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Although default scanners provide a solid foundation, you may want to create your own custom scanners to track stocks that meet your specific criteria. This can be accomplished through the scanners page of the MomentumDetector web application. Default Scanners Board Once your custom scanner is created, it will be displayed on the scanners’ page.

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Scanner infos settings

Scanners Info Settings

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Scanner name

Choose a name that reflects the scanner’s purpose.

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Scanner type

You can create two types of custom scanners: lists and alerts.
  1. Lists: These scanners provide a list of top gainers or losers based on your custom settings. Unlike traditional top gainers/losers lists, this smart scanner implements pre-filtering criteria to surface higher quality trading candidates. (Should you need a completely unfiltered list of top gainers/losers, open a default unfiltered gainers/losers scanner.)
Smart lists pre filtering criteria:
  • Pre-Market: Displays top/worst percentage movers relative to previous day’s CLOSE.
  • Regular Market Hours: Automatically switches to show top losers/gainers from market OPEN.
  • Momentum: Excludes low-activity stocks with no trades in the last minute. They will never show in the scanner.
  • Volume: Requires minimum daily trading volume of at least 10000.
  • Price: Minimum $1 share price to exclude penny stocks crap. (this doesn’t apply to OTC stocks).
  • Performance: Must have minimum 5% loss/gain from previous close.
Your own criteria will be applied on top of these pre-filtering criteria.
  1. Alerts: The alert scanner will scan the entire stock market and report when a stock is making a new day high or low. You will receive the alerts on each minute of the trading sessions.
Alerts pre filtering criteria: Are defacto eliminated from the alerts, stocks that had less than 0.5 trades per seconds average in the latest minute. The goal is to present you high quality alerts that are worth your attention. Thus we exclude from the alert stocks making new high/low on very low rate of trades per seconds.

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Scanner General Settings

Scanners General Settings

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Minimum Price

Minimum Price: The minimum stock price required for inclusion in the scanner. By default, smart lists enforce a minimum price threshold of $1. This restriction does not apply to Alerts scanners or OTC (Over-The-Counter) stocks lists and alerts.

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Maximum Price

Maximum Price: The maximum stock price required for inclusion in the scanner results.
Pro Tip: If you are looking for explosive stocks, the sweet spot settings is between $2 and $20.

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Minimum Float

A stock float is the total number of shares that are available for public investors to buy and sell. The less float available, the easier it is for the stock to move up or down. A low float stock with a news catalyst can lead to explosive moves. Levels:
  • Nano float: under 1 million
  • Low float: 0 - 20 million
  • Medium float: 20 - 50 million
Float of large companies like AAPL, MSFT, TSLA is in the billions. Minimum Float: The minimum stock float required for inclusing in the scanner results. In millions. Example:
  • set 0.1 for 100,000 shares
  • set 1 for 1,000,000 shares
Many low float stocks don’t report their float information and are assigned a float value of 0 in our system. If you’re focusing on this category of stocks, it’s recommended to set the minimum float to 0 to ensure these stocks are included in your scans.
Maximum Float: The maximum stock float threshold (in millions) above which stocks will be excluded from the scanner results.
Pro Tip: If you are scanning for explosive stocks, the sweet spot settings is between 0 (min) and 20 (max) million shares float.

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Scanner New High / Low of day scanner alerts settings

These settings are exclusively available for alert scanners. Scanners New High / Low of day scanner alerts settings

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Session selection

The Momentum Detector is a professional trading tool designed by traders for traders. Market conditions vary significantly throughout different trading sessions. Key metrics like trades per second and last minute % change display distinct patterns during pre-market, market open, regular trading hours (RTH), and after-hours sessions. To accommodate these market phases, you can customize your high and low alert settings for each trading session, ensuring optimal alerts across all market conditions.
  • Premarket: 4:00 AM - 9:30 AM ET
  • Market Open: 9:30 AM - 9:38 AM ET
  • Regular Trading Hours (RTH): 9:38 AM - 4:00 PM ET
  • After Hours: 4:00 PM - 8:00 PM ET
Those settings will automatically be switch at the beginning of each of those session.

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New alerts sorting

The scanner dashboard refreshes every minute, displaying new stocks that match your custom filter criteria, if any. You can sort the new batch of received stocks either by the number of trades per seconds or by the % change in the last minute. The default is to sort by the number of trades per seconds.

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Minimum Trades Per Seconds

Trades per second is an excellent measure to determine the momentum of a stock. The momentum detector was designed to detect stocks that are moving with intense trading activity and is the first tool to use trades per second as a filter. Stocks making new daily highs/lows on high trades per second can potentially be excellent momentum plays. Typical levels of interest for low float stocks:
  • 0.5 trades per second: considered low activity. Minimum threshold allowed in pre-market (1 in RTH).
  • 1 trades per second: considered moderate activity.
  • 10 trades per second: considered strong activity level seen in the best momentum stocks.
  • 80+ trades per second: considered extreme activity. This represents the highest level of activity seen in highly volatile stocks.
Pro Tip: Trading frequency (trades per second) is particularly effective for finding exploding low float stocks, which can remain inactive for days before experiencing sudden high activity due to news catalysts. For low float stocks, the sweet spot trading frequency threshold is above 10 trades per second.For finding large-cap stocks like AAPL or NVDA, which maintain consistently high trading activity, we recommend setting much higher trading frequency thresholds.

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Minimum 1 minute % change

This measures the stock’s price movement in the minute immediately preceding the alert.
Pro Tip: When used in combination with last-minute percentage change, there’s an inverse relationship between the required percentage change and trading frequency.Think of it as a balance: if you set a higher percentage change requirement, you can accept a lower trading frequency threshold, and vice versa.However, we recommend maintaining a minimum threshold of 0.5 trades per second in all scenarios.

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Minimum Day Volume

The minimum trading volume required for a stock to be included in the scanner. During pre-market hours, the volume is calculated from 4:00 AM ET. This counter resets at market open (9:30 AM ET) for the regular trading session.

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Minimum % Day Change from previous close

The minimum percentage change from the previous day’s closing price required for a stock to be included in the scanner.