Scans using unadjusted prices possible?

mokurum

Hi,

I was wondering if running my scans using unadjusted prices possible or not ? By default I understand that everything uses adjusted prices.
In some instances the difference between the adjusted and unadjusted is large and affects the back test of a scan.

e.g. SOJB on Feb 3rd, 2016 adjusted vs unadjusted.

Cheers

markd

To my knowledge, there is no option to scan un-adjusted historical data. I searched the documentation, which talks about chart options, but didn't find any mention of scanning.

You can scan for [symbol = ???] in the Alert workbench. You could try that in the scan workbench with _??? and see what happens.

You could also try an email to Support.

I don't remember where I read it, but I believe Stockcharts strongly believes in the need for adjusted data for TA to work. I think the idea is that price changes caused by dividends, splits and distributions are not the result of buying and selling, and so do not have predictive value. Imagine a split that reduces the nominal price by half. That would break any up trend line even if there had been no selling, and would require you to draw a new down trend line, when in fact there was no other reason for it. Un-adjusted dividends also reduce the price and in some cases could also cause a trend line break without any selling.

mokurum

Hi markd,

thank you for the insightful comment.
I will email support about this.

I guess my issue/question with this is that on any given present day, when you are scanning for stocks, the charts you are looking at are un-adjusted as they are present prices. You make your decision to buy/sell based on the present/ un-adjusted prices (or maybe I am wrong about this? Are they always, adjusted live?).
So I want to mimic that when back testing my scan. I wouldn't be looking at the adjusted prices/charts on the day that I make a decision to buy/sell right? Anyway, I hope it makes sense. Not that, this is a problem that we can solve. I will check with support.

cheers!

markd

@mokurum The data you are seeing intraday for the current trading session is the data provided by the vendor to Stockcharts. So you always see the actual, real time market prices for *today's* action - either the current bar on a daily or higher time frame chart, or all the intraday time frame bars for the current session.

If a split or dividend was reported after the prior close, then all the data *prior* to the current session has been adjusted up to (but not including) the open of the current session.

So, if yesterday's close was 10.00, that is what SC will show as of yesterday's close (let's say 4 pm eastern, although there are updates after that). If a dividend is then reported, say, 25 cents, then sometime after the last update but before the next day's open SC will adjust all the prices in the database for that dividend and when the market opens, yesterday's close will show as 9.75 and all other prior data will be similarly adjusted.

Stockcharts reports the adjustments it makes and when here:

http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/adjusthist.html