The Scanners are some of the software's most powerful features.
Your SOFTWARE includes two different scanning tools, allowing you to identify securities and options that match your trading strategy. Set your own scan criteria from the available options to create scans that match your personal trading strategy.
The market scanner allows you to search whole markets, either on-line or off-line, to identify securities that meet your specific market performance criteria.
In the broadest sense, there are two types of scan: User-Defined and Pre-computed.
Pre-computed Scans are a limited number of trading specific scans, created by professional traders at HUBB Organisation and run each day on the HUBB server.
The results of these scans, referred to as pre-computed lists, are updated each trading day and are available for immediate download.
For more information, go to the Pre-computed Scans Overview topic.
User Defined Scans are defined by, and the scope of the scan is set by, the user.
User defined Market Scans are used to identify securities that match some or all of the user defined criteria. First the scan is defined by one or more criteria expressions, and then a particular market or market segment is specified.
Market scans detect and report securities which have performed within the criteria. These scan results can then be saved for charting or used for scanning for trades.
For more information, go to the Market Scanners Overview.
The criteria defined for each scan consists of one or more separate expressions, such as "Close of the current day Is Less Than Low of 1 day ago".
A scan may contain any number of logically related expressions. However, as there is no mechanism to guard against expressions that contradict one another, it is best to limit the number of expressions to those that the user can easily review and be satisfied with.
User defined scans can either be on-line scans, meaning the scan is sent to the server and performed on the data on the server, or off-line. Off-line scans require the current price data for the market or group that is to be scanned to be downloaded onto the user’s PC. The biggest difference between the two is that more detailed scanning criteria can be set for off-line scans; currently on-line scanning is limited to price data.
Once created, the user defined scans are named by the user and saved. The saved scans are available from the Select Market Scan selection list. Saved scans can be selected and run against the current price data for a selected market. Saved scan’s criteria can later be edited to improve the scan’s performance and whole expressions can be added or deleted as required.
The user can also control the scope of the scan, i.e. what group of securities the scan will be run against.
Scans can be set to run against a range of markets, user defined Quote Pages, as well as scan results from other user defined scans or saved pre-configured scan results.
The user can also select the date of the data to be scanned. By default this is current data, but the user can specify a date in the past to scan on.
Weekly data intervals, as well as the default daily intervals, can be selected to be scanned.
Your SOFTWARE contains a number of preconfigured scans.
They are the same as user defined scans but are already configured and ready to be run. They will be loaded in the Select Market Scan selection list when you install the software.
They have been developed and included to give users an introduction in scanning techniques and capabilities. You can later change the parameters and save them under different names.
Results of a scan include all symbols that meet the scan’s criteria from the scanned market or selected group.
Results from both pre-computed and user defined scans are organized into lists. These lists can be saved and later accessed via the Select Market Scan Results selection list.
Saved scan results can be selected to be scanned by another user defined scan, further refining the results.
The results list contains an Action menu from which you can view each symbol's chart, price data, details, etc.
The result lists can also be saved and or printed.
The Trade Scanner lets you select and define potential option strategies, and then apply them to the market to find option combinations that best meet these strategies.
Trade Scanner also lets you scan a Quote List, previously saved scan results, or a whole Market for the individual options or option combinations that meet your market forecasts. You can use it to either scan for stocks that meet your pre-determined criteria, or to create and test your own systems.
You can access the Trade Scanner from the Trade Scan command in the Scanners tool menu, or by entering a symbol and selecting a strategy from the Strategy Wizard on OptionGears's Start Page.
For more information, go to the Trade Scanners Overview.