Scanner row colours - what green, purple, red and yellow mean
The colour of a scanner row tells you something before you read a single number: a big gap, fresh news, locates in hand, a halt, a stock near its limit band, or a price that has gone stale. This video goes through each colour.
In this video
The 30-second version
The same topic in thirty seconds, made for a phone screen.
Both videos use the desk in paper mode with made-up symbols and prices.
Read the transcript
Colour tells you first
Before you read a single number, the colour of a row already tells you something. Learn these once, and you can read the board from across the room. Here is what each one means.
Green and purple
Green text: the stock is gapped up twenty percent or more. A green background means you hold a position in it. Purple: a news headline arrived for that stock recently. Open the NEWS window to read it.
Locates in dark red
A dark red background: you hold locates for that stock, and the Loc column shows how many shares. So the stocks you are ready to short stand out on their own.
Yellow means halted
Yellow: the stock is halted. Its Live cell switches to the halt view, with the latest bid and ask while it is stopped.
Red means near the band
Red: the stock is close to its limit-up or limit-down band, which matters in market hours, when a volatility halt may only be seconds away.
Grey means quiet
And grey text means no fresh price has arrived for that stock recently. One more mark: a float figure turns red when its share count is more than 120 days old, because a share sale could have happened since.
Combined signals
Colours combine with the alert itself. A purple row with a fresh Squeeze alert is news moving a stock right now. A dark red row is a stock you can short today without waiting for a locate. The colour answers what kind of row it is; the columns answer how strong it is.
The same colours, everywhere
The same colours follow a stock into the other lists. The gappers window and the watchlist use them too, so a purple or dark red row means the same thing wherever you see it. And the float's red age mark appears in the gappers window, exactly as on the scanner. One set of colours to learn, for the whole desk.