SCAN -- Out preforming S&P

Elwin

A Scan for weekly charts, would like stocks that are out preforming S&P for at least a couple of weeks

markd

ROC (rate of change) is probably a good choice for this. But first, you would have to determine from your chart the ROC value for $SPX for the time period you select. For instance, ROC(2) for $SPX on the weekly chart after today's (Wednesday's) close is 0.36

So in your scan you would include the line

and [weekly ROC(2) > .36]

Each time you run the scan you would have to update the ".36" to the current value (because the scan engine has no variables, so there is no way to specify you want to compare other symbols' indicator values to the $SPX indicator value).

You might want to experiment with the parameters for ROC. Better stocks will outperform the $SPX over longer periods.

But a short period parameter could catch an emerging stock. On your chart style, you could add the Price Performance indicator with the parameters $SYMBOL:$SPX. If you add moving average to it - 21 or 63 (thanks BobS) maybe (on a daily chart, 4 or 13 on a weekly chart), then a cross above the falling MA may indicate a stock that wants to turn around - it might happen right away, or it might take a few weeks. But if it gets above an MA and stays above it, it's a decent possibility. Unfortunately, you can't scan for the Price Performance indicator.

Note that if you run a weekly scan mid-week, the scan engine considers the current date/time as the end of the week. So if you say ROC(2) and run it on Wednesday, it is not covering the same amount of time as if you ran it for the previous Friday (or waited until market close this coming Friday). It may not matter in this case, but it would matter if you were looking for, say, crossover signals.

Elwin

Mark,
Thank you. This is very helpful.