The best way to learn how to use filters is by experimentation. We will walk through some examples.
Example #1
Let's say that you trade on an intraday interval (5-min bars) and you have a basket of anywhere from 2 to 500 securities that you routinely trade. Let's further assume that during the trading day you want to know which of these securities currently have a Stochastic %D value (using settings of 14,3,3) that is below 30 (oversold).
| • | Step 1: Use the ScanExpert Wizard to create a script that includes as one of the display columns a 14,3,3 Stochastic D formula. |
| • | Step 2: If you have not already done so, create a portfolio in the ScanExpert Configuration Manager of the securities that you routinely trade. |
| • | Step 3: Using ScanExpert Configuration Manager, load the script and load the portfolio. Close Configuration Manager and click on the Start button on the toolbar. |
| • | Step 4: Once the historical data has been downloaded and the Grid is displaying and updating information for all symbols, click on the Filter button. |
| • | Step 5: Find the Stochastic %D column in the Filter Specifications dialog and enter the condition "<30" in the filter edit field. Uncheck any columns that you do not wish to display in the final filter. Assign this filter a name (i.e., we used "Filter Example #1"). |
| • | Step 6: Click on the Create Filter button. A filter based on the condition (i.e., Stochastic %D must be below 30) will be created and displayed. This filter will update in realtime throughout the trading day. If and when securities match your specifications, they will be added into the filter and alerts will be generated (if alerts are turned on). When securities no longer match your filter specifications they will drop out of the filter. |
Note: If you right-click in the Filter grid, you will see a "Copy Symbols to Clipboard" menu option. If you select this menu option, the list of symbols currently in the filter will be copied to the Windows clipboard and they can then be pasted into a document or another application.
Example #2
In this example we will create a filter that will track all securities in our basket which have price above a 30-period exponential moving average and have volume of at least 1 million shares.
| • | Step 1: Use the ScanExpert Wizard to create a script that at least includes columns for Close, Volume, and a 30-period exponential moving average. |
| • | Step 2: If you have not already done so, create a portfolio in the ScanExpert Configuration Manager of the securities that you routinely trade. |
| • | Step 3: Using ScanExpert Configuration Manager, load the script and load the portfolio. Close Configuration Manager and click on the Start button on the toolbar. |
| • | Step 4: Once the historical data has been downloaded and the Grid is displaying and updating information for all symbols, click on the Filter button. |
| • | Step 5: In the snapshot below you can see that our Close value is being displayed in Column #3 and our EMA value is being displayed in Column #5. To create a filter condition that specifies Close must be above the EMA, we type in ">col[5]" in the filter edit field for the Close column. In english this simply says that the value in the Close column must be above the value present in Column #5 and, in our case, Column #5 happens to be the column where the exponential moving average value is displayed. In the Volume filter edit field we will type ">1M" which simply states that current volume must be greater than 1 million (M is a shortcut for Million). Assign this filter a name (i.e., we used "Filter Example #2"). |
| • | Step 6: Click on the Create Filter button. A filter based on the condition (i.e., Close greater than the 30-period EMA and Volume greater than 1 million) will be created and displayed. This filter will update in realtime throughout the trading day. If and when securities match your specifications, they will be added into the filter and alerts will be generated (if alerts are turned on). When securities no longer match your filter specifications they will drop out of the filter. |
Note: If you right-click in the Filter grid, you will see a "Copy Symbols to Clipboard" menu option. If you select this menu option, the list of symbols currently in the filter will be copied to the Windows clipboard and they can then be pasted into a document or another application.
Example #3
In this example we will create a filter that will track all securities in our basket which have a Stochastic %D that is either overbought or oversold as well as volume of at least 200,000 shares.
| • | Step 1: Use the ScanExpert Wizard to create a script that includes columns for Volume and Stochastic %D. |
| • | Step 2: If you have not already done so, create a portfolio in the ScanExpert Configuration Manager of the securities that you routinely trade. |
| • | Step 3: Using ScanExpert Configuration Manager, load the script and load the portfolio. Close Configuration Manager and click on the Start button on the toolbar. |
| • | Step 4: Once the historical data has been downloaded and the Grid is displaying and updating information for all symbols, click on the Filter button. |
| • | Step 5: Find the Stochastic %D column in the Filter Specifications dialog and enter the condition "<30 or >70" in the filter edit field. Find the Volume column and enter the condition ">200K". Uncheck any columns that you do not wish to display in the final filter. Assign this filter a name (i.e., we used "Filter Example #3"). |
| • | Step 6: Click on the Create Filter button. A filter based on the condition (i.e., Stochastic %D either above 70 OR below 30 and Volume greater than 200,000) will be created and displayed. This filter will update in realtime throughout the trading day. If and when securities match your specifications, they will be added into the filter and alerts will be generated (if alerts are turned on). When securities no longer match your filter specifications they will drop out of the filter. |
Note: If you right-click in the Filter grid, you will see a "Copy Symbols to Clipboard" menu option. If you select this menu option, the list of symbols currently in the filter will be copied to the Windows clipboard and they can then be pasted into a document or another application.
Example #4
In this example we will demonstrate how you can retrieve previously-created filters. You will notice that in each of our 3 examples above we assigned a filter name for each filter we created. Whenever you assign an explicit filter name, that filter specification is saved and can be quickly retrieved at a later date (for example, you may create several filters that you want to load and run every day).
To load a previously-defined filter, just click on the <Select Saved Filter> listbox at the top of the Filter Specifications dialog and select the filter that you wish to retrieve from the list of available filters.
Once you have made a selection, the filter specifications and title associated with that filter will be displayed. You can make changes, if desired, and then click on the Create Filter button to launch the filter. All settings associated with the filter will be restored when a saved filter is launched. These include screen position, size of window, alert settings, update settings, and sort settings
To delete a previously-saved filter definition, select that filter from the drop-down list and then right-click in the saved filter field. Click on the "Delete Saved Filter" menu option and that filter will be removed from the list of saved filters.
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