The Trade Scanner identifies individual options or option trades that match the particular strategies and criteria that you specify.
Scanning for individual options will return all the possible options that meet the filters you specify, for example time to expiry, strike price, open interest, model price, etc.
While this may be useful in single legged options trades, the Trade Scanner also allows you to identify groups of options which together form multi-legged strategies.
Scanning for trades returns selected options, grouped into a sequence of trades, that meet your strategy's parameters and is comprised of options that meet your filter settings. Consequently, each trade displayed may contain a combination of several option positions. Also, whereas searching for options will return all options that meet the filters you set, a trade search will only display those options that combine to make the displayed trades.
Generally you would search for a trade that matches your strategy.
The Scanners button on the Tool Bar contains links to all the important scanning interfaces.
Select Open Trade Scan to open a trade scan that has been created and saved.
To perform a Market Scan you must select a scan [or create a new scan] set the market parameters, edit the existing scan criteria (if required) and start the scan.
The scan is configured, run and results are displayed from the Trade Scan work page.
Click the Open Trade Scan command in the Scanners tool menu to open the Select a file... dialog box will open:
All previously saved Trade Scans are saved with the .trs file extension.
The default location for saving and retrieving these file types is the Market Scans folder in Your SOFTWARE's program directory.
The navigation, display and file management tools located in the top right are the same as for other Windows file selector dialog. For more information on this functionality, go to the File Selector topic in the Shared Utilities section of this Help.
Your SOFTWARE contains a number of preconfigured scans. They are designed to perform scans which would commonly be made by traders. You can open these scans and use them as they are, or alter their criteria or scope to suit your requirements, and save them with new names.
To create a new scan, click on the New button from the group of buttons on the right margin of the Select Market Scan list selector dialog.
New scans can also be created from the New submenu of the File menu:
In both cases, a new market scan work page will open showing its Search Criteria tabbed page.
Alternatively, enter a symbol and select a strategy from the Strategy Wizard on OptionGear's Start Page.
In either case, the Trade Scan will open to its standard tabbed work area.
The trade scan work area contains a series of tabbed pages, each tabbed page has a trade scan function bar.
The following function bar tools appear on each tabbed page:
The is the standard Data on Demand (DOD) Refresh button. It is used to refresh the data displayed in the work area, or the Quote Lists displayed in the selector list, etc.
For more information go to the Data on Demand Update help topic.
The Action menu is particularly helpful after a scan has been run.
It provides a link between the securities listed on the scan results table of the Search Results tabbed page and other features and functionality. Selecting a security and then the Action button will open the following menu and submenu:
Use the Save Scan button to save any changes you have made to a new or existing scan criteria on either the Trade Parameters or Option Leg Filters page. Changes to the scope of the scan as defined in the Search for Trades on section of the Symbols to Search tabbed page will also be saved.
The Save As.. command clones the current scan and allows users to create similar but slightly different versions of a scan. After using the Save As.. command to create a new cloned version, further changes to that new scan can then be saved using its Save Scan command.
Once you have run a scan, you can Save Scan Results as files with recognizable names. Later you can retrieve them and re-scan their contents by selecting the scan results from the Scan Results selection dialog in the Search for Trades on section of the Symbols to Search tabbed page.
The Scan Offline command will cause the scan to only query the local database. Users will be prompted to Please ensure that your local database is up to date before performing an Offline trade scan.
The Actions for "Symbol" submenu provides links to other tools specific to that symbol such as price charts, price data table display, options graph or detailed symbol information.
For more information on these features, go to the help topics for each one.
The Model.. command will open the Option Model dialog. This shared utility will change the method used by Your SOFTWARE to calculate the model price. Changes to the model's settings will affect all options pricing calculations throughout Your SOFTWARE. For more information, go to the Option Model topic in the Shared Utilities section.
The Buy and Sell commands allow users to directly trade the selected Search Result with a linked OptionsXPress account. The OptionsXPress trade ticket will be populated with the details of the options leg/s that make up the trade. For more information, go to the Buy or Sell Using OptionsXPress topic
Note: For the Buy and Sell commands, if multiple trades have been selected from the Search Results list, then the last selected result will be used to populate the OptionsXPress order ticket. Thus, when using this feature, ensure that you only select the trade you want to trade before clicking on the Buy or Sell commands.
The Configure View command allows users to create custom views for the table on the Search Results tabbed page. Once a new view is configured and saved, it can be applied to the table using the view selector drop-down list.
For existing scans, the Start scan button will initiate a scan.
For more information, refer to Run Trade Scan.
For new scans the Start scan button will not function until you have defined one or more criteria expressions.
Use the Save button to save any changes you have made to a new or existing scan criteria.
This has the same effect as the Save Search Criteria command in the Action menu, see above.
Trades are made up of one or more options, specifically selected to achieve the objectives of a strategy.
The options that make up a trade are usually logically related to one another, for example in terms of expiry date, strike price, whether in or out of the money, etc.
Your SOFTWARE allows you to search for combinations of options indicating a viable trade (as defined in the Trade Parameters tabbed page), or to search for individual options which are capable of being the components of such a trade. There will always be a greater number of individual options capable of being used in viable trades than the number of options that will be included in those potentially viable trades.
The criteria for individual options is set in the Option Leg Filters tabbed page.
In the Trade Parameters tabbed page you set the criteria for trades made up of options meeting the Filters criteria.
Generally you would search for a trade that matches your strategy. Selecting Scan for Trades will search for trades that meet the Trade Parameters criteria only using options that meet the Filters criteria.
If the trade results are not what you expected, you could then change to Scan for Options to see all the individual options available to Your SOFTWARE when assessing its trade search results. The Trade Parameters tabbed page is no longer displayed when Scan for Options is selected as it is no longer relevant.
A review of the individual options returned by the Scan for Options may indicate what adjustments are necessary in either the Trade Parameters or Option Leg Filters criteria to achieve better results when Scan for Trades is selected the next time.
Single left-mouse click on the Headline to view it in the News Article window of the News work page.The work page also includes a list of other Breaking News and a Search News facility containing search and news filter tools.For more information, go to the Headline News help topic.
Some of the tabbed pages, for instance Search Results, have additional function bar tools. These additional tools, as well as any special tool functions, will be described and explained in the topic for that tabbed page.
The trade scan work area contains five tabbed pages:
This tabbed page provides a symbol selection interface and an instant overview of the symbol which is selected.
The symbol selection interface allows you to directly enter a single symbol's details, or to search using the standard symbol search facility, or to reference symbols through your Quote Pages and lists, or saved Scan Results. You can also select from all symbols for a particular market.
In any case, an alphabetical list of symbols included in the search parameters will be displayed on the right.
Select on any of the symbols in the list to get an instant overview in the work area of the search page. The overview will provide a bar chart and a volatility indicator for the selected symbol.
Go to the Symbols to Search tab topic for more information.
This page enables you to select a market outlook and define an options trading strategy.
Once you have defined your market outlook and expected volatility, Your SOFTWARE will display a list of option trade strategies that consistent with the view you have taken. You select a trade strategy, then set the other parameters for the strategy using the settings on the right side of the tabbed page.
Once complete, you can move on to define your scan filters. The Trade Parameters settings work in conjunction with the Option Leg Filters settings to identify multi-legged option trade opportunities. The Trade Parameters settings define the strategy, while the Option Leg Filters settings restrict the range of options that can be included in the strategies.
Note - This tab does not appear when Scan for Options is selected in the trade scan function bar.
Go to the Trade Scan Parameters topic for more information.
When the Scan for Options mode is employed, this tab enables you to filter the individual options that Your SOFTWARE will find.
You can specify premium price, strike price, time to expiry, volume and open interest ranges, Money ranges (In the money, out of the money, at the money), Greeks and volatility.
By setting ranges in this tab, you will filter out the options that do not meet your investment goals.
When the Scan for Trades mode is used, the Option Leg Filters settings define the kind of options that can be used when constructing the strategies defined in the Trade Parameters tabbed page.
Go to the Trade Scan Filters tab topic for more information.
This tabbed page displays all the trades that meet your parameters and filters. Each trade is a group of option instruments combined to meet the strategy defined in the Trade Parameters tab.
The Construction field shows the full details of each option trade.
Once you have undertaken your trade scan and have analyzed the available trades, you can then perform more detailed analysis on an individual trade.
Go to the Run Trade Scan topic for more information.
This tabbed page consist of a large text box.
Use this area to describe your objectives for the trade scan strategy which you have defined.
You can edit your comments and keep notes on the use of the scan.