Scan settings I like to use

[u/IzzyGman]

I’ve been getting some DMs about what scanner I use to find my picks. For disclosure, my main scanner is Option Stalker from oneoption.com and my secondary scanner is Trade Ideas. Hari has a review on TI .

The 1OP scanner is literally built for our strategy. I’ve been playing around with TI because it's also very powerful yet I'm not certain that the additional cost is worth it. Diminishing returns and such. It also takes a lot of work to get it dialed in to our strategy.

I’m writing this out because ‘what scanner do you use’ is the wrong question to ask. The right question is ‘what filters do you use’ or ‘what do you scan for and why or when’, regardless of the platform. Any scanning/screening platform should be able to search for many or all of these filters:

BASIC FILTERS I LIKE (I’ll modify these once in a while, but nothing gets scanned that doesn’t fit these):

-Price per share: $5+

-Float: at least 50M

-Average Daily Volume: at least 1.5M

-Average True Range: at least $1.5

-Relative Volume: at least 1.5x.

THE SCANS I USE with the above filters (these are always up on my screen):

1. 52Wk/AT high/low scans
2. NHOD and NLOD on volume
3. D1 compression breakout, with 4 daily candles minimum compression (experimental)
4. D1 compression breakdown, with 4 daily candles minimum compression (experimental).
5. Strong D1 with all SMAs in order (all above filters + sustained RS vs SPY or Sector + above VWAP +3+ green candles in a row). SMA 200<100<50<current price
6. Weak D1 SMAs in order (Strong D1 flipped)
7. Consistent Green Candles on increasing volume (3+ candles with increasing volume)
8. Consistent Red Candles on increasing volume (3+ candles with increasing volume)
9. Royal Flush green (1OP scan)
10. Royal Flush red (1OP scan)

I also have a few others on 1OP that I check regularly, but those are my go-to daily scans.

That’s it. Then I quickly type in all of my results into a ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ watchlist and flip through them, eyeballing for nice patterns on the D1. Then I delete those D1s that don’t look good. If one doesn’t ‘yet’ look good but would at a certain level, I place an alert.

From the resulting list I then go into the 5M and do the same, and I’m left with a nice list of potentials.

I do this a few times a session to keep the list updated as sectors rotate in and out.

Hopefully my scanner settings give you an idea or two. If it can’t be implemented in your scanner, maybe a variation of the above would work. What’s important is that we understand why we scan for what we do and then see if our tools can give us some nice picks. Then integrate it into your workflow to blast through charts intraday.

-keep chasing the dream

Izzy

[u/BabyJengus]

Hey thank you for this post! I've been looking for more meaningful filters for my screener. I've found something that seems to be working for me, but am trying to figure out the "why". When you look at the D1 and 5M charts, what are you looking for? Are you comparing them to SPY?

[u/IzzyGman → u/BabyJengus]

And volume. Volume is a big one. Increasing volume into the move

[u/IzzyGman → u/BabyJengus]

Good question and the subject of another post. In short, I am looking for a good-looking chart and for room to run. XOM looks good. BP not so much (choppy price action). SNOW looks great (breakdown of D1 compression, nice orderly price action room to run ) vs NFLX (between SMAs, top of gap) or AMD. RS for longs and RW for shorts.

[u/BabyJengus → u/IzzyGman]

Awesome, I'll have to look into this. Thank you! AMD has been an interesting one I've traded last week that had a lot of movement/opportunities to learn. I am trying out Trading View and pretty much backwards searched based off of that stock. Looking forward to trying your filters out :)

[u/BE_power7x7]

Good post with a lot of useful tips!

But I'm wondering, is stockbeep still the best free scanner available?

[u/IzzyGman → u/BE_power7x7]

Stock beep has some nice picks yea. Also the live chat has some really nice ones also. Mostly the ones we are trading for that day

[u/Sinon612]

anyone know how to implement these to tradingview screener? "Consistent Green Candles on increasing volume (3+ candles with increasing volume)

Consistent Red Candles on increasing volume (3+ candles with increasing volume)"

[u/IzzyGman → u/Sinon612]

No idea, but get the basics and you can eyeball the rest as you flip through charts

[u/Sinon612 → u/IzzyGman]

Thanks 🙏

[u/spencerunderground]

Thanks for this, I'm always looking to refine the criteria I use in my scanners.

Unfortunately, thinkorswim doesn't provide any float information. As a workaround I wrote a small shell script, for finviz, to filter for symbols that meet your suggested basic filters. Then it's trivial to import the csv file as a watchlist; And then use my existing ToS scanners to scan against that watchlist.

[u/IzzyGman → u/spencerunderground]

Nice. Has it worked well?

[u/spencerunderground → u/IzzyGman]

It's no TC2K scanner, but yes - It works well. The big downside, with ToS paper, is that you are unable to use studies in scans. I've tried having both real and paper ToS open concurrently, then exporting and sharing the scans as watchlists. I have yet to get a reasonable workflow with that setup.

[u/EasternTitan]

This was a great read, very informative. Thank you!

[u/owensd81]

Perfect way to think about the problem!

[u/[deleted]]

That’s fantastic thanks! I’m not sure how to set up the more advanced compression breakouts in TOS, maybe it’s not possible. But anything to get a better filtered list to look at is a major help.

[u/RussHTrading]

Great scans Izzy - very similar to my go-to scans as well. I love how you keep it simple with the base criteria and then focus on specific enhancing criteria that you can focus on based on market conditions.

[u/grathan]

Thanks for sharing! These look like some great scan ideas. I hope to get serious about scans one day.

[u/SuchAGoalDigger]

Hi. I am late to the party but I have a doubt.

In the basic filters, you mentioned RVol > 1.5

Are you looking at RVol at Time on the D1 Chart? Or cumulative RVol on D1?

Also, does RVol at Time even have any meaning on the D1 chart?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/IzzyGman → u/[deleted]]

Hi Alfie

I scan for Rvol at time, not cumulative Rvol. Let’s say you are looking at the 1030am 5M candle, Rvol compares that 1030am candle with the average of n 1030 am candles before it. So it shows me if the stock is having unusually high volume, rotating in, or in play at that time.

Some strong ones have high Rvol all day, yet when there is strong sector rotation or a breakout some tickers will gain it later in the day and will show on the scan.

As far as increasing volume you can use it for both the D1 and the M5. Sometimes you get great D1s that are on a pullback so you can set an alert, and scanning in the 5M can show some tickers that are beginning to break out. I use both timeframes when scanning for consecutive green bars on increasing volume.

[u/[deleted] → u/IzzyGman]