Investing in real estate is a good way to diversify your portfolio and move some of your financial risk away from the stock market. Many traders turn to REITs (real estate investment trusts) to easily invest in portfolios of properties. 

With hundreds of REITs available in the US, it’s important to be able to quickly sort through companies and find winning opportunities. Today, we’ll explain how to evaluate a REIT and show you how to build a REIT scanner using Scanz.

What are REITs?

REITs, or real estate investment trusts, are companies that own real estate. REITs are similar to mutual funds in that they pool investors’ money to buy an asset. Instead of buying stocks, though, REITs purchase properties or even mortgage debt.

A typical REIT might own a portfolio of several dozen properties, each of which generates revenue through rent. That rental income is then distributed to investors as dividends. In addition, the value of a REIT can increase over time as the value of its holdings grows.

REITs can be traded publicly on the stock exchange, or they can be private investments. If you invest in a private REIT, expect to find a minimum investment amount and rules around how long you must stay invested before you can get your capital back. Many investors prefer publicly traded REITs because they are more liquid. You can also invest in REITs through real estate-focused ETFs. 

What to Look for in a REIT

REITs operate somewhat differently than most traditional companies. Instead of producing a product or offering a service, these companies make money by owning properties and renting them out. If you’re new to REIT investing, it’s important to know what factors what to consider when choosing a REIT. 

Types of REITs

There are several different types of REITs based on the types of real estate that these companies invest in:

Retail REITs own shopping centers and malls. These make up nearly one-quarter of REITs, and their fate is tied to the fate of the retail industry. Take a close look at what tenants are in a REIT’s properties, especially since the retail sector has been distressed in recent years.

Office REITs own commercial office buildings. Once again, it’s important to consider what tenants are in a REIT’s properties and whether they are likely to stay. It’s also worth thinking about the economic trajectory of the cities that a REIT’s properties are in.

Healthcare REITs invest in hospital buildings, medical offices, rehab centers, and nursing and retirement homes. These REITs are closely intertwined with the US medical system and depend heavily on insurance reimbursements. Healthcare properties are a complex niche, so make sure that a REIT has plenty of experience with this type of real estate.

Residential REITs own single- and multi-family homes and apartment buildings. This sector has been extremely hot in recent years, especially for companies that own properties in regions where the cost of housing is high (e.g. California and New York). Residential REITs succeed when more people are renting rather than buying their own homes, and when the population of an area is increasing.

Mortgage REITs invest in mortgages rather than properties themselves. They generate revenue from loan repayments and interest. Mortgage REITs lose value when interest rates go up, so carefully consider national economic conditions before investing in this type of company.

Dividends and Appreciation

REITs generate returns in two ways: through dividends and through share price appreciation. How much money a REIT pays out in dividend each year varies widely among companies. Some choose to distribute the majority of profits, while others keep a significant amount of profit to reinvest in new properties.

When choosing a REIT, consider what balance of fixed income and exposure to a changing stock price you desire.

Management Team

While the management team at any company is important, it’s especially crucial for REITs. Look for companies that are managed by an expert team that has years of experience in the market niche the REIT occupies. The longer a company has been around, the more likely it is to have a strong foothold in its area and an economy of scale when it comes to managing its properties.

How to Build a REIT Scanner

The easiest way to find the right REIT for you is to use the Easy Scanner module in Scanz. You can scan for REITS by selecting ‘Real Estate’ under the ‘Sectors’ menu. The Easy Scanner also enables you to further narrow your search to different real estate sub-sectors like ‘REIT-Office’ and ‘REIT-Retail.’

Once your real estate scan is set up, you can adjust the scanner view to find REITs that are of interest. Sort by % Change to see what REITs are posting big price movements on the day. Or, use % Off 52 Low to see what REITs have posted a significant gains over the past year.

It’s also a good idea to check on the trading volume around a REIT. You can sort REITs by Volume and add a column for x10 ADV to see how the day’s volume compares to the 10-day average volume. Avoid REITs that are trading with low volume, since low liquidity makes it hard to open and close your position.

Once you’ve found a prospective REIT, you can inspect it more closely using the Montage module. Here, you can inspect and analyze the technical chart using a variety of indicators. The Montage also includes news headlines around that REIT, which may give more insight into recent price movements.

Conclusion

Investing in REITs offers a way to diversify your portfolio while getting exposure to a wide range of real estate holdings. REITs typically offer both dividend yield and price appreciation, but it’s important to consider whether a specific company focuses more on investor payouts or reinvestment in new properties. With Scanz, it’s easy to find high-performing REITs in any subsector so you can start investing in real estate.

One of the most difficult aspects of analyzing stock price charts is looking at noisy price data. While volatility is critical for profitable trading, it can also make it tricky to spot price trends.

Moving averages help traders cut through the noise and quickly spot directional price movements. In particular, moving average crossovers can provide critical information about stocks’ momentum and trend changes over time.

In this guide, we’ll explain how you can put moving average crossovers to work for you and show you how to scan for moving average crossover using Scanz.

If you are new to using moving averages in your scans, make sure to check out this video first:

What is a Moving Average?

A moving average is a simple technical indicator that smooths out price data over time. A basic moving average simply calculates the average closing price of a stock over a set number of previous days. So, to determine the 10-day moving average, you could add up the closing price of a stock on each of the past 10 days and then divide by 10.

You can calculate a 10-day moving average like this every day. Then draw a line connecting the points to form a moving average overlay, like the kind that is used in most stock charting software.

Importantly, there are two different types of moving averages: simple moving averages and exponential moving averages.

Simple moving averages work as in the example above. Each day’s closing price is weighted equally to calculate the overall moving average.

Exponential moving averages use a more complicated calculation that gives more weight to recent price data. So, in the example above, yesterday’s closing price would have a bigger impact on the moving average than the closing price from 10 days ago. Many traders prefer exponential moving averages because they are more responsive to recent price action than simple moving averages.

Another thing to note is that moving averages can be applied over any timeframe. Moving averages that use the daily closing prices are common, but so are moving averages calculated based on one-minute, 15-minute price intervals, or even weekly price intervals.

What is a Moving Average Crossover?

While a single moving average provides a lot of information, traders can get even deeper insights by looking at two different moving averages for a single stock. For example, it is possible to compare a plot of the 10-day moving average for a stock to the 50-day moving average for the same stock.

The two moving averages are said to experience a crossover when the 10-day moving average line crosses above or below the 50-day moving average line.

The Significance of Moving Average Crossovers

Moving average crossovers are closely watched by traders because they can indicate a shift in a stock’s price momentum or direction. For example, consider what it means when a 10-day moving average crosses from below a 50-day moving average to above it. Such a crossover happens because the stock has recently gained ground at a faster pace that it had been. This can mean that the stock is picking up price momentum or that it is experiencing a reversal after a downtrend.

Moving average crossovers can also signal bearish price action. If a short-term moving average crosses below a longer-term moving average, that indicates that recent price action has been more sharply downward compared to movement in the past.

Based on that, moving average crossovers provide key information about how a stock’s price trend may be changing. Looking for crossovers can be important for identifying trade entry and exit points. 

How to Build Moving Average Crossover Scans

To create moving average crossover scans with Scanz, we’ll use the Pro Scanner. This allows us to fully customize the timeframe of the moving averages we’re interested in so that crossovers are relevant to your trading strategy.

Let’s start with basic crossover scan that is looking for instances where the 50-day moving average recently crossed above the 200-day moving average:

Exponential Moving Average (Daily, 50) is greater than ANALYTIC Exponential Moving Average (Daily, 200) by 1% AND Less

The ‘by’ parameter is important because it ensures that the screen turns up only recent crossovers. However, it is important to analyze the price charts of stocks that turn up in the results in order to make sure that a bullish crossover has actually happened, and not that the 50-day moving average has dropped to within 1% of the 200-day moving average.

Comparing the 50- and 200-day moving averages can be very useful for swing traders, but day traders may be more interested in moving average crossovers on shorter timescales. In that case, you can create a similar scan that compares the 10-day to the 20-day moving average:

Exponential Moving Average (Daily, 10) is greater than ANALYTIC Exponential Moving Average (Daily, 20) by 1% AND Less

It’s also possible to create scans for bearish crossovers. In that case, you would search for stocks for which the short-term moving average crossed below the long-term moving average:

Exponential Moving Average (Daily, 10) is less than ANALYTIC Exponential Moving Average (Daily, 20) by 1% AND Less

Conclusion

Moving average crossovers provide important information about changing price trends and momentum. These crossovers are relatively easy to interpret and simple to scan for, making them a helpful data point for many traders. With Scanz, you can use the Pro Scanner module to create highly customizable moving average crossover scans that fit any trading strategy.

Traders are always on the lookout for stocks that are experiencing high volatility. One of the best ways to spot these stocks is by looking at trading volume, or the number of shares that are changing hands in a given time period.

Even better, traders can compare volume at any time against a baseline to look for unusual trading activity that could signal opportunity. Relative volume, as this is known, is widely used by traders to find stocks to trade, confirm trading setups, and more.

In this guide, we’ll explain the concepts behind relative volume and show you how to create a relative volume scanner with Scanz.

What is ‘Relative’ Volume?

Volume is simply the number of shares of a stock being traded in a given timeframe. This can provide some information about a stock’s liquidity, but absolute volume isn’t all that helpful on its own. The absolute trading volume around a popular stock like Apple will almost always be higher than the absolute volume around a penny stock. 

Instead, most traders care about relative volume. Relative volume is a ratio that compares trading volume in a current timeframe against average trading volume over a past timeframe. That way, traders can compare current trading activity around Apple against past trading activity around Apple, rather than against an unrelated stock.  

For example, relative volume might compare the number of shares of Apple being traded today to how many shares of Apple were traded on each of the past 10 days. If the resulting ratio is greater than one, it signals that more shares are being traded today than is normal for Apple stock.

Importantly, relative volume is flexible in what types of timeframes it can be applied to. You can compare a whole day’s trading volume to past days or, say, the volume in a 15-minute trading interval against earlier 15-minute intervals that day.

The Importance of Analyzing Volume

Relative volume is a key metric for stock traders because it provides information about what stocks are receiving attention from the market. Stocks that have high relative volume also typically have high volatility, which presents opportunities for day trading. Stocks that have low relative volume are probably not going to be ‘in play’ for most trading strategies.

In fact, in many trading strategies, relative volume plays a critical role. High relative volume around a breakout, for example, is typically a sign that the price movement is supported by the market. The same breakout with low relative trading volume might be more suspect and traders would need to be wary of a reversal.

Relative volume can also be useful in analyzing momentum stocks. If a stock is marching steadily upward with increasing volume, that’s a good sign that the momentum will continue. On the other hand, declining relative volume even as the price continues to increase can be a sign of slowing momentum and an impending reversal.  

How to Build a Relative Volume Scanner

Building a relative volume scanner in Scanz is a fast and easy way to identify trading opportunities. As we noted, stocks with high relative volume are often experiencing high price volatility and may be in the midst of a trading setup that is strongly supported by market activity.

There are two ways to build a relative volume scanner in Scanz: using the Breakouts Scanner and using the Pro Scanner. We’ll show you how to use both.

Using the Breakouts Scanner

The Breakouts Scanner is designed to quickly surface stocks that are trading with higher than average volume. In the Volume Breakouts menu, simply choose a timeframe to compare the day’s volume against. The results will show all stocks that have a higher trading volume in the current session compared to the average daily volume over a selected number of previous days.

The Breakouts Scanner includes stocks that are trading with low absolute volume by default. However, you can set a minimum volume threshold using the Filters menu. For most mid- and large-cap stocks, an absolute volume threshold of 500,000 shares is typically a good cutoff.

Another way to use the Breakouts Scanner to your advantage is to also search for price breakouts. That way, you can quickly see what stocks are setting new highs or lows on strong trading volume – a sign of support from the market.

Using the Pro Scanner

The Pro Scanner gives you more granular control over the timeframes you are comparing when considering relative volume. For example, with the Pro Scanner, you can look for stocks with an average trading volume over the past five days that is greater than the average trading volume over the past 30 days:

5 DAY AVG VOLUME is greater than ANALYTIC 30 DAY AVG VOLUME

You can also specify that the five-day average volume is greater by a specific amount, like 10%. It’s also a good idea to specify a minimum absolute volume cutoff to avoid stocks that trade with low liquidity:

5 DAY AVG VOLUME is greater than ANALYTIC 30 DAY AVG VOLUME by 10% AND More

AND

DAY’S VOLUME is greater than or equal to VALUE 500,000

Importantly, using the Pro Scanner also enables you to combine a relative volume scan with other types of scans. So, if you already have a momentum stock screener, for example, you can add relative volume into that scan to only look for momentum stocks that are trading on strong volume.

Conclusion

Analyzing relative volume is a good way to find potential trading opportunities and confirm some types of trading setups like price breakouts. Using Scanz, it’s easy to create a relative volume scanner with either the Breakouts Scanner or Pro Scanner modules.

SEC filings can be an important source of information about companies’ financial health, insider trading, and more. These filings are often studied by traders because of the insights they offer, and unexpected news contained within SEC filings can cause sudden moves in stock prices.

With Scanz, you can easily monitor SEC filings to deeply investigate a company or to stay ahead of breaking market news. Let’s take a look at several different methods for analyzing SEC filings with Scanz.

Find All Filings for a Specific Company

When evaluating a specific company to trade, it can be helpful to quickly browse all recent SEC filings for that company. Scanz makes this easy to do using the Montage window.

To get started, choose a stock from your scan results or select Montage from the home menu and search for a ticker symbol. SEC filings appear along with other company-related headlines under the News tab. Typically, SEC filings are easy to spot because the headlines appear in all-caps white text.

Alternatively, you can search for SEC filings using the News Scanner. Under the News Search tab, enter the ticker symbol of interest and check the Filings option. You can search all filings for the past three months, or limit your search to specific SEC forms or a shorter timeframe depending on your preference.

Create Real-time SEC Filings Scans

Scanz also enables you to create real-time scans for SEC filings using the News Scanner module. To set up a scan for SEC filings, use the scanner’s News tab and select Filings only under the News Types menu.

You can set broad boundaries on your scan by choosing specific exchanges and types of securities to include. Under the Filter tab, you’ll find many more options for tailoring your scan. The Market Cap parameter is a good option for finding companies in a specific size range that you want to trade. In addition, you can use % Change or Current Volume to scan specifically for companies that are reacting strongly to a new SEC filing.

The Keywords Filter tool gives you even more control over your scan. You can include specific companies in your search by listing their names and ticker symbols as keywords. You can also target sector-specific keywords. For example, to find SEC filings for tech stocks, you might include keywords such as ‘tech,’ ‘computing,’ and ‘cloud.’ If you create SEC filings or news scans frequently, you can also create text lists of keywords and import them to Scanz for faster scanner setup.

Once your SEC filings scan is set up, results will appear automatically in the scanner window. By default, results are listed chronologically. However, you can right-click to add columns for price change, trading volume, volatility, and much more and sort your results according to these attributes. This is a useful way to quickly identify stocks that are responding strongly to a just-released SEC filing.

Create SEC Filings Alerts

Scanz makes it easy to stay on top of new SEC filings for companies in your watchlists using alerts. To create SEC Filings alerts, open the Alerts module and select the News tab. Enter a ticker symbol and, under News Types, choose Filings. Then simply click Create New Alert, and Scanz will notify you anytime that company files a new form with the SEC.

Conclusion

SEC filings can provide important information about a company’s financial prospects. These filings are often read by traders as soon as they are released and used to re-evaluate a company’s value. As a result, many companies see significant price action in response to new SEC filings.

With Scanz, it’s easy to stay on top of SEC filings. You can easily find recent filings for any company to aid your stock research or create a custom scan to watch for new filings in a specific market sector or among a subset of companies. Scanz also supports filings alerts, so you can be the first to know when a company on your watchlist releases new information through an SEC filing.

Reversals are exciting trading events. If you can spot them before they happen, a reversal offers a chance to make a major profit as a new bullish or bearish trend takes over. Alternatively, spotting reversals can help you lock in profits on your existing positions before a new price regime develops.

Finding reversals can be tricky, as it requires some detective work. That research starts with scanning for stocks that could potentially be signaling a reversal, but also requires searching for specific technical signals that could anticipate a trend shift. In this article, we’ll explore four different scans you can create with the Scanz Pro Scanner module to identify stocks that are poised for a reversal.

Scanning for an Established Trend 

Before looking at technical indicators that could point to a reversal, it’s essential to limit your scans to only stocks that have an established price trend. That’s because only stocks that have been trending can experience a true reversal. If a stock has been trading in a channel or without a clear pattern, the technical indicators that we use to find reversal candidates may not be reliable.

You can use a combination of moving averages and average directional index (ADX) to scan for trending stocks:

Simple Moving Average (Daily, 10) is greater than or equal to ANALYTIC Simple Moving Average (Daily, 50)

AND

Simple Moving Average (Daily, 50) is greater than or equal to ANALYTIC Simple Moving Average (Daily, 200)

AND

Average Directional Index (Daily, 14) is greater than or equal to VALUE 20

When shorter-term moving averages are stacked above longer-term moving averages, it’s typically because a stock’s price has been moving consistently up over time. In a bearish trend, longer-term moving averages would be stacked on top of shorter-term moving averages. The average directional index is a more direct way to scan for trending stocks – an ADX greater than 20 indicates that a stock’s price has established a trend, regardless of whether the trend is bullish or bearish.

1. Abnormal Volume on Price Reversal

One of the simplest ways to look for potential reversals is to scan for stocks that may already be experiencing a reversal. Many reversals start with a large price jump that bucks the existing trend. If that sudden price change occurs on abnormally high volume, it may be more than a temporary aberration – it could be the start of a reversal.

You can spot these potential reversals by looking for stocks that are up several percent in a single day and are trading with significantly above-average volume:

PERCENT CHANGE is greater than or equal to VALUE 5

AND

DAY’S VOLUME is greater than or equal to ANALYTIC 10 DAY AVG VOLUME by 2 X and More

You can modify the cutoff values in this scan to make it broader or narrower. Also keep in mind that if you’re looking for bearish reversals, you’ll need to scan for a negative percent change. When scanning solely based on price change and volume, it’s important to look at other technical indicators or news that could help confirm the suspected reversal.

2. Moving Average Cross

Moving averages are some of the best indicators you can use to scan for potential trend reversals. Here is an example of a scan you can use to scan for short-term bearish reversals:

Exponential Moving Average (Daily, 10) is less than or equal to ANALYTIC Simple Moving Average (Daily, 20) by 10% and more

AND

Simple Moving Average (Daily, 20) is greater than or equal to ANALYTIC Simple Moving Average (Daily, 50)

The first rule is used to show a change in the short-term trend. With the 10-Day EMA below the 20-Day SMA, we can find stocks where short-term momentum has shifted.

The second rule is to establish that this is actually a reversal of trend and not just a continuation of a downtrend. With the D0-Day SMA over the 50-Day SMA, we can find stocks where the previous trend was an uptrend.

These settings can be tweaked based on the timeframe of the reversal you are looking for. You can also reverse the logic to find bullish reversals.

3. Key Reversal

Key reversals are common one-day chart patterns in which it’s possible to see bears taking over after a bullish trend or vice versa. In a bearish key reversal, a stock opens to new highs, but then is sold until it closes below the previous day’s opening price.

You can spot key reversal patterns by combining several price parameters in the Pro Scanner:

PREV DAY CLOSE is greater than PREV DAY OPEN

AND

DAY OPEN is greater than or equal to ANALYTIC 10 DAY HIGH

AND

LAST is less than ANALYTIC PREV DAY OPEN

Key reversals won’t always trigger an offset moving average cross, so this scan can identify some potential reversals that scan may otherwise miss. However, you should be careful to pull in information about trading volume and other technical indicators before trading on this chart pattern.

4. Out of Bounds Reversal

Another way to look for stocks that are poised for a reversal is to search for stocks that are extremely overbought or oversold. These stocks will not only have an extreme RSI value in the short term, but will be priced outside of the Bollinger Bands that are trailing the existing trend. This scan will not return results for stocks that have already reversed. Instead, it will help you find stocks that are highly overbought/oversold and may be due for a reversal.

You can scan for a bearish reversal buy searching for stocks that are very overbought and for which the latest candlestick opens and closes above the upper Bollinger Band.

Relative Strength Index (Daily, 5) is greater than or equal to VALUE 90

AND

DAY OPEN is greater than or equal to ANALYTIC Bollinger Bands Upper (Daily, 20)

AND

LAST is greater than or equal to ANALYTIC Bollinger Bands Upper (Daily, 20)

To find a bullish reversal, use an RSI less than 10 and search for bars developing below the lower Bollinger Band. Note that this scan can be effectively used on intraday timescales as well as daily timescales. That makes it significantly more versatile for day traders than some of the other reversal scans we looked at.

Anticipating Trend Shifts with Reversal Scans

Trend reversals can be extremely profitable if you can spot them before they fully develop. With these four scans, you can use the Scanz Pro Scanner to identify stocks that are poised for a reversal or are actively experiencing a trend shift. When using these scans, be sure to filter your results to look only at stocks that have an established trend. In addition, it’s important to use multiple technical indicators, stock news, and trading volume to help you confirm a reversal before trading on it.

Building high-quality scans that can help you quickly spot prime trading opportunities is essential to every strategy. With the Scanz Pro Scanner, you can easily develop new trading ideas or fine-tune a scan for existing trading strategy with just a few filters. In this guide, we’ll highly six all-purpose filters that can help you create more nuanced and actionable scans.

1. Moving Averages to Spot Price Trends

Moving averages are among the most helpful filters you can apply to any scan. By scanning for stocks that have a short-term moving average stacked above a long-term moving average, you can limit your results to stocks that are trending upward. As an example, the following scan looks for stocks that are broadly increasing in price over a 10 to 50-day timescale:

Simple Moving Average (Daily, 10) is greater than ANALYTIC Simple Moving Average (Daily, 50)

AND

Simple Moving Average (Daily, 50) is greater than ANALYTIC Simple Moving Average (Daily, 200)

This filter can be easily modified to look for stocks that are trending upward on an intraday timescale as well. To look for bearish stocks, simply reverse the order of the stacking so that the short-term moving average is less than the long-term moving average.

2. ADX to Identify Trending Stocks

The Average Directional Index (ADX) is another powerful filter you can use to scan for trending stocks. This indicator offers a single number that can be used to evaluate the strength of a price trend. An ADX value greater than 25 indicates a trend, while a value greater than 50 indicates a very strong trend.

You can add an ADX filter into any scan with the following parameter:

Average Directional Index (Daily, 14) is greater than VALUE 25

ADX is particularly useful for swing traders, although it can also be used on an intraday timescale to identify sustained movements on the scale of a few hours. Note that ADX is agnostic to the direction of the trend. If you want to only scan for bullish trends, however, you can pair the ADX filter with a bullish stacked moving average scan.

3. RSI to Find Overbought and Oversold Stocks

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is a useful indicator that gives information about when a stock is overbought or oversold relative to its recent price history. If you’re looking for stocks that may offer a value or are nearing a price bottom, you can scan for equities with an RSI value below 30. Alternatively, an RSI value over 70 indicates that a stock is overbought and may be poised for a bearish reversal.

If your trading strategy doesn’t revolve around momentum or you’re looking for stocks that are trading choppily inside a channel, you may be more interested in avoiding stocks that are overbought or oversold. In that case, you can filter out any stocks with a high or low RSI value using this scan:

Relative Strength Index (Daily, 14) is between 30 AND 70

Note that some traders prefer to use RSI values of 20 and 80 to identify oversold and overbought stocks. In addition, RSI may be misleading during times when a stock is trending strongly up or down, since the indicator lags behind changes in price.

4. Declining Short Interest to Catch Bullish Stocks

Looking for a decline in short interest is an interesting way to spot bullish stocks, which may or may not show up in your scans when using other indicators. Short sellers fleeing from a stock may be a sign of strong fundamentals, a positive financial report, or improving conditions in an industry. Alternatively, if a stock already had a high level of short interest, a modest increase in price can trigger a short squeeze – which in turn accelerates the bullish price movement.

You can spot declining short interest with the following scan:

% Change M O M is less than 0

If you want to narrow your search further to stocks that are losing short interest in droves, you may consider changing the scan value to -10 or less. You can find the exact change in short interest in a stock identified by your scan by navigating to Fundamentals > Short Interest in the Charts module.

5. New Highs and Lows to Find Trading Opportunities

Stocks that are hitting new highs or lows offer a number of trading opportunities. Some of these stocks will have strong momentum behind them, propelling them to new highs. Others may meet resistance, lending themselves to consolidation that you can then act on before a renewed price movement. Or, highs and lows may identify peaks and troughs that form immediately before a reversal.

While the exact scenario around each new high and low may differ, it’s easy to add a filter that looks for stocks hitting new highs and lows into your scans:

DAY HIGH is equal to ANALYTIC 52 WEEK HIGH

If you’re interested in stocks that are close to a new high or have hit one in the past few days, you can change the DAY HIGH parameter to the 5 DAY HIGH parameter.

Depending on your trading strategy, it may be worthwhile to filter for RSI as well when looking at new highs and lows. This will give an indication of the price momentum around the high or low.

6. Fundamentals to Find Strong Companies

The Pro Scanner allows you to dive into companies’ fundamental metrics as well as their technical price movements. While you can use fundamentals to search for stocks in a specific market capitalization group, you can also use fundamental parameters to identify companies that are poised for growth. 

There are several ways to go about this, but one example is to look for companies that can pay back their debts either with cash on hand or within several years using net income. This test is a strong way to check whether companies have manageable amounts of long-term debt:

GROSS PROFIT is greater than ANALYTIC DEBT by 5X AND more

AND

CASH is greater than or equal to ANALYTIC DEBT

Keep in mind that this doesn’t provide information about changes in debt or revenue over time, so you may want to do additional research into companies you identify using this filter.

Alternatively, you can build a watchlist of companies that are strong based on earnings or revenue growth over time. With that, you could use the Breakouts module in Scanz to keep an eye on price movements among these companies.

Conclusion

These six filters can help you take your stock scans to the next level, winnowing down your results to only the stocks that are most relevant to your trading strategy. When building scans, keep in mind that it’s possible to combine multiple of these filters in the Pro Scanner to achieve unique results.

If you want to be a successful day trader, you need to trade the right stocks at the right time. Every day, there are thousands of stocks being traded, but only a few that are worth your attention. Your goal is to follow the action and find stocks that are exceptionally volatile. Day traders and swing traders aim to spot momentum before it happens. One of the best ways to do this is by using stock scanners to find specific chart patterns that will lead to the best trading opportunities.

In EquityFeed, you can use the “Filter Builder” module to input a variety of criteria, including price, volume, and technical data. These inputs can be used to filter through thousands of stocks so you can focus on the best trading opportunities.

We’ll be discussing a few Filter Builder settings to get you started. Keep in mind that scanning is just the first step – you still need to review each stock before formulating a game plan.

If you want to follow along, feel free to start your 14-day free trial of EquityFeed.

The first step towards any successful trade is finding the RIGHT stock to trade. Your goal is to focus solely on the stocks that provide the best trading opportunities. In order to do this, you need to wade your way through a sea of thousands of stocks. While this may seem like a substantial task, it’s actually quite simple if you’re familiar with the process. That’s where we come in.

Tools like EquityFeed are designed to help you find the right stocks at the right times. Managing your trades is still up to you, but we’re here to give you a head start on other traders.

So, how exactly do you find the best stocks to trade? First things first, you need to define your goals.

What are you looking for?

Defining your trading strategy is another topic for another day. That said, before you find the best stocks to trade, you need to know what you are looking for. This will ensure that your trading tools are customized to your personal needs. Your goal is to find trading setups that fit your trading style. For example, if you swing trade breakouts, you may want to find stocks setting new 30-day highs. If you trade momentum, you may want to find the most active stocks.

A few considerations include:

• What price stocks are you looking to trade?
• Are you looking for bullish or bearish setups?
• Are you planning to swing trade or day trade?

The list goes on and on. For now, create some broad specifications. You can always return later to narrow your focus.

EquityFeed Market View

EquityFeed Market View is an incredibly powerful tool that gives you a bird’s eye view of the entire stock market. You can choose which markets you’d like to analyze and filter the stocks using a variety of criteria.

Market View is best for generating broad trading ideas and getting a better understanding of the day’s trading environment. You can see which stocks have the most volume, the most trades, the biggest percent changes, etc. This is particularly beneficial for intraday traders who want to be where the action is.

For example, on June 20, 2017, there were only 6 OTC stocks priced under $0.10/share with over $500,000 trading volume. If you were interested in these types of stocks, you could narrow your focus from an entire market down to 6 stocks.

Here are a few ways to make the most of the Market View module.

Market View Pro Tips

Sorting Penny Stocks – When searching for penny stocks (or cheaper stocks), sort the Market View module by “$ Volume.”

Sorting Momentum Stocks – When looking for momentum plays, sort the Market View module by “Trades.”

News – Pay attention to stocks with news. News catalysts can help fuel a stock’s volatility.

Understand the Phase of the Move – Compare the “% Chg 5 Day” column to the “% Chg” column to see which phase of the move a stock is in. For example, if the “% Chg 5 Day” is +300% and the “% Chg” is -30%, the stock is probably in the backside of the move.

Use Filters Sparingly – In the Market View module, you are better off sorting stocks by column than filtering them. For example, you don’t need to filter stocks based on volume if you are going to use the “$ Volume” column to sort the stocks.

Market View Video Guide

Trading Alerts

The Trading Alerts module is one of the most powerful tools for intraday traders. This tool gives traders intraday alerts when stocks are making significant moves. Unlike other intraday scanners, EquityFeed’s Trading Alerts module is incredibly easy to set up and focuses solely on actionable trading alerts.

To get started, select a few stock filters (i.e. price, # of trades, etc.) and choose which types of alerts you’d like to receive. Alerts are color-coded so they are easily recognizable during the trading day. Here are some of the alerts you can set up:

• New Highs (Intraday, 5 Day, 10 Day, 20 Day, 40 Days, 26, Days, 52 Weeks)
• New Lows (Intraday, 5 Day, 10 Day, 20 Day, 40 Days, 26, Days, 52 Weeks)
• Price Breakouts (5, 10, 15, 20, 30, or 60 days)
• Volume Breakouts (5, 10, 15, 20, 30, or 60 days)
• Block Trades

These alerts will be streamed in real-time during the trading day. You can also run the scanner after hours to tweak your filters or find stocks to trade the next day.

Trading Alerts Pro Tips

Balance Your Filters – You want to be alerted to significant moves, but you don’t want to overwhelm yourself with alerts.

Avoid Redundant Alerts – Clean up your alerts feed by eliminating similar alerts. For example, a 5-Day Avg. volume breakout and 10-Day Avg. volume breakout may be similar. Eliminate whichever one is delivering lower quality alerts.

Eliminate Irrelevant Alerts – You only want alerts that actually help you generate trade ideas. For example, if block trades don’t affect your trading style, there’s no need to be alerted about them. Keep your alerts relevant to your personal trading style.

Scan Your Watch Lists – Use the Trading Alerts module to scan your watch lists. This can help you keep identify significant moves in stocks that you follow. You can take this a step further by creating special watch lists just for the Trading Alerts window. You can sort these watch lists by sector, stock type, etc.

Use Multiple Windows – You can have multiple trading alerts windows open at once. Consider segmenting your alerts by market, stock price, trading style, etc.

Keep Track of Stocks with Multiple Alerts – Add the “Count” column. This will tell you how many alerts a stock has triggered. Pay close attention to stocks with a higher amount of alerts.

Trading Alerts Video

News Streamer

Stocks can experience higher volatility when there is a catalyst in the mix. Often times, this catalyst comes in the form of a press release, SEC filing, or promotion. The EquityFeed News Streamer will alert you to these potential catalysts in real-time.

You can filter news results by markets, stock prices, stock volume, and more. This allows you to find news from stocks that are relevant to your trading style.

The News Streamer is straightforward and easy to use. Simply specify a few filters and the scanner will do the rest for you.

News Streamer Pro Tips:

Use Filters Sparingly – Avoid “over-filtering” stocks. For example, if you filter out stocks with less than 100 trades, you may filter out news that can bring in more volume. Remember, the right catalyst can bring more volume to a stock.

Keep it Relevant – Only stream news types that are relevant to your trading style. If you don’t read through filings, you don’t need real-time alerts for them. Similarly, if you don’t understand the implications of NASDAQ news, avoid scanning that market.

Check a Company’s History – See how a stock reacts to previous news. Here’s how:

1. Click on the ticker to open the Chart Montage window.
2. Load the news for the past month and select “News on Chart.”

First, it will show you how a stock reacts to news. You may find that the market shows no interest in news surrounding a particular stock. Secondly, it helps you gauge the significance of the news. For example, you may get a news alert for a company that is expecting to close a $100 million deal, yet the stock isn’t moving. If you check on the stock’s previous news, you may find that the company has been talking about this deal for months without any follow through.

News Streamer Video

Filter Builder

Filter Builder is by far the most powerful scanning tool within the EquityFeed platform. Filter Builder allows you to create scans using almost any filter you can think of. You can include price data, volume data, technical indicators, fundamentals, and more.

The Filter Builder can be used both intraday and after market hours. Intraday scans help you find momentum trading candidates, whereas after hours scans help you build a watch list.

The main benefit of the Filter Builder is that it allows you to find stocks that fit your own personal trading strategy.

Here are some examples of scans you can set up using the Filter Builder:

• Stock breaking out above their 52-week highs
• Stocks crossing over their 200-Day moving averages
• Stocks trading above VWAP with above average volume
• Stocks up over 10% on the day with over 1000 trades
• Stocks reversing out of a long-term downtrend
• Stocks going red after a multi-day price run

The list is endless. Decide what types of stocks you are looking to trade and start building your filter! You can get some tips on building a great scan with the Filter Builder over here.

Filter Builder Pro Tips

Focus on Relevant Filters – Don’t add filters for the sake of adding filters. Focus on filters that are actually relevant to your scan. For example, if a stock’s 5-day avg. volume isn’t important, don’t include it. This seems like a simple concept, but many traders muddy up their scanning criteria by getting too specific.

Get Creative – Certain scans are easy to build while others require some creative thinking. For example, if you wanted to find a stock that is coming out of a short term downtrend, there’s not a simple “reversal” criteria you can use. Instead, you may look for stock’s breaking above their 5-day high with a 10-day moving average that is higher than the 50-day moving average.

Create Multiple Scans – One scan isn’t enough to find all of the top trading setups. If you value simplicity, you may prefer using the Trading Alerts module. If you want to find different types of hidden gems in the stock market, you may need to create multiple scans. Each scan should have a basic goal. For example, one scan may be used to find 52-week price breakouts while another may be used to find parabolic moves.

Use Preset Filters – If you are looking for a quick scanning option, consider using the preset filters available in the Filter Builder.

Incorporate News Into Your Scans – We mentioned above that news can act as a catalyst that fuels higher volatility. Why not incorporate this into your scans? The Filter Builder allows you to scan for stocks that had news during the day or during the past 3 days. For example, you could look for stocks that are up over 10% on the day with news.

Filter Builder Video