and higher probability of initial succes. So that is what I am trying to figure out right now.
I am also studying how to trade options on SPY with the intention of learning to trade other options later. I use the VIX as my primary tool to watch for volatility spikes in the SPY as an indication that the potential for markup is strong within the next few days .
Based on your stated goals, I suggest you start with the TOS scan for volatility breakouts, bollinger band breakouts, TTMS breakouts. Run it on longer term time frames: like 30 minute , or 60 minute, daily or even weekly. Some of the best trends start with weekly volatility breakouts.
You can run that on large cap stocks as well, like: GOOG, NFLX, AAPL ... Just set the stock scan to filter for breakouts on stocks with high daily ATR and price above $100.
I just talked to a friend about it. Based on the limited amount of money that I will use to initially fund my acct... He strongly suggested that I stick to futures because of the ability to leverage. He further explained that there are only 8 or 10 Futures that have enough volume to be worth the time and most of them ... perhaps excluding the eMini and light crude... most of the others tend to be range bound. I will work on perfecting a range trading strategy in those instances.
I guess I will have to learn to read the screen ... trend or no trend.
I called TOS trading desk and the guy said that there are currently no tools in place to scan for futures other than to input ... % change.
With such a small field of entities to choose from perhaps I wont need a scanner right now...
That said
Do you happen to know of any scanners that would help me to locate the criteria you listed above... ( for volatility breakouts, bollinger band breakouts, TTMS breakouts)
Also... If you have anything to add or suggest related to what my friend said ... feel free.
Thnx.
PS
Are there any sites you know of that focus on futures... trading strategies/ indicators/ tools etc.
there is so much information on this site and even the non-subscribed version is really useful. The only standpoint that is not useful from my standpoint is that the site does not do Canadian stocks... it is solely for American stock Exchanges ... including OTCBB if you are into dumpster diving
It is a query based system which makes it so you can customize your scans to exactly what you want.
here is a sample of a query I have used to find stocks for my American Journal on this site.
ok...tomorrow I hope that IDT Corp recovers and does not trip the limit Stop-loss.
I did a search today and think I have come up with a winner.
Cowen Group Inc. [Nasdaq:COWN]
Here are the charts that grabbed my attention
It has taken over 5 years …
I use this scanner only to find possible stocks....it is a screener afterall... not perfect in all ways. Once I find possibles I then subject them to my normal TA to identify stocks I would invest in.
The query language is very simple but very powerful... almost like English
this is a query that I made to identify stocks that are nearing a BB squeeze and hence ready to break out. Note: the upper right circle... there is a user manual which describes in detail.... make sure you have a lot of printer ink if you print it out as it is huge.... It is available free to subscriber and non-subscriber alike.
As a non subscriber you can only see yesterday's results and only returns 5 at a time. You get much more fexibility as a subscriber of course.... but by narrowing your price range and repeated query tests you can get all the returns... inconvenient yes...but doable.
There are many many examples to look at as shown in the next graphic
you can look at their indicator and parameter definitions and you can click on one (BBwidth) in this example and you can see sample code and how it is used....not exactly what you want... well you see the example and parameters it uses... experiment.
The forums on this site are FANTASTIC!!!! You can see all of them as a non-subscriber... but cannot post your issues unless you are a subscriber.
The above sample shows an example of ETF's.... there is no way to identify ETF's on the fly.... however as I have circled you can create a list of ETF's that interest you and add or subtract from that list.
Conclusion
The ABSOLUTELY ONLY reason I do not subscribe to this site is that 99.9% of my trading is in Canadian stocks and they do not now (but used to years ago) do the Canadian markets or any other market other than American exchanges.
On the infrequent times I need a handle on an American stock... I live with what I can get on a non-subscriber basis. I got inspired to create an American journal and after stumbling around for a month or so I remembered this website and modified an old query ... my American journal is up 2% and climbing since then.
I'll even bet if you have a customizable query based system in your trading platform already, this site would be useful in modifying existing queries in your platform after seeing what is done here.
I really wish we had such a tool for Canadian stocks.... though I could look at the few that also list on American exchanges.
Thanks much!
Im thinking this info will be a great addition to my tool box.
Perhaps you can convince some computer geek to build a system, or find that old retired software program ... with focus on the Canadian niche... and make a fortune on subscriptions...
If you're just going to focus on a few futures contracts, why do you need a scanner? Just look at a chart higher than the timeframe you want to trade, and you can see if it's trending or not visually, no need for complicated scanners. Scanners are useful for stock trading because there are so many stocks that can be traded, and it's a pain to have to pull up a chart of 100s of stocks every day, but if you're just going to focus on S&P and oil futures, just look at, for example, a daily chart if you are trading the 1hr or lower chart and trade the lower timeframe chart in the direction of the higher timeframe trend.
Here are daily charts on oil and S&P futures. Which direction do you think they are trending, if at all?
I agree with your reasoning.
From the reading I've been doing I thought a scanner was necessary immediately. I realize after all the feedback that it isnt something that I need now... It looks like a tool for the future. After I start investing using the house's money ...
I know, as the charts show, that oil is trending down and the ES has been in an up trend but peppered with a lot of chop lately... most lately a 2 or 3 wk pullback. I have been focused on the ES almost exclusively and am beginning to get a handle on how those traders act based on tech indicators ... mostly using multiple time frames, SMA's and the SMI crossover at support and resistance. Still trying to figure out how to trust a Bollinger Band. ... and not think it is a Bollinger Bandit.
Maybe I should switch over to Crude for a while. I havent actually looked at it lately til you put the chart in front of me...
I didnt realize til my conversation with a friend on the phone this AM that I should stick to what I have been doing... at least for now.
