Thinkorswim Scans For Day Trading Stocks (Scanner Setup & Tips)

hey what's going on everyone thanks for  checking out this video this is Travis   from Master the Market and i wanted to  make a quick video to talk a little bit   about scanning for day trading setups here in  the thinkorswim platform with td ameritrade   so before we get into the scans themselves i want  to say that even though i'm using thinkorswim   pretty much any scanner is going to have  similar criteria that you can plug in so   if you're using something like etrade pro or you  know a paid option like trade ideas or equity feed   or really anything along those lines you're going  to be able to apply pretty much the same criteria   and set up the same custom scans with those  as well so first and foremost what you do to   create a scan in thinkorswim is go up here to  the scan tab and from there what you're going   to want to do is click on this little icon  here followed by load and create scan query and after that all you're going to have to do  is put in the criteria that i'm going to show   you here in just a moment and this is already  a scanner that i have created so i'm going to   go ahead and load this up and the first one that i  want to talk about is a low float scanner so this   is looking for stocks that have a limited amount  of shares to actually trade and you can think of   that as the supply for the stock and you can think  of the volume as the demand and stocks with a low   supply or in other words a low amount of shares  available to be traded in a high amount of volume   or a high amount of demand are going to be the  stocks that have the biggest potential for a huge   run so anytime you see a stock that's spiking  up you know maybe 100 or 200 percent even 500   or more in a short period of time whether that be  one day or you know a couple days or even a week   more often than not those are going to be stocks  that have a low number of outstanding shares   because in its simplest form what  that is is a low amount of supply   so really all this scan is looking for is first  anything in the 1 to 20 dollars per share range   now this is completely preference honestly i like  to trade stocks in this range uh but if you prefer   to trade stocks maybe below one dollar per share  or if you're somebody that trades higher price   stocks and you want to focus on twenty dollars  and up you can of course change these settings   to fit your personal preferences uh but after that  you're going to want to put in volume and you want   the minimum volume to be at least 100 000 shares  and in my opinion this should be pretty much the   bare minimum because anything below 100 000 shares  is going to be a very limited amount of liquidity   and that's going to cause a lot of  problems with your trading because   as you know there has to be somebody on the other  side of your trade so when you buy there has to   be somebody to sell you those shares and vice  versa when you sell there has to be somebody   to buy those shares from you and when there's a  very small amount of volume in a specific stock   more often than not you're going to have trouble  finding somebody on the other side of the trade   so 100 000 shares is the bare minimum and to be a  little bit more picky you can even boost this up   to you know 200 000 shares or even up to 500 000  or more shares now the next thing is going to be   the number of shares and again this is going back  to the supply for the stock we want this to be a   pretty low amount of supply because we want to  look for stocks with a lot of volatility and the   ones that have the biggest potential for a huge  spike in the near future so because of that i like   to put the maximum amount of shares outstanding  at 20 million shares anything below that is going   to be considered pretty low and again these are  the ones with potential for a lot of volatility   in the fourth and final study that we have down  here we're looking for unusual volume so we want   the current day's volume to be at least 50  percent greater than what it typically is   over the past 30 periods and you can go ahead and  select any period so you know if you want to look   over the past 30 minutes you would have 30 periods  selected but the period is representing one minute   um you can also have 30 periods selected but that  can be 35 minute periods but in this case we're   looking for volume to be at least 50 percent  greater than it is for an entire day over the   past 30 periods so now not only are we looking  for stocks with a limited amount of shares in a   limited supply but we're also looking for stocks  that are trading unusually large volume and more   often than not these are two things that you're  going to see with pretty much every single big   runner in the stock market so if we go ahead then  and click on scan you can see that we get our list   of stocks meeting this criteria and from there  you would obviously want to narrow this down a   little bit further and maybe look for stocks that  have some kind of news or press release or some   kind of upcoming news or press release and then  potentially look to take a trade based off of that   okay so the other scan that i want  to talk about is a very simple one   and this is actually going to be pretty much  just my idea of a top percent gainer scan   with just a few tweaks because i like to be a  little bit more specific with my scans than just   a general top percent gainers so in this case i  have stocks anywhere between 10 cents per share   all the way up to actually no maximum so anything  above 10 cents per share is going to fit into this   scanner now because we're looking for stocks that  are spiking up and they already have some kind of   gain i'm gonna go ahead and boost this minimum  percent change up to just two percent i'm going   to show you how to actually arrange these so  that way you're looking at the biggest gainers   but then the last thing that we have down here is  just volume again at a minimum of 100 000 shares   and all you have to do then is click on scan again  and this is going to give you the largest percent   gainers now the way that you have this listed from  the top percent gainers down is just make sure   that you click on percent change up here at the  top um and it's going to maybe first list them as   the smallest gainers up to the largest gainers but  you want to have the largest gainers up at the top   so if you click on that again it's going to do  just that and again this is pretty much just   a top percent gainer scan just in this case  we're looking for a minimum amount of shares   so that's going to remove the stocks that are only  trading a couple thousand shares here and there   and also because i'm a little bit picky and i  don't want to trade stocks below 10 cents per   share it's also factoring that in and removing  those stocks from the scan and believe it or   not these two very simple scanners are pretty much  the only ones that i use for my intraday scanning   for the most part i trade a lot of stocks that are  here on the top percent gainers list because these   are stocks that more often than not have some kind  of news or press release that was very recently   released on top of that they usually have a lot of  volume which is associated with that news or press   release and they also have a lot of volatility and  generally speaking when it comes to day trading   the two things that you want to see are volatility  and volume so now that we have the scans   themselves covered i want to actually give you a  few tips to actually use this sidebar over here so   that way you can look at your scans in real time  while you're doing your trading and while you're   analyzing charts without having to switch back  between you know the trade tab and the chart tab   as well as the scan tab that we're on right now so  one thing that many people don't know is that over   here on the sidebar you can click on this plus  button down here to actually add a watch list and   in that watch list it's going to have a default  watch list saved in there but you can actually add   in any of your scanners that you created and saved  right here on the scan tab so what you're going to   want to do is click on this default scanner that  it has pulled up and from there you're going to   go to personal and anything under personal is a  scanner that you created on your own and saved   so just a reminder to actually save this scanner  after you put in this criteria um and all you have   to do is click on the same button up here that you  clicked on to make the scanner in the first place   and then go ahead and save that so that way  you're not going to have to put in this criteria   every time you open the platform back up and on  top of that it's going to be saved so that way   you can open it up over here on the sidebar and  it's going to show up under personal uh so for   example if we go ahead and take this top percent  gainers one that we just talked about a moment ago   and you can see that now we have this pulled up  over here on the sidebar now one thing that i   don't like by default about these scanners and  watch lists over here on the sidebar is the way   that they're arranged so i'm going to click on  this little settings icon to the right of the   ask and i'm going to go ahead and customize this  now i personally like to focus on the percent   change rather than the net change so i'm going  to go ahead and remove that as well as the bid   and the ask and instead i'm going to go ahead  and add the percent change as well as the volume and then i'm going to go ahead and click on ok  and you can see that now our scanner is going   to show us the symbol it's going to show us the  last price that the stock traded at it's going   to show us the percent change and last but not  least it's going to show us the volume over here   so again this is very useful if you are you know  doing some trading or chart analysis and you want   to keep an eye on your scanners at the same time  without having to switch between these two tabs   now another really cool thing is that you can  actually go ahead and widen this sidebar out a bit   you can actually link all of these different  tools together which is really going to help   you save a lot of time when doing your analysis  and when looking for some trade setup so if we go   ahead and set these all to yellow or number two  under this little link feature on these tools now anytime a stock pops up on  our watch list or on our scanner   if we click on that stock you can see  it's also going to pull up a quick chart   and it's also going to pull up the most recent  news for that stock so if you wanted to read the   news and see what is causing the stock to spike  up you just click on it and it's going to have   that article right there pop up for you to read  so the last thing that i want to talk about is a   way for you to actually narrow down the stocks  that are pulling up on your scanners to a much   smaller list that you're going to be able to  put a little bit more of your attention into   uh so to narrow that down even further you can go  ahead over here to the sidebar and add in another   watch list and this time we're going to go ahead  on default and create watch list and just go ahead   and give it any kind of name i'm going to go  ahead and call this november 2nd watch list and   all you have to do is add in any symbols that  were popping up on your scanner that you think   are going to be a potential day trade in the near  future so uh we'll just take this example here sup uh we'll take e i g i we'll add dgly and let's take acor and then go ahead and  click on save and again just like we did   up here you can also adjust the columns  to have the last price the percent change   and the volume instead of the net change the bid  and the ask and now not only do you have your   scanners over here on the sidebar but you have a  more narrowed down list of the best stocks that   are actually hitting that scanner and for me i  think that's a really great way to kind of narrow   down your scans and to have a readily available  list of the stocks that you're looking to trade   so anyway i hope you found this video helpful  and let me know if you try out these scans   and how they work out for you if you're interested  in learning how to day trade swing trade or even   long term invest you can find more information  on that at my website master the market which   will be the first website link down below in the  description and if you enjoyed the video please   make sure to give it a like and subscribe to the  channel so you don't miss out on future videos   but anyway thank you again for watching i hope  you enjoyed and good luck with your trading you

Channel: Master the Market

Views: 74,952

Rating: 4.9458957 out of 5

Keywords: thinkorswim, thinkorswim scanner, day trading scanner, custom thinkorswim scan, low float stocks, how to find stocks, day trading for beginners, thinkorswim tutorial, master the market, Ricky gutierrez, humbled trader, mtmtrader

Id: e0uB1fGJDqI

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 04 2020