Scanner and market lists
The scanner watches the live market and lists the stocks that pass your filters. The gappers, watchlist, new highs and news windows give you more views of the same market.
Filters row
The filters row sits under the header. It applies to the scanner and to the top gappers list, and every automatic entry must also come from a stock on the scanner.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Window | The time window the scanner measures volume, relative volume and the price run over. Choices: Candle 30s, Candle 1m, Candle 5m, Candle 10m (whole candles), 1m, 5m, 10m, 1h (rolling windows) and 1D (the session). A shorter window reacts faster and reads noisier. |
| Price $ … to | The price band. Stocks below the first price or above the second are ignored. |
| Min gap % | How far above yesterday's close a stock must trade to enter the scanner. 0 means no gap floor: more stocks, more noise. |
| Min vol K (win) | Volume in the selected window, in thousands of shares, that a stock needs to count as active. |
| Min RVOL (win) | Relative volume in the window, compared with the normal volume for that time of day. 2 means twice normal. Relative volume can read very high after a halt or a split. |
| Min RVOL day | A floor on today's pace against a normal day. 0 is off, 1 means at least normal pace. It filters out quiet stocks that spike for one minute. |
| Scans/sec | How often the market-data screener is asked for new movers. Higher finds a mover sooner and uses more of your data plan. Too high for your plan and the data provider stops answering, which makes the scanner blind, not faster. One value for the whole desk. |
Session sets: PRE, MKT, AH and auto
Premarket, market hours and after hours each keep their own filter values, because a stock that is interesting at 07:00 looks very different at 11:00.
- PRE, MKT and AH load that session's filters by hand (and turn auto off). Any change you make is saved into the set you are looking at.
- auto follows the market clock: the sets switch themselves at 09:30 and 16:00 New York time. At 16:00 the after-hours session also starts fresh, so first hits and new highs are counted again from zero.
Typing a ticker: WATCH / TRADE
The box left of WATCH / TRADE takes any ticker. Type it and press Enter (or the button): the stock is added to the scanner feed and armed for the BUY and SHORT buttons, the ladder and the chart. This is your way into a stock the filters did not surface.
The scanner
The scanner is a history board. Every alert is its own row with the newest on top, and rows stay where they are: nothing is overwritten. Click a row to arm that stock. Double-click arms it too; it only sends an order if you have ticked Double-click sends orders.
The scanner is always in the main window. The SCANNER button in the WINDOWS row opens a second copy in its own resizable window.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Time | When the alert fired, on your computer's clock. |
| Symbol | The ticker. |
| Loc | How many locates (borrowed shares for shorting) you hold for this stock today; - for none. |
| High | The price when the alert fired. |
| Live (vs high) | The current price and how far it is from that alert price. Shows the halt state when the stock is halted (below). |
| Vol day | Shares traded today. |
| Vol win | Shares traded in the selected window. |
| RVOL win / day / 5m | Relative volume in the selected window, for the day's pace, and over the last 5 minutes. |
| Float (age) | An estimate of the shares available to trade, and how old the share count behind it is: 1.04M 33d. See below for why the age matters and when the row turns red. |
| Gap % | How far the price is above yesterday's close. |
| Strategy | Which alert fired (below). |
RESET and HIST
- RESET clears the scanner's day state and starts fresh: the board, high-of-day marks, first hits, day and session volume and relative volume, on the main desk and the fleet. It then reloads yesterday's reference figures and rebuilds today. Positions, orders and the journal are never touched.
- HIST shows whether the scanner holds today's full price history for every stock it knows: green for complete, amber for loading or partial, red for poor. Click it to reload the whole day without clearing anything.
Alert types (Strategy column)
| Alert | When it appears |
|---|---|
| Scanner hit - desk filters | The stock passed every filter on your filters row. Announced once per stock per session. |
| High Rel Vol - 5min 5x | Volume over the last 5 minutes is at least five times the normal pace for that time of day. |
| Squeeze - Up 5% in 5min | The price rose 5% or more in 5 minutes on real volume. |
| Squeeze - Up 10% in 10min | The price rose 10% or more in 10 minutes on real volume. |
| New High of Day | A new high for the day on a stock that has gapped up. |
| Former Momo Stock | A stock that was a mover on an earlier day is active again. |
| HALTED / RESUMED | The stock was halted, or trading resumed. Halts are always shown, whatever the filters say. |
Row colours
| Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Green text | The stock is gapped up 20% or more. |
| Green background | You hold a position in it. |
| Purple background | A news headline arrived for it recently. |
| Dark red background | You hold locates for it. |
| Yellow background | Halted. |
| Red background | Close to its limit-up / limit-down band. |
| Grey text | No fresh price recently. |
Halted stocks
Small caps halt often. When one does, its row on the scanner turns yellow, a HALTED alert is added to the board, and the desk refuses new entries on it, by hand or automatic. You can still close a position you hold, though the exit may have to wait until the stock trades again.
The Live cell on the scanner and the strip on the trading panel both switch to the halt view:
| Shows | Meaning |
|---|---|
HALTED | Halted, and no quote has arrived yet. |
HALT ~4.15 (4.10x4.20) | Scanner cell: the middle of the latest bid and ask, with the bid and ask beside it. |
HALT - RESUME ~4.15 (4.10 x 4.20) | Trading panel strip: the same thing, a rough idea of where the stock may reopen, worked out from quotes published during the halt. |
HALT - last pre-halt 4.10 x 4.20 (no fresh quote yet) | The only quote on hand is the one from before the halt. It is shown as what it is, not as a reopening price. |
When trading resumes, a RESUMED alert is added and the normal price comes back. Every halt and resume is also written in the order log with its time. See halt rules for what the desk can do with a position during a halt.
Float, and why it carries a date
Float is the number of shares actually available to trade: the shares outstanding, less the ones held by insiders. On a fast small cap it often explains why a stock moves the way it does.
No market-data feed publishes it, and the only float figure in SEC filings is a dollar value reported once a year, often more than a year old. So AutoScanTrade works it out from recent public filings:
The share count comes from the cover page of the company's own filings. Insider holdings come from Forms 3, 4 and 5, which directors, officers and ten-percent holders must file within two business days of trading their own stock.
The age is part of the number
The cell reads 1.04M 33d: an estimated float of 1.04 million shares, from a share count filed 33 days ago. The date matters because a share count from before an offering is out of date, and the figure alone cannot tell you that.
Past 120 days the row's text turns red. The figure is still shown, but marked, because an offering could have happened since. A stock you are holding keeps its own row colour.
| The cell says | What that means |
|---|---|
1.04M 33d | An estimated float of 1.04 million shares. The share count behind it was filed 33 days ago. |
14.59B 57d | The same, for a large company, in billions. |
12.85B 255d | Shown, and the row is red: the share count is more than 120 days old. |
n/a | Nothing usable has been filed, the company does not file with the SEC, or one of the checks below refused the figure. |
When the desk refuses to show a number
A wrong estimate is worse than none, because you might act on it. Five checks sit between the filings and the column:
- Options are not shares. A Form 4 that reports only options or warrants is skipped, so it cannot be read as "this insider holds nothing".
- Old totals are ignored. Anything filed more than two years ago is left out, because a reverse split since then would put the share counts on a different basis.
- A float of zero or less is refused. That catches a split inside the two-year window. The column reads
n/ainstead of a wrong number. - A blank or placeholder is refused. The column shows
n/a, never a made-up figure. - An old share count is shown and marked, never hidden. See above.
It is information, not a filter
Nothing sizes, prices, refuses or triggers an order from this figure, and there is no float filter anywhere in the desk. If you keep your own float figures in the desk's float file, yours are used instead of the estimate. The gappers window shows the same column, with the same red mark.
Where the figures come from
From the SEC's own public interfaces, on a background thread, for the symbols you are watching: the armed symbol first, then your watchlist, then the scanner. No account, key or subscription is needed, it never runs on the price or order path, and it stays within the SEC's published request limit. The figure is an estimate, not a vendor's float, and it only covers companies that file with the SEC; for anything else the column reads n/a.
Where a stock files from
When you arm a symbol, the live price carries a badge: TNON [US] @ $5.42 (live), or [Israel], or [China]. It is the country on the company's own filings, not a guess from the ticker.
A company with no country on file, which happens with some ADRs, shows its state of incorporation instead, marked as such: [Cayman Islands inc]. A blank badge only means the filings have not been read for that symbol yet.
Top gappers
The GAPPERS window lists the biggest gappers that pass the same filters, sorted by gap. Double-click a row to arm it. Automation can also use this list (Top gappers only).
Watchlist
The WATCH window tracks stocks you choose, whatever the scanner filters say. +ADD ARMED adds the armed stock; REMOVE or the Delete key drops the selected one. Columns: symbol, locates held, price, change in the window, volume in the window, relative volume in the window and gap.
New highs
The HIGHS window shows the armed stock's breakout history for the session: each new high, the step from the previous one and the time since it. It shows how a run is pacing.
News
The NEWS window shows the latest headlines for the armed stock: time, age, source and headline. Double-click a headline to open the article in your browser. A scanner row turns purple when a headline arrives for that stock.
Two sources feed it. Headlines come from the news stream on your market-data key. SEC filings come straight from the SEC's own public feed as they are published, for the symbols you are watching. Filings about share sales are the ones to look out for, because an offering announced in the middle of a move can end it. They arrive marked, and the scanner row turns purple for them too.
Both go into one list, newest first, and neither overwrites the other, so a filing that arrived while you were busy is still there when you look.