Stock screening

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone uses stock screening websites to pick their trades. I use StockFetcher right now and I really like the language, back-testing, etc but StockFetcher has serious limitations. I use TradeStation for actual trading.

Does anyone know of another solution that I can use for stock screening such as another website, program, or add-on for TradeStation?


Also, anyone have an idea what it would cost to have a similar system to StockFetcher developed (with improvements)? This is a subject I’ve been exploring heavily recently and I'm starting to believe it might be better to just have my own system created.

Thanks for feedback!

 

?...............Keep an eye on the stocks making 52-week highs and lows for breakout and reversal candidates.

 

screening on what? fundy's or techs?

 

Sorry, Technical Analysis. I use StockFetcher so much I start to believe everyone knows about it is and what i'm talking about.

 

Since you use TradeStation, why don't you use RadarScreen?

 

It's not all I do but...

When I'm teaching people how to trade, I tell them to follow the Largest % winner and losers list. I would tell them to look into "why" the particular stock made an outlier move.

In most cases, the reason why is irrelevant to the style of trading, but every once in a while, you find a gem in terms of understanding how the market works.

If you're tool of choice is technical analysis, the question to ask is:

"How would I have caught this move?"

then test it. Again, TEST IT... And, yes:

TEST EVERYTHING.

You'll be surprised how dealing with extremity can lead to consistant trading.

 

Very important observation, methinks.

 

RadarScreen has its uses but what I'm trying to do, it can't be used for. Here is an example:

"Show stocks where RSI(14) crossed above 70.00 within the last 1 day
And Average Volume(30) is above 1,000,000
And close is between $6.00 and $250.00"

This simple filter looks at all the stocks in the market and returns only stocks that are equal or greater than the requirements above. I ran this filter today and it retuned 32 individual stocks that matched this criteria. Normally my filters are much more strict though.

Imagine what you can do with this type of screening. You can gather a basket of different stocks each day and use them for trading. Instead of manually watching your own watch list of stocks for the right signal, screening only returns stocks that have the signal you are looking for. If you like to trade a particular rare signal (such as a stock being off by 3 standard deviations), one advantage is increased trading opportunities because it watches all stocks that match this signal. The advantages of this type of screening go on and on.

More importantly, you can back-test every stock that was returned for this filter over whatever period of time suites you. What I like is not having to design a strategy based on a single or watch list of stocks, but to find the stocks that match the strategy I am designing. That’s what StockFetcher does for you (in a limited fashion). On the other hand, you could still limit your filter to only return signals for a single stock or basket of them if that is your wish which would force it to act like any other back-testing system (like TradeStation).

I like playing odds when trading stocks. If over the past 2 years and 212 trades, 78% of those trades are profitable (with everything else being acceptable such as DD) when the RSI(30) is greater than 95 then that’s the kind of trade I would jump on. StockFetcher doesn’t offer this kind of filtering really, but I know the technology is possible. That’s one reason why I’m asking about stock screeners and if there is other choices out there. Another reason is that StockFetcher doesn’t offer optimization nor walk-forward analysis.
If someone can come up with a reason why this kind of filter is bad, I would like to hear about it. Like if it introduces biases or curve fits in some fashion.

 

I am also looking for a more powerful screener than TS has.

TS has a 1000 stock limitation and that includes all time intervals so if you want to scan for daily and for 30 min bars your limit is 500 stocks.

Gotta be something out there than can do this.

 

stockcharts.com has a powerful scan engine and will do about anything you want. The language for the Advanced Scans can take awhile to get used to though.

T.
http://actionpointsta.blogspot.com/