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

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