Alerts

dhall6938

GM. I am trying to save yet another scan into the alert system. I have tried repeatedly since yesterday afternoon. Have tried several times this morning as well. As a test, I also tried to set up an alert for another scan and it worked fine. There must be something wrong with my scan, but I can't figure out what is wrong. The syntax checks out. I am not over the maximum number of alerts. I am well below the maximum characters allowed. I don't know what else to check. Do you have any ideas that I can check?

dhall6938

I may have figured it out. I think it must be a syntax problem. I dismantled the scan and re assembled it one piece at a time. After I had completely reassembled it, it seems to work fine and it can be saved into the alert system as a new alert. Fingers crossed

dhall6938

I was wrong. After dismantling it would save to an alert. However, if I close out of alerts and then go back to alerts and open it up, nothing is saved. It's as if this particular alert will allow the number of characters as the scan will allow.

markd

Either you are doing something wrong without realizing it, or something is corrupted. If you know how to empty your browser cache, do that.

Delete all versions of the scan and alert and log out of Stockcharts. Also close your browser. Then log back in and start over with a completely new scan, a completely new alert and completely new names.

dhall6938

Thanks. I have copied the scan into an alert several times before, so I know that it has worked fine. Yesterday, I deleted one of the previous alerts and then set it up again and it worked fine and still is this morning. I said all of that to say that I am not too sure that your suggestion will take care of my issue. This morning, I have tried a number of things, and I can permanently save the scan as an alert minus the very last sentence. However, if I delete one of the previous identical alerts and then set it up again, it is permanently saved. It's almost as if the first 180 alerts hold more characters.

dhall6938

I am doing something wrong definitely.

dhall6938

Thanks again for your advice. I will live with what I have now, I guess. FYI, in the initial alerts set up months ago, I was able to save the whole scan with 1621 characters left. Now, if I delete the last sentence, I can save the alert with1839 characters left. So, currently, I can save somewhere between 1839 and 1621 characters left. However, in the first alerts, I am still able to save the entire scan with 1621 characters left.

markd

I'm suggesting that the copying and pasting brings the corrupt area (which may not be visible, by the way) with it.

It appears you are safely within the character limits, so the number of characters bumping up against the limit is probably unrelated to the problem.

It is possible there is an "end of file" character, or some other character created and used by the scan interpreter that you can't see (and didn't type) embedded somewhere in your text - that would be the corruption.

I'm suggesting starting clean so you know that corruption isn't there. When you copy and paste, you can't be sure where it is, so you may or may not be copy/pasting it.

dhall6938

Thank you, I had no idea

dhall6938

I ran my primary bull entry scan a couple of times today. In the morning, XLF triggered but none of the others triggered. I ran it one more time during the day and only XLF. During the last 15 minutes today, I ran it again and it triggered INDU, SPX and XLF. I have the scan set up to run every hour and it only triggered XLF this morning. If my scans are set up to notify me on the hour and the criteria does not line up until the last hour, will it trigger at the close? My guess is that if the criteria are not met until the last hour, it will not trigger or alert me, not even on the close.

markd

If you can set the scan(s) to run at a specific time, choose 3:59. It's not unusual for the day's range to expand in the last hour, sometimes in the last 5 minutes.

dhall6938

Thank you. I have not tried to set a specific time yet. I will

dhall6938

I have almost 200 lengthy scans. IT's going to be a fairly monumental task to delete and then recreate at least 30 of them and maybe twice that many. I may try to take on that task this week and I have been trying to think of ways to make it easier and less prone to a mistake that I am very likely to make. I think that I will need to copy and paste the scan / alert into an email so that I can see exactly what I asked the scan to give me. I wonder if it is safe to copy and paste from the email or do I need to rewrite the whole thing? If I need to rewrite the whole thing, is it safe to begin to copy and paste from the first one or will I have to rewrite each one of them? I know that I can get started and find out on my own and I enjoy doing it but if I understand your instructions correctly, I have to delete every scan and alert that may be corrupted before I try to recreate them. So, I will be without them until I can get all of them recreated and I would like to reduce the amount of time that I will be without them as safely as possible. Now that I think about it a little more, I may wait until a weekend to try it. Anyway, I hope to find some short cuts to reduce time

markd

Have you checked whether there is an alert limit for your subscription level?

dhall6938

If you're asking about the maximum number of alerts, I have 250 that I can use. I have just under 200 of them so I should be good to go, I hope. I have been thinking about how to approach this mess. I still have some saved scans that have used almost all 8K characters, so I think that whatever is wrong happened after creating those scans. I have also tried to create a couple of scans this morning that have more than 6500 characters and it won't save them until I get below approximately 6500 characters. I don't know the exact numbers but it's close to 6500 characters. I think that I will start by keeping all scans and alerts and just manually typing in every single character and see if it will save it when it grows to over 6500 characters. I'll try that before I delete so many scans and alerts.

markd

It sounds like you may be exceeding an undocumented total character limit for all scans/alerts even though no one scan/alert exceeds the character limit for any one scan/alert.

When they programmed the system, they probably didn't anticipate so many lengthy scans from an individual user. They have to set a limit to prevent malicious viruses eating up the disk space. So they probably took an average usage per subscriber plus some extra to set the limit, and maybe you've found it.

dhall6938

Well, I can still create quite a few new scans as long as the character limited to 6500 each scan. I do have some saved scans that I will never use but I have kept for reference. I will get rid of some of those tomorrow as well. Thanks

dhall6938

Tomorrow I am going to take one scan that I know is corrupt and rewrite the whole thing manually with no cutting and pasting or copying anything and see if I can create a new scan with more characters than what seems to be my current limit of 6500. If that works, I will be very lucky and I will be able to take my time rewriting one scan and one alert at a time. I'll be able to do it over time.

dhall6938

I don't imagine that it would help to know more about what I am doing or trying to do but I am trading 8 index symbols mostly. I trade INDU, SPX, NDX and IWM to mention some of them. I have 1 long entry scan for all of them, 1 long profit scan for all of them, 1 short entry scan and 1 short profit scan for the group but I have an alert for each symbol so that I can be alerted as each one meets the criteria. They don't all do it at the same time. So you can see that the number of alerts can get pretty large quickly. I have one chart list with all of the symbols that I use to run my 4 scans, but I have an individual chart list for each symbol that I use for my alerts.

markd

I guess the only thing I would suggest is to see whether all the conditions in each scan are actually necessary to get the results you need. In other words, of the many conditions, which are most responsible for useful hits. Keep those and prune the rest.

IamJim

What is the last line of the scan please? As I know for sure if you have a "rank by" it works in Scan but does not work using Alert.

And not sure if / what other clauses like that there is in this thing, as never found a full blooded glossary of terms, nor a simple database items list of exactly what is stored as well as

https://interactivebrokers.github.io/tws-api/namespaceIBApi.html

dhall6938

There is not one line that I can cut and still get the same results.


The last three lines of this particular scan copied so that you can see it exactly as it exists....or[[EMA(14) X Close] or [SMA(14) X Close] or [EMA(20) X Close] or [SMA(20) X Close]]

or [[SMA(20,RSI(14)) X EMA(20,RSI(14))]]]]///End Group Signals

]///Individual Signal

As you can see, I don't have any individual Signals yet. I can't get the scan or the alert to accept any more than I already have. This scan says that it has 1637 characters left.

dhall6938

I have deleted several scans that I had been saving for future reference and I have some alerts that I am not likely to use that I'll also dump today sometime. Sometime today, before I delete so many scans and alerts, I am going to manually recreate one of the corrupted scans and see if I can get it to save. If that doesn't work, I have a gigantic chore ahead of me, lol

markd

OK. Maybe there is a different limit, again undocumented as far as I know, like the number of conditions that can be tested (regardless of the number of characters).

new topic:

So this

[EMA(14) X Close]

says, close crosses below the ema.

Whereas this

SMA(20,RSI(14)) X EMA(20,RSI(14))

says the sma crosses above the ema.

Is that what you intend? (not saying it's wrong, just wondering)

Also, are you using the exact same tests against each index, or are the tests customized for each index?

I'm thinking if you are using the same tests against each, you could use one universe (e.g. a favorites list), but break up the scans by test - e.g. one scan for price vs. mas, one scan for indicators vs. mas, etc.

That might help you get around the limits, if that's what's happening.

dhall6938

Thanks, yes, I am sure about the crosses. I have tested and retested these things a hundred times and have been using them for quite a while now. It is what I intend. FYI, I created these scans for SPX however it will produce profits on most of the other indexes as well but not usually as reliable on the others. I do have a favorites list that includes all symbols, and I use that list for the scan, but I also have one symbol favorites lists also. I break up the alerts into each symbol because they don't usually trigger at the same time. So, I have a favorites list that includes all symbols for the scan and individual lists for the alerts. Just recently I have customized one or two of the alerts very slightly in an effort to accommodate differences in their performance. However, my current problem began a long time ago and is a problem for all symbols. I have considered breaking some of the scans into smaller scans and I may eventually do that, but it complicates things a little bit because I'll have to wait for all of them to trigger at the same time. Having said all of that, I don't think that I have exceeded any of the limits yet. I think that it's something else wrong. Remember I have some saved scans and saved alerts that have used almost all 8K characters. Over 7500 characters

markd

OK.

Sorry I can't be of more help. I'm out of ideas.

dhall6938

Oh, you've been generous and wonderful. I always appreciate it even if I don't say it. As always, thank you and I'll let you know how it goes especially if I can manage to figure out what I have done wrong

IamJim

It's possible even though "what is printed" allowable, and actually what the database storage [or allows] could be limited or else something attached to your profile "tokening your scans" corrupted.

I'd contact main, and curious as response time as I have been waiting 6 months for a symbol question answer, and gave up after 2 attempts

dhall6938

I don't try to contact them any longer for the same reason. They almost never respond which leaves me wondering if anyone has even seen my question. In any case, it's rude as hell of them especially when they could at least set up an automatic response letting people know that they will not respond. The guys here have been very good and very polite, so I don't need them anyway.

IamJim

I am in total agreement, just an unattended "slot machine w/no payouts" = main

markd & lmkwin? =thumbs up ;-) [and anything historical that DOES WORK]

1) Has anyone, anywhere see documentation of the database and field names -vs- friendly names?

Why? to see what data is actually accessible

2) why 2?

Here's data baby, why the he** can't I access and scan it as I am paying for it

https://stockcharts.com/freecharts/options/?sym=$SPX&view=straddle

3) ?? [3 strikes [for a paid site] I am out as I Paid for a year = 2 months left and [big grin]