In this article, we'll dive into one of the most popular – and powerful – features of StockCharts: Advanced Technical Scanning.
Quickly find investment opportunities using our predefined and custom technical scans. Both kinds of scans search our entire database of tens of thousands of ticker symbols, returning only those that meet your exact technical criteria. Predefined scans are available to all users, and screen for commonly-requested criteria. Custom technical scans put Extra and Pro members in the driver's seat, empowering them to scan based on their own custom technical criteria.
It takes some practice to write well-crafted scans, but we want you to get the scan experience today. So, to help you run your first scan in just a couple of clicks, we've built a simple "New 52-Week Highs" scan for you. Stocks that have just recorded a new high are leaders and in an uptrend; they're definitely worth a closer look.
The "New 52-Week Highs" scan syntax looks like this:
All you have to do to run this "New 52-Week Highs" scan is click the button below. You'll be sent over to the Advanced Scan Workbench with the scan syntax already loaded.
Once you're on Advanced Scan Workbench, running the scan is simple: just click the green "Run Scan" button below the Scan Editor window. Your results will appear in a new browser window.
If you like the "New 52-Week Highs" scan, you can easily save it in your account.
Instead of hitting the "Run Scan" button on the Advanced Scan Workbench, look for the "Save As" button above the Scan Editor panel (to the right of the Your Scans menu). You'll be prompted to save the scan with whatever name you'd like.
The stocks returned by this scan would be great to invest in; let's save them into a ChartList so that we can analyze them in more detail.
To save your new "watchlist" in a ChartList, click the Available Actions dropdown menu and choose "Store these results in a new ChartList". Give the list a name and click OK.
Once the list has been saved, the symbols will be displayed in a tabular summary view. A great way to get an overall look at your new investment candidates is to view them in CandleGlance view. Simply click on the "View List As" dropdown menu at the top and choose "CandleGlance". Now you can see mini-charts of all the stocks on your watchlist.
We hope this gets you excited about learning to write your own scans. We have lots of documentation and tutorials available in the Support Center to help you on this journey.
For those that aren't feeling brave enough to write their own scans from scratch yet, our Predefined Scans may be just what you're looking for. The Predefined Scans page can be accessed from our Charts & Tools menu (there's a link on the right side of the page under "Reports & More").
On this page, you'll see a list of all the predefined scans that we offer; "New 52-week highs" is right at the top of the list, but we offer many others based on technical indicators, candlestick patterns, and P&F patterns.
The numbers next to each predefined scan show how many results you would get for that scan if you ran it right now. Try clicking the number of NYSE stocks that are having new 52-week highs. This will take you to the results page showing you those leading NYSE stocks. You just ran a scan, without having to write any code!
One of the best things about our predefined scans is the link in the top right corner of the scan results that says "Click here to edit this scan". When you click that link, it takes you to the Advanced Scan Workbench, with all the code filled in so that the Scan Engine knows what to search for. These predefined scans can be a great starting point for creating your own custom scans.
Join Grayson Roze, VP of Operations at StockCharts, as he takes you on a tour of our scanning tools. He covers our predefined scans, the advanced scan workbench, and demonstrates how to run scans directly from ACP, our interactive Advanced Charting Platform.
Next up, let's take a look at how to use the concepts covered in scanning and apply them to our custom technical alerts feature.
Happy Charting!
See how our technical alerts can help you stay one step ahead of the market