Searching stocks price at the moment of search

beast770

Hello,

For example, at the start of the market hours, the price of a stock (xyz) is below the 50 day moving average. But 1 hour before the market closes, the price goes above the 50 day moving average. So if I were to scan at the start of the market hours, the stock xyz would have not appeared in the search but at the end of the day would have appeared.

markd

The scan engine data is updated continually (every minute or so) while the market is open, then periodically after the market closes until the final update (somewhere between 6 an 7 pm eastern, usually).

The scan engines smallest time frame is daily (no hourly or five minute, etc. scanning so far). It handles scans run during the day by considering the most recent update (e.g. 1:17 pm) as the final update of the day (even though it isn't).

So your scan results (number of hits) may vary if you run scans during the day. To use your example, suppose xyz were trading near its 50 day. If you ran a scan for a 50 MA crossover at 9:45, 11:20, 1:33 and 3:45, you could get different results each time depending on whether the "close" (the current price at the most recent update preceding your scan) had stayed below, moved above or crossed back below the 50 MA (which would also be changing its value slightly as the current price changed value).