Why didn't my Scan pick up stock "XYZ" ??
Q: Why didn't my scan pick up stock "XYZ", I've
checked the scan, its all OK and "XYZ" meets all the criteria ?
A: Assuming there are no logic errors in the scan, it is
probably the simple case of stock "XYZ" not being in the scan engine
database. Not all stocks we can plot are
contained in the scan engine database, but there is an easy way to verify
whether your stock is in the scan base or not.
The scan engine database is a very large collection of live
data which is stored on a separate computer system in fast RAM memory. It contains 800 trading days of; high, low,
open, close and volume, for about 20,000 stocks, that’s a ton of data. This database is updated about every 15 mins
throughout the day with new data and this all happens while people are running
scans, not an easy task to keep everything straight.
In order to keep the size / cost of the equipment and the
time to run a scan down to a reasonable level, the database is limited to only
the more common stocks with readily available data. IE pink sheet stocks are normally not
included in the Scanning database as this would significantly increase the
number of stocks and thus the cost and time to run a scan.
So in order to check if your stock "XYZ" is in the
database we'll have to use the Advanced User Interface for the Scan
engine. Under the "Ticker
Properties" drop down menu, select "Symbol" and then
insert. This will add the criteria
"and [symbol starts with 'A']"
to the default scan expression.
Now we'll need to modify this criteria and delete everything
else in the expression so we are left with only one criteria, [symbol = 'XYZ']
. Run the scan, if "XYZ" is
returned then its in the database and something is wrong in the logic of your
scan. If its not returned then its not
in the base and thus the reason the scan did not find it.
