Hard to answer that question... I took a couple of years to learn to program well, from nothing. Why Visual basic, because there are more examples on the internet for this language than anything other. So if you dont want to go to school this is a do it your self job then VB is ok. Unforunately its not ones ability to program that will win the day, its your ability to "design the code and application" to work quickly and correctly that is the key. I purchases all types of software and had no consistent succes until I designed my own thing for what I wanted to see when I wanted to see it. If you want it done in six months for say 50 symbols use excel and VBA, if you want a robust wizz bang scanner thats will cover 500 to 1000 symbols in under 2 mins then write your own code...and get a 3.0 GHZ machine. They only software that may do it for you may be NeoTicker ... goto google.com and do a search. Most other software is all talk and not really upto it.
Funny that I asked the question but realized I never heard of the software. Where can you get it from, is there a free trial of it, and what is the price?
i use realtick's hottrend... Gaj... how's it work for you? Folks may know that we're got a chat coming up here from RealTick on "Using Hottrend to Find Superior Opportunities". That'll be Thursday, July 10th at 4:30PM EST in the Elite Trader Chat Room. André
U can also do some nice scans with SWP and IRT. You can make a scan for whatever your heart desires w/o learning programming. Links: www.crontech.com and www.linnsoft.com This is what I use.. since I cant really program. --MIKE
Hottrend shows abnormal price/volume activity updated every minute. Combine it with Pristine's ESP alert (lod, hod, block trade, buy/sell setup alert real time) is powerful. For example: I found STJ today from ESP lod. Check the charts & entered short. It appeared in Hottrend later.
Hey folks, you can find the Hottrend chat log here: http://www.elitetrader.com/ch/transcripts/hottrend.cfm Real interesting chat. Talks about programs can be dry, but Mike told us how he used it. I also thought it was fascinating in how it was originally designed to alert media outlets so they could cover news on volume. André
If you want to control the parameters as described at the top of this thread, you should look at Neovest. I think you can do the volume screen on their Idealink, which is the lighter of their products. http://www.neovest.com/idealink.asp
andre - great interview with realtick RE: hottrend. when i was at the expo in nyc, i told them firsthand how much i love hottrend. i generally fade lesser-known stocks, but don't have too many positions at once, and work off of 10/15 minute intraday charts. hottrend is real nice for me because once i identify an 'unusual' stock that is appearing in hottrend, i wait for a sign of exhaustion to appear. it's totally contra what hottrend is designed to do, and i have to be careful (i've gotten burned sometimes with it), but it fits my trading style, and gives me lots of opportunities, that i might not normally catch.
I agree with Trend Fader, Stock Watch Pro is the software to go with. You don't really need any programming experience and even if you have trouble creating strategies, you can always e-mail them, they are usually right on top of things.