Right now, whenever I open up the Advanced Scan Workbench, I get this default benchmark definition for the universe of securities to scan:
[type = stock] and [daily sma(20,daily volume) > 40000]This is hopelessly broad in that it includes boatloads of thinly traded stocks, penny stocks, foreign stocks and the like — securities I would never trade in, myself. I have my own definition of a securities universe, which looks like this:
[type = stock] and [[exchange is NYSE] or [exchange is AMEX] or [exchange is NASDAQ]] and [daily sma(50,daily volume) > 200000] and [Close > 10]This is my personal universe, and it works for me, but the point is, I would like to change the default securities universe to be that, rather than forcing me to manually change the overly broad universe that's already baked in, every time I log in.
Is there a way to make that change?
The short answer is “No.” The default scan page isn't customizable.
However, there is a workaround. You just have to change how you access the scan engine. Normally, I use the links on the Members page. You can use the right-hand link to “Create a New Scan,” which takes you to the Standard Scan Workbench. Then you hit the Advanced Scan button to get to the Advanced Scan Workbench page with the standard default starting point.
There is another link on the left, though, that you can use to pull up one of your saved scans and run it or edit it. This is the method I use, as I am either running a saved scan, editing a saved scan, or creating a new scan from scratch. Why not have the scan engine open directly in the scan where you want it to be, rather than open the default and then pull up your saved scan?
For a new scan with “MY Standard Default” intro settings, I just pull up one of my standard intro templates. These are scans I've created with different default settings that I use as a starting points. Their names start with “0” so they are always at the top of the drop-down menu list.
One more thing, its always good to put the primary database criteria first — Symbol, Open, High, Low, Close and Volume — and put the secondary calculated criteria second. Your scans will run faster if the heavy calculations are done after the universe of stocks has already been reduced.
In other words, don't ask the scan engine to calculate EMAs, Stochastics, and Bollinger data on the entire 30,000 stocks in the database, and then ask it to scan the results for stocks between $5 and $10. Make the pool of stocks to be scanned as small as possible first. Then, run the heavy calculations. Your scans will run much, much faster.
Cheers Gord
–Gord
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