Identifying Best Stocks/Scanner/Swings/Gapups for Day Trading

[Krish_Jags]

Hi guys -


I joined this forum and it was very helpful. Thanks for all the contributors from leader board especially “Ben”. Lot of useful info in forum.


I am new to stocks trading and its been 1 month so far I started trading stocks. I tried different ways from different stock alerts providers to buy/sell stocks, but they are not much helpful or not even close to info I learnt from this group.


So far - I learnt about when to buy/sell stocks, based on indicators strategies provided in this forum. But sometimes the stocks I sold will take a swing on same day with in minutes or hours and rise to even more profits.I feel bad for selling early.

1. I am curious to know if there is any script that can hint me about stock possibly go further up based on patterns or study?
2. Most of my time goes away by researching what stocks to buy. I have multiple scanners/filters in my TOS platform which I got, but its little confusing to go over all the scanners I have and identifying each stock and doing research on each of the stock from each of the scanner/filter list. Is there a best scanner script that can help me to identify stocks that can take best swing or best gap up along with labels or indicators pls? This will help me a lot as beginner.

I really appreciate your help pls. I am interested in Day Trading @BenTen @tomsk @horserider @markos or anyone who can help me with my request pls.

 

[codydog]

@Krish_Jags - never an easy answer to your questions, but, my very simple approach is to just stay with FAANG + BA + VIRT

imo, endlessly scanning for stocks I dont understand or never heard of, seems silly when the mkt favorites provide endless opportunities.

As fir missing out, FOMO is the greatest waste of time. If I capture some % of the move, I dont really care - i see this as a store where you buy and sell inventory all day and have an idea what price you want. And each day start fresh. I think Walmart used to have rules where they sold inventory at 15% markup and Waltons became very very rich.

I'm sure the gurus here will offer alot more and better advice.

 

[MerryDay]

@Krish_Jags I agree with @codydog; analyzing, and becoming an expert on a limited set of stocks/futures/options is a better use of time versus endlessly scanning for stocks.

Familiarization with the trending patterns of what is being traded is helpful in determining the optimal entry and exit points.
That said; I was you. Jumping into stocks that "I thought" were positioned perfectly but jumping out at the first sign of trouble. Only for the stock to then go on a stupendous rally. I feel your frustration.

The blackFLAG FTS - SwingArm Trend Indicator using ATRTrailing Stop and Fibonacci Retracements thread is awesome to read through. I don't use the strategy but there are explanations for:

• what and why certain studies/indicators are important
• the proper use of support and resistance

AND most importantly
- the need to do multi-timeframe analysis to time your exits and entries.

HTH

 

[joe362]

Hello everyone,
What is the best scanner on the TOS platform?

 

[MerryDay]

@joe362 All the studies that you have been asking about in the last few days can be used in the scanner.
A search for day trading or swing trading strategy will yield you thousands of results. "Most" can be used in a scanner.
Here a just a few that came up when I did the search:

https://usethinkscript.com/threads/profitable-day-trading-strategy-for-thinkorswim-users.2016/
https://usethinkscript.com/threads/a-simple-day-trading-strategy-for-beginners.46/
https://usethinkscript.com/threads/identifying-best-stocks-scanner-swings-gapups-for-day-trading.2354/#post-25913
https://usethinkscript.com/threads/best-swing-trading-indicators-for-thinkorswim.182/
https://usethinkscript.com/p/best-scalping-indicators-for-thinkorswim/
HTH

 

[_Merch_Man_]

@aomt Would you please post a screenshot of the scanner you have created?

 

[aomt]

@_Merch_Man_ @MerryDay Hi and thank you for your reply. At the moment I use a scanner found on this site/youtube, with a few tweaks/experiments on my own.
Whenever I try to do my own setup, I get stuck on how to do volume (avg last 5 vs prev 5 before that) and the same with the price.

 

[_Merch_Man_]

@aomt A couple of things I noticed. Your post refers to the 1 minute chart but your scanner rules are set to daily (see "D" at right side of scanner condition). Also, the Near_High_Lows appears to be checking that this price is within 4% of the last bar. I don't think that's what's intended. I also think your custom moving average should test for "above" rather than "crossing" if you want alerts on stocks that are already in your uptrend pattern.

I had a quick play around with a custom study for volume but I can't seem to get it to allow me to compare to other aggregation periods.

Your price condition can be interpreted a few different ways. This custom study gives you where this price is at least 5% higher than the highest price in the last 5 bars:

close >= (1.05 * highest(close,5))

Hope this helps.

 

[aomt]

@aomt A couple of things I noticed. Your post refers to the 1 minute chart but your scanner rules are set to daily (see "D" at right side of scanner condition). Also, the Near_High_Lows appears to be checking that this price is within 4% of the last bar. I don't think that's what's intended. I also think your custom moving average should test for "above" rather than "crossing" if you want alerts on stocks that are already in your uptrend pattern.

I had a quick play around with a custom study for volume but I can't seem to get it to allow me to compare to other aggregation periods.

Your price condition can be interpreted a few different ways. This custom study gives you where this price is at least 5% higher than the highest price in the last 5 bars:

close >= (1.05 * highest(close,5))

Hope this helps.

I've been playing around with it all evening and I start getting a lot better results. Even a few stocks I wanted to jump on, but I want to add/fine-tune and paper trade scanner before I use some real money. And I'm still getting tons of noise.

Do you know if it's possible to code "sma 50 crossed sma 200 within the last 20 periods"?

Edit: Figured it our right away. In case someone else will need it:
"SimpleMovingAvg("length" = 50)."SMA" is greater than or equal to SimpleMovingAvg("length" = 200)."SMA" within 20 bars"

 

[rad14733]

I've been playing around with it all evening and I start getting a lot better results. Even a few stocks I wanted to jump on, but I want to add/fine-tune and paper trade scanner before I use some real money. And I'm still getting tons of noise.

Do you know if it's possible to code "sma 50 crossed sma 200 within the last 20 periods"?

You can use "sma50 crosses sma200 within 20 bars" if you have sma50 and sma200 defined... It would be another Custom filter based on either a Study or the the Average function, like the following code created in the Condition Wizard for a Custom Study... I used the Average function...

Average("data" = CLOSE, "length" = 50) crosses Average("data" = CLOSE, "length" = 200) within 20 bars

 

[aomt]

@rad14733 Thank you so much for your input!
Using only "crosses" would give me cross up or cross down? But I'm interested only in cross-up (I don't do any shorting), so "crosses above" would work in that case?

 

[rad14733]

@rad14733 Thank you so much for your input!
Using only "crosses" would give me cross up or cross down? But I'm interested only in cross-up (I don't do any shorting), so "crosses above" would work in that case?

Yes, "crosses above" is the proper context for your sole purpose... Good luck...

 

[aomt]

Hi there! Another question on my quest to create scanner(s).

I would like to add something like a hammer or hanging man. Candle with long lower wick (at least 60% of a candle), either red or green and it must be last candle, of course.
For now, I just copied a hammer study and got:

input length = 20;
input trendSetup = 3;
input bodyFactor = 0.3;
input shadowFactor = 2.0;

assert(bodyFactor >= 0, "'body factor' must not be negative: " + bodyFactor);
assert(shadowFactor >= 0, "'shadow factor' must not be negative: " + shadowFactor);

def BodyHeight = BodyHeight();
def AverageBodyHeight = Average(BodyHeight, length);
def ErrMargin = 0.05 * AverageBodyHeight;
def IsShort = BodyHeight < bodyFactor * AverageBodyHeight;

plot Bullish = IsDescending(close, trendSetup) and
    IsShort and
    high - Max(open, close) <= ErrMargin and
    Min(open, close) - low > shadowFactor * BodyHeight;

Bullish.SetPaintingStrategy(PaintingStrategy.BOOLEAN_ARROW_UP);
Bullish.SetDefaultColor(GetColor(4));
Bullish.SetLineWeight(2);"

Anyone knows how to modify it to get what I want?