I just recently joined TI after their yearly $8.99 Trial Run. They gave 25% discount over their yearly subscription of $1068 or $801 with discount but you can easily find 20% discount on the Internet. The main advantage to TI over free services is real time intraday scanning with alerts. As a daytrader, the ability to know what stocks are moving suddenly is essential. For that you need a dedicated service that can process the mountain of <1 minute price data for the entire universe of equity stocks. I've explored other free options in order to see if I can replicate TI's functionality. For premarket scans for biggest movers, IBKR is excellent. I compare ThinkOrSwim, IBKR and TI's premarket scanners, I like IBKR the best. TI doesn't start processing until 6:45am EST. IBKR starts at 4am EST. For intraday scanning, I've compared TI, IBKR, TOS, TradeStation. The advantages of TOS and TradeStation is that you can use their programming language (ThinkScript, EasyLanguage) to create custom scans which can replicate TI for free. The cons that I've found with ThinkScript is that even tho you can scan 1 minute data, setting it up in a watchlist which will allow alerts but at 3-5 minute interval. By then, the opportunity may be gone. TradeStation RadarScreen will only allow 1000 symbols for scanning. So you will have to first parse down a limited universe of stocks before you can scan. Big disadvantage since entire equity universe is >5700 symbols. Con with TI is that to customize scans, you will need to dig through their large library of parameters. They don't have a programming language, rather they have a distinct parameter for every type of alert that you may want ie New High, New High Ask, New Ask (filtered). With a programming language, all of that is replaced much more neatly. Perhaps for non-programming people, it's not a con. Trade-Ideas Stock Scanner Help - Alert and Filter Definitions and System Requirements I haven't tried Scanz but would love if anyone has a detailed comparison of the 2 services. TI during the trial run had said they were coming out with next generation version this year. Sometimes I feel that TI is lagging a bit as some of the intraday scans come 10-15 minute after the fact. It would great to see how Scanz vs TI compare with the same scan. Which one delivers it faster in real-time. An example of a TI scan which I feel might be lagging.
It is true that the entire stock universe is a lot more than 1000 symbols. But I suspect that stocks that are worth trading can be narrowed down to 1500-2000 symbols. And that can be processed on the client side, with fully customizable criteria/logic.
I use your software MT, great software thanks for the product. My only issue is that it doesn't have the ability to scan symbols outside the tickers in the portfolio. Currently, for Pre-market scanning I have to log in to TWS to use the TWS scanner, then I have to log out of TWS before market opens to use Gateway (order fills are faster using Gateway). During the day, I have to use Barchart website for intraday scanning which is not very convenient as I cannot filter the tickers according to my criteria and I would rather have the scanner in the software as its easier to use that way. I hope you can implement this feature in MT. Would be top notch for MT. Thanks again
The problem with IB is that 100 streaming tickers limit. Very low. TDA on the other hand allows 1500, which is a lot more convenient for scanning purposes. In orders to implement the scanning of whole ticker universe, we would have to have the data on all of them. Since we (MT) do not provide the data for the program, and only let the program pull the data from various sources, we cannot do the whole-market scanning.
I have around 100 stocks on my portfolio (more or less) that I constantly follow but everyday there are random stocks gapping up/down so even 1500 is too little specially if you trade Small Caps Yes I understand MT doesn't provide data but apparently other softwares such NinjaTrader, Agenatrader that don't provide data have that feature Maybe it can be done but at extra cost that I don't think most users will mind paying
There is so much to learn about every financial market. The moment I think that I have learnt everything, I see something new that I have never seen in the past. A complex universe for sure!
Another option is to pay Warrior Trading (Ross Cameron) $4,297 for the Warrior Pro 90 Days Course. Than you get his scanner which seems to be similar to TI. LOL.
Ross, The Man! Someone on YouTube tried his services during free trial or something. Afterwards, they contacted her for a testimonial. She said she was turned off by them asking her for a female testimonial when she hadn't even paid for the course. The rep let it slip that Ross and Co take home $2 million/month from all that trading related stuff. That's how you do it! Who cares if you gain/lose $30k/day trading if you can have that type of steady side income. It's like if someone was trading 1 share size, so little pressure versus having to come up with your rent money every month. These trading "gurus" are smart to do paid training. Ross knows his stuff (as does Shay, Humbled Trader). But it's a bit disingenuous as most of his students probably thinks he lives on his daytrading profits. If I can make $2 million/mth "teaching" the noobs, then I would trade 1 share lots on my PnL, the occassional home run trade would have them in awe but my goal would be to just break even on my account so that I have "verified" trade results.