These alerts appear any time there is a print for a higher or lower price than the rest of the day.  Highs and lows are reset once a day at a time determined by the exchange.

When the alerts server sees a new high, it looks for the most recent day before today when the price was higher than it is now.  It reports the day when this happened, and the high for that day as resistance.  For a new low, the server looks for the most recent day when the price was lower than the current price.  It reports the low for that day as support.  Note:  This is a very simple version of support and resistance based only on daily highs and lows.  Several alerts listed below implement more advanced algorithms for finding support and resistance.

These alerts are related to the Position in Range filters.  Use these filters to make other alert types sensitive to highs and lows.

More options related to these alerts are listed below.

These alerts appear any time the ask price goes higher or the bid price goes lower than any time today.  These are reset at the same time as the highs and lows.  These alerts are never reported in the 30 seconds before or 60 seconds after the open.  More options related to these alerts are listed below.

These alerts are a subset of their unfiltered counterparts.  When the price quickly changes several times in a row, only one of these alerts will appear.  The unfiltered alerts appear once every time the price changes.

Typically no more than one alert per stock will appear each minute.  However, if a stock price changes by more basis points than expected, new alerts will be displayed more often.  The cutoff point for each symbol is automatically chosen based on volatility.

Daytraders often prefer to display the unfiltered versions of these alerts on a large set of stocks.  The effect is to create a window where the user can quickly see if the market as a whole is moving up or down.  Other traders prefer to see fewer, more interesting alerts.  For that effect, select these filtered versions of the alerts.  Some people create two or more alert windows, some with filtered alerts and some with unfiltered alerts.

These are similar to the new high ask (filtered) and new low bid (filtered), listed above.  More options related to these alerts are listed below.

Pre-market highs and lows show the highest and lowest prices of the morning.  This only includes the pre-market prints, which are not part of the normal highs and lows.

You can filter these the same way as normal highs and lows.  For example, set the filter to 1 if you only want to see highs which are higher than the previous day's high, or lower than the previous day's low.  More details

Post-market highs and lows show the highest and lowest prices since the market closed.  This only includes the post-market prints, which are not part of the normal highs and lows.

You can filter these alerts the same way as other highs and lows, with one difference.  We start counting the number of days from today's close.  So a value of 1 day means that the high was higher than today's high, but not higher than the previous day's high.  If that same print had happened before the market closed, it would have generated an alert with a value of 0 days.  More details

If the stock gapped down, start with yesterday's close price.  If the stock gapped up, start with today's open price.  Follow the stock down to today's low.  Report an alert when the stock returns 25% or 75% of the way from the second point back to the first point.  A stock can report these alerts more than one time per day.

Note:  These alerts examine and report on every print.  We do not filter out or otherwise correct bad prints.  These alerts are typically used as a warning of something coming, so these alerts report as quickly as possible, rather than waiting for confirmation.

Our proprietary filtering removes the most insignificant moves.  More filtering options related to these alerts are listed below.

These work just like the Pullback from lows alerts, but in the other direction.

The check mark pattern is defined by higher highs followed by lower lows followed by even higher highs.  This pattern is most commonly seen as a continuation pattern.  The inverted check mark is the same pattern, but upside down.

These patterns are based on daily highs and lows.  The exchanges report highs and lows almost exclusively during market hours, so these alerts rarely if ever occur after market.  We never report these alerts before the open or in the first three minutes after the open.  The last part of the check mark must happen at least three minutes after the open.

These alerts report when a stock moves up or down a certain percentage since the previous close.  These alerts are based on official prints, not the pre- and post-market.

These alerts were requested by money managers who often have to report to investors when a stock moves against them by too much.  These alerts are more straightforward than many of our alerts.  A money manger will typically watch several types of alerts, but will only report simple events to clients.

Typically these alerts only report once at each price level.  However, if an alert was based on a bad quote, the server will reset itself to the last valid alert.

The server does not report an alert until the stock price has changes by at least 3%.  The user can require higher standards, as described below.

These alerts report each time the stock price moves an integer number of standard deviations from the closing price.  These are very similar to the % up/down for the day alerts, but these are based on volatility rather a percentage.  For some stocks it is interesting and unusual when they move up by less than 1% from the previous close.  Others must move by 2% or more before they are interesting.  The user can require higher standards, as described below.

These alerts are slightly different from our other volatility alerts, because these use a more traditional formula for volatility.  For most of our alerts we use two weeks worth of volume-weighted, intraday volatility data, and we scale it so that "1" means a typical move for one 15 minute period.  These alerts are based on a year's worth of volatility data.  Recent data is weighted more heavily than year old data, and the data is scaled so that "1" means a standard deviation for one day.

The crossed daily highs resistance alert reports whenever a stock crosses above any previous day's high for the first time since the end of that previous day.  The crossed daily lows support alert reports whenever a stock crosses a previous day's low for the first time since the end of that previous day.  These compare the current price to the daily highs and lows for the past year.

These alerts are a variation on the idea of a 5 day high or a 52 week low.  These alerts tell you when a stock is moving from 5 day highs to 6 day highs.  Or from 6 day highs to 7 day highs.  Etc.

The messages and the filters for these alerts are the same as for the new high / low price alerts.  In fact, these alerts are a subset of the standard daily high / low alerts.  These alerts only report when the number of days in the new high or low changes.

These alerts report when a stock has an unusually high number of shares on the best bid or ask.  These are very short term alerts aimed at very fast, experienced traders.

We only generate these alerts for stocks with an average daily volume of less than 3,000,000 shares per day.  If a stock typically trades less than 1,000,000 shares per day we require a bid or ask size of 6,000 shares or greater to generate an alert.  Otherwise we require a bid or ask size of 10,000 shares or greater to generate an alert.  We also have additional filters to prevent a stock from reporting this alert too often.  For example, if the best bid for a stock is 20,000 shares at $10.00, then someone adds a bid of 100 shares at 10.01, the 20,000 shares still appear in the order book.  When the 100 shares go away, and the best bid returns to the 20,000 shares at $10.00, we do not report another alert.

If we report a large bid or offer size, then the size grows even larger, we typically report another alert.  The message for that alert is labeled "(Size increasing)".

If a stock is showing a large bid or ask size, and the price changes but the size remains large enough, we may report an additional alert.  The message for that alert is labeled "(Price rising)" or "(Price dropping)".  This message only applies to large size.  For example, if we see a 20,000 shares on the bid at $10.00, we report an alert.  If the best bid changes to 100 shares at $10.05, we report nothing.  If the best bid then changes to 15,000 shares at $10.02, we report a second alert, labeled "(Price rising)".

If a large bid is dropping, or a large ask is rising, this makes for a stronger alert.  If a large bid is rising, or a large ask is dropping, this may be a "head fake"; someone may be trying to trick you by showing large size in one direction, while slowly buying or selling in the other direction.  In either case, we report an alert.

The bid and the ask are two completely separate alerts.  The size or price of the bid does not influence the Large ask size alert.  The size or price of the ask does not influence the Large bid size alert.

More options related to these alerts are listed below.

The market crossed alerts appears when the ask price for a stock is lower than the bid price.  These conditions occur when the stock is unusually active and often signal a turning point.

These alerts will not appear every time the market is crossed.  Crosses often appear in groups.  The alerts server will filter these, and report the first crossing in each group.  It will report new alerts only if the size of the cross grows, or if the market has been uncrossed for several minutes before crossing again.  Some stocks, particularly the highest volume stocks, are crossed on a regular basis.  The alerts server may filter out most or all of the alerts for these stocks.

In some cases the alert server will describe the alert as "up" or "down".  This distinction is based on the primary market.  The assumption is that the primary market does not react as quickly as the ECNs.  So if the bid on an ECN is higher than the specialist's offer on an NYSE stock, many traders assume the price will move up soon.

Note:  These alerts are only intended to highlight stocks which are doing interesting things.  A crossed market is often a leading indicator of other activities.  These are not intended for arbitrage.  Crossed markets typically last for only a second or two, and disappear before most traders can take advantage of them.

More options related to these alerts are listed below.

The market locked alert occurs whenever the bid and ask for a stock are at exactly the same price.  Like a market cross, a market lock typically shows when a stock is especially volatile.  These alerts are automatically filtered similar to the market crossed alerts.  If this condition occurs several times in a row, you will only see one alert.

These alerts tell you when the specialist's spread for an NYSE stock suddenly becomes large.  Large is at least 50 cents.  If the spread changes multiple times in a short time period, you'll only be alerted the first time.

For additional ways to work with the spread, be sure to look at the min and max spread filters.

Trading above occurs when someone buys a stock for more than the best offer price.  Trading below occurs when someone sells a stock for less than the best bid.

These alerts typically signify a temporary condition where a stock is suddenly more volatile than normal.  Often this is caused by traders who know that the stock price is about to change quickly, so they choose the fastest execution venue rather than attempting to get the cheapest one.  Highly experienced short term traders may choose to join the action, in anticipation of a fast change in the stock price.  Longer term traders still take note of this condition because it is a leading indicator of which stocks will have interesting activity.

This signal is strongest when there are multiple events for the same stock in a short period of time.  When this happens the alerts server will group multiple events into the same alert.  The alert message will say something like "Trading above 4 times" to indicate that this alert includes 4 different prints that were higher than the best offer.  If it just says "Trading above" but doesn't say "times", then this alert only refers to a single print.

More options related to these alerts are described below.

These alerts are a subset of the Trading above and below alerts.  These alerts only apply to NYSE and AMEX stocks, and they only work during normal market hours.

If a print is below the NYSE specialist's bid, then we display a Trading below specialist alert.  If a print is above the specialist's offer, then we display a Trading above specialist alert.

More options related to these alerts are described below.

The offer stepping down alert describes a trading pattern often associated with a market short sale.  Although there is no certain way to detect a market short, many proprietary traders tell us they are looking for exactly this pattern.

The basic pattern looks like this.  The stock has a large number of shares on the offer.  (The exact minimum size on the offer is different for different stocks.)  The best offer price is exactly one penny above the last sale price.  The sale price drops, and the large offer follows it.  The prices must drop at least one more time in this way before we print the first alert.  Each successive time the price steps down in this way we report another alert.  We add our own filtering on top of this to remove noise and display the highest quality alerts.

This pattern is based on the rules for short sales.  For most stocks, especially the lower volume stocks, most traders cannot sell short on a down-tick.  One option is to wait for an up-tick.  The other is to do a short offer.  In the latter case, you will want to lower your price as much as possible, as soon as possible, each time the price of the last print goes down.  The offer stepping down alert is looking for this particular trading pattern.

These alerts appear any time a stock changes between being up for the day, and being down for the day.  These compare the current price to the price of the open.  Daytraders typically use the open, not the close, to decide if a stock is up or down for the day.

These alerts always compare the price of the last print to the price of the most recent open.  In the pre-market, this refers to the open of the previous trading day.  Otherwise this refers to today's open.

More options related to these alerts are listed below.

These alerts are similar to the previous two alerts, except these alerts look at the close, not the open.  Most institutional traders use the close, not the open, to say if a stock is up or down for the day.

Before and during normal market hours, this refers to the previous trading day's close.  After normal market hours, this refers to the current day's close.  Note:  This value can change during post market trading.  The closing price can be estimated right at the close, but the official number is not available until later.

More options related to these alerts are listed below.

These alerts present information similar to their unconfirmed counterparts.  Each time the price of the last print crosses the open or the close, one of the preceding unconfirmed alerts appears.  The advantage of this is that the messages are instant, and the last message shows the current direction of the market.  The disadvantage is that it is noisy.  If the price stays near the open or the close, many alerts will appear.

The alerts listed here require statistical confirmation before they appear.  This filters out noise, but requires a slight delay.  This analysis involves price, time, and volume.  If the price continues to move around the open or close, this alert may never appear.  Once the price chooses a direction the exact amount of time required for the alert to appear depends on volume. 

The statistical analysis does not require that every print cross the open or the close before the alert is displayed.  The analysis filters out insignificant prints that go against the general trend.  It is even possible, although unlikely, that the last print disagrees with the analysis as a whole.

These alerts report when a stock's price is acting differently than expected based on the prices of related stocks.

The server reports a breakout and displays a green arrow if the stock is performing better than the rest of the sector.  The server reports a breakdown and displays a red arrow if the stock is performing worse than the rest of the sector.  These are all relative measurements.  It is possible that all stocks in the sector are moving up today.  If one stock in the sector is moving up faster than the rest, that stock will report a breakout.  If another stock in that sector is also moving up, but much more slowly than expected, it will report a breakdown.

The server determines which stocks are related to which other stocks empirically.  It compares the intraday moves of each stock to the intraday moves of a variety of different indices.  It records which index is the best predictor of the stock, and it records additional statistical information about the relationship.  This is often an index of the stock's sector, but it may also be a broader market index.  For some stocks no index is appropriate.  The server never reports one of these alerts for those stocks.

During the day the server monitors various ETFs and similar products.  These give a more timely description of the underlying stocks than watching an index directly, especially near the open.  In real time the server compares the changes in each stock's price to the expected changes based on the other products.  It reports an alert as soon as the actual price varies too much from the expected price.  It recomputes this every time a stock prints; it does not include any type of confirmation.

These alerts are not available for indexes.  The opening price data for an index is not reliable.  Instead, use the following alerts, which are similar but use the previous close rather than today's open.

The server does not report a breakout unless the actual stock price is at least 1% above expectations.  It does not report a breakdown unless the actual price is at least 1% below expectations.  The user can require higher standards, as described below.

These alerts are similar to the previous set of alerts.  While those compare each stock's current price to its price at today's open, these compare the current price to the previous day's close.  Otherwise, these alerts use the same algorithms and historical background data as the previous alerts.

The most obvious advantage to using the previous close is that these alerts work in the premarket.  The previous alerts only report after the opening print.

More importantly, the two types of alerts handle the gap differently.  If you believe that the gap was based on news after the market, and the market has already stabilized, use the previous set of alerts.  Those start fresh after the open, and only look for new changes.  If you think that the gap is significant and will continue to effect the stock prices through the day, use these alerts.  This philosophy is appealing to traders who believe that the beginning of the day is too wild to be predictable or the open is manipulated by the specialists.

More options related to these alerts are listed below.

These alerts are similar to the Sector breakout/breakdown (from close) alerts.  These are optimized to work well in the low volume times, such as before and after official market hours.

The Sector breakout/down (from open/close) alerts look at a number of possible sectors and indexes, and choose one to match each stock.  They make this choice based on how well the prices match during a typical trading day.  The market divergence alerts try to compare each stock to QQQQ.  This is a popular point of comparison because it is a broad based index and it is so liquid, even before and after normal trading hours.  The market divergence alerts also use a slightly different algorithm than the previous alerts to compare the stocks.  This algorithm pays more attention to the previous close and minimizes the effects of the opening prices.  As with the previous alert types, some stocks do not usually move with QQQQ, so we do not report alerts for those stocks.

If you do a lot of trading before the open or in other low volume times, these alerts are ideal.  But they are also useful to traders who only trade at the open and other high volume times.  For instance, take the strategy of open order enveloping.  In this strategy traders assume that the specialist is manipulating the opening print, and they try to take advantage of this.  They start shortly before the open by using yesterday's close and the current price of the futures to predict a reasonable opening value for a stock.  They assume that the actual opening price will often differ from the expected value, but will usually move toward that value after the open.  After placing your initial orders, use the market divergence alerts to watch your stocks.  You will see alerts if the stocks move away from the expected value, moving against you.  You will see no alerts as long as the stock moves toward the expected value.

More options related to these alerts are listed below.

This alert appears when a stock price is changing significantly less than normal.  The volatility of the stock sets the expected price range for a stock price.  Statistical analysis determines if a consolidation is strong enough to report.  If the software detects consolidations on multiple time frames, it reports the most statically significant time frame.  On average the software reevaluates each consolidation every 15 minutes, but the exact time depends on how quickly the stock is trading.  The analysis is based on the majority of trades, weighted by volume; outlying prints may be ignored.

This alert works best for stocks with medium to high volume.  For low volume stocks, a few large prints can contribute more volume than all the rest of the prints combined.

More options related to this alert are listed below.

If you are looking for consolidations on a larger time frame, see the consolidation filters, below.  These use a more traditional algorithm for consolidations, and they look at a daily chart.

This alert appears when a stock is trading on higher volume than normal.  Normal volume is based on the average volume of the stock on several recent days, at the same time of day.  Historical volume data is broken into 15 minute intervals.  Current volume must be up a minimum of 50% over the historical average before this alert is reported.  If the current volume is at least 3 times the historical average, the alert description includes "very high relative volume".  Current volume may be smoothed out; if volume in one time period is below average, it will take more volume to cause this alert in adjacent time periods.  Distant time periods also affect each other, but to a lesser degree.

This alert is related to the current volume filters.

More options related to this alert are listed below.

This alert appears when a stock is trading on significantly higher volume than normal.  Normal volume is based on the average total volume of the stock on several recent days.  Current volume is the volume between midnight and the current time.

This alert can appear multiple times for a stock.  If, in the course of a day, a stock trades a total of 3 1/2 times its average volume, the stock will generate 3 alerts.  The first alert will occur when the stock's volume first gets to its daily average.  The second alert will occur when the stock's volume gets to twice the daily average.  An additional alert is generated each time the current volume crosses another integer multiple of the average volume.

This alert is similar to the High relative volume alert, listed above.  High relative volume is much more precise, looking at only the recent volume today, and comparing it to the normal volume for this time of day.  This alert is better at finding stocks which are trading much, much more than normal.

More options related to this alert are listed below.

These alerts appear when a stock prints the tape more quickly than it normally does at this time of day.  They only look at the number of prints, not the size of the prints.  They are focused on timeframes of 3 minutes or less.  This includes all prints, regardless of the exchange or execution venue.

A stock must print at a rate of at least 5 times as fast as normal to generate this alert.  Roughly speaking, if a stock prints as many times in a 3 minute period as it usually does in 15 minutes, then we report an alert.  We can also display additional alerts if the rate continues to rise.

We always compare the current rate of prints to a historical baseline for this stock.  Some stocks typically print more often than others.  And we expect more prints during certain times of day than others.  This historical data is more consistent during regular market hours than in the pre- and post-market.  It is possible to see these alerts in the pre- and post-market, but they are far less common.

These alerts are aimed at finding stocks which are just starting to print quickly; we report these alerts as soon as possible.  However, once we report an alert, we are less likely to report a second alert for the same stock.  If the rate drops, then rises again later in the day, we will display another alert.  And if the rate increases, we will report more alerts. But if the rate remains constant, regardless of how unusual the rate is, you will only see these alerts when this trend starts.  If you wish to see stocks which have been printing more than normal all day long, look at the Strong volume alert or the Min Current Volume filter.

You can filter these alerts based on how much faster the prints are coming in than normal, as described below.

These alerts appear when the stock price moves very quickly.  The exact number of basis points required to set off this alert depends on the volatility of the underlying security.  To assist daytraders, this alert works on a time scale of approximately one minute.  Bad prints are filtered out, and will not cause this alert to appear.

The description of each alert includes the size of the move.  Roughly speaking, this number shows how much the price has changed in the last minute.  However, the alert will be reported as soon as the underlying security meets the minimum criteria, which may take less than one minute.  Often the price continues to run in the same direction, so the final size will be larger than the size reported.

This alert will only be reported when the price makes a clear, statistically validated move in one direction.  It will not be reported every time the price of the last print moves by the price displayed on the screen.  Otherwise, random noise would cause this alert to be reported more often.

More options related to these alerts are listed below.

These alerts are similar to their faster counterparts, but these alerts work on a longer time frame and require more volume to appear.  These alerts work on a minimum time frame of approximately 15 minutes.  The exact time frame can change based on how quickly a stock is trading.  To assist institutional traders, these alerts have stricter criteria than the faster ones, so fewer of these alerts appear.

There is no direct relationship between the confirmed and faster version of these alerts.  Neither is a subset of the other.  It is analogous to the problem of drawing trendlines on graphs with two different time frames.  A trend may be clear in the smaller time frame but reverse itself several times in the larger time frame.  Conversely, a trend may not be considered strong to report on the smaller time frame, but in the larger time frame the trend is consistent enough to report.  The confirmed version of these alerts actually monitors multiple time frames, with different cutoffs for each one.

Because these alerts require statistical confirmation of a trend, the last print may not agree with the trend.  Often these alerts can be helpful to find tops and bottoms.  During especially turbulent trading, it is even possible to see a running up alert followed almost immediately by a running down alert.  This is not a mistake.  In this case the VWAP graph will show a trend moving up then down, with one or more major volume spikes in the middle.

The description of the alert will include more information:

• Running up - This stock price is increasing quickly.
• Running up briskly - This stock price is increasing even more quickly.
• Running down - This stock price is decreasing quickly.
• Running down briskly - This stock price is decreasing even more quickly.

More options related to these alerts are listed below.

These offer a middle ground between the volume confirmed versions of the running alerts and faster versions.  Watching the confirmed running alerts, or any of the volume confirmed alerts we offer, is similar to watching a week's worth of 15 minute candles.  Watching the faster running alerts is similar to watching 90 seconds worth of data on a tick chart.  Watching the intermediate running alerts is similar to watching 25 minutes of 30 second candles.  Of course, we continuously monitor the tick data, not candles, but this gives you an idea of the time frame for each alert.

Like the other types of running alerts, these alerts point out stocks that are moving more quickly and more consistently than normal.  Normal is defined by the intraday volatility over the past two weeks.  At a high level, the three pairs of alerts are all looking for the same thing.  In practice we need different algorithms to work on each time scale.

• The intermediate and volume confirmed versions of the alerts smooth the data out before commenting on the trend.  This prevents any one unusual p