Day Trading Scanner

Stocks moving now, with volume, at prices you can trade. Most day traders watch a few setups: premarket gappers, opening range breaks, momentum runs, and new highs of day.

This page is about Trade Ideas itself. For a comparison of tools, see best stock scanners for day trading.

A common starting point: Price $2 to $50, Relative Volume (RV) at 2 or more, a Dollar Volume minimum, and a max Spread. Add Float (Float) under 20 million if you trade small caps.

Crossed Above Close (CAC) fires when a stock crosses above yesterday's close, a red to green move. Crossed Below Close (CBC) is green to red.

Unusual Number Of Prints (UNOP) fires when trades print much faster than normal. Many day traders read it as buyers or sellers getting aggressive.

1. Before the open, sort a Top List (Screener) by Gap (%) with Relative Volume.
2. In TI Pro, open an alert window with Running Up Now, New High and 5 Minute Opening Range Breakout.
3. Add Price, Dollar Volume and Spread filters.
4. Add Halt in the same window.
5. Save the layout.

Before the open. Gap (%) and Relative Volume on a Top List to build the watchlist.

The open. Opening range breaks and running alerts on the watchlist names.

Mid-morning. New highs of day and consolidation breakouts.

Midday. Unusual volume wake-ups, often the only movers.

Afternoon. Breakouts of the day's range into the close.

Running Up (RU) and Running Up Now (RUN) measure speed against each stock's own volatility, so a slow stock moving fast for it shows up next to a fast stock. That is closer to "unusual" than raw percent change.

Gap Up Reversal (GUR) fires when a gap up fills back through yesterday's close. False Gap Up Retracement (FGUR) fires when a gap fills partway then pushes back over the open, an intraday cup pattern on a gap. See the gap scanner.

High Relative Volume (HRV) is the alert behind most day-trading watchlists. See the unusual volume scanner.

Add Float (Float) at a max of 20 million for low float runners, and keep Halt (HALT) in the same window. See the low float scanner.

Price range, Dollar Volume (DV) for dollar volume, and Spread (Spread) for spread. Without these, the list fills with thin names you cannot get in and out of.

TI Pro works with paper trading. Run your setup on paper for a few weeks before real money.

1. At 9:00 a.m. ET, a Top List shows stocks gapping up 4% or more with Relative Volume over 2.
2. At 9:35, the 5 minute Opening Range Breakout alert fires on one of them.
3. By 10:15, New High (filtered) fires as it clears the morning high.
4. A Halt alert in the same window warns you if it stops trading.

This is a real capture from the Running Up Now (RUN) help page. At 10:20:53 a.m. ET on November 9, 2023, the alert fired on Akamai (AKAM) with the description "Running up: +0.16 in less than one minute." The stock was at $109.88, down 0.6% on the day, with Relative Volume at 1.42 and 737,123 shares traded.

Look at the chart. AKAM had sold off from the open and spent the first hour under its moving averages. The alert fired as a green bar pushed back toward them. That is the kind of turn a day trader wants to see the moment it starts, not after the 15 minute bar closes.

The same window also listed IVZ, IAU and SHY moving two cents. Those are slow names where two cents is a normal wiggle. The quality column, $0.02 against $0.16, is how you tell them apart at a glance. A minimum on that column, or a Price and Relative Volume filter, keeps the slow names out.

Most day traders run more than one scan. Three windows cover the session: one for the open, one for momentum during the day, and one for reversals. Here is a starting setup for each, using the exact alert and filter names.

Window 1: the open (9:30 to 10:30 a.m. ET)

Window 2: momentum all day

Window 3: reversals

• Read the description first. Every alert line says what happened in plain words, such as "Opening range breakout. (5 minutes)." You know why the stock showed up before you open a chart.
• Look at Relative Volume next. Relative Volume (RV) under 1 means the move is happening on normal or light trading. Many traders skip those.
• Open the chart from the alert. The chart in TI Pro marks where the alert fired, as in the AKAM capture above.
• Check the level above. Below High (BelowHigh) shows how far the stock is under today’s high, so you can see the room before the next obvious seller.
• Set the stop before you enter. Smart Stop (%) (SmartStopP) gives a stop distance based on the stock’s own volatility, which keeps you from setting the same 2% stop on a slow utility and a fast small cap.

The open is when most day trading alerts fire. Spreads are wider, prices jump, and the first range sets the levels for the rest of the day. Alerts like ORU5 and OVO5U only make sense here.

Midday is slower. Volume drops, and many breakouts stall. Some traders shut the momentum window off between 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. ET and leave only the reversal window running. The Time Of Day (Time) filter can do this for you. It counts minutes after the open, so a max of 120 stops alerts at 11:30 a.m. ET.

The last hour brings volume back. Funds rebalancing and traders closing positions can push stocks through the day’s high or low. NHPF and NLPF tend to pick up again after 3 p.m. ET.

Every bullish alert on this page has a bearish twin. 5 Minute Opening Range Breakdown (ORD5) is the opening range breakdown, Running Down (RD) is Running Down, New Low (filtered) (NLPF) is the filtered new low, and 5 Minute Red Bar Reversal (RBR5) is the red bar reversal. A trader who only buys can still keep a short window open to see when the whole market turns.

Watch S&P Change Today (SpyD) in the same window. When most of your alerts are breakdowns and the S&P is red, longs are fighting the tape.

Example numbers, not a real trade

1. 9:25 a.m. ET: a stock is up 6% premarket on earnings. It sits at the top of a Top List sorted by Gap (%).
2. 9:35: ORU5 fires as it clears the first 5 minute high at $18.40.
3. 9:52: RUN fires as it pushes $18.90 on Relative Volume of 3.1.
4. 10:40: it fades. PFH25 fires as it gives back a quarter of the move from the open.
5. 11:05: FU62 fires and a green bar reversal follows. A trader decides whether to buy the second leg or leave it alone.

This is the setup many small-cap day traders run from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. ET. The Top List does the ranking before the bell, and the alert window takes over once trading opens.

Top List, sorted by Gap (%)

Alert window, same filters

Small caps move further and faster, so the volume bar is higher and the gap bar is higher. Large caps move less, so a 2% gap on twice normal volume is already worth a look.

• Spreads. A 10 cent spread on a $3 stock is 3% before the trade moves at all. Keep Spread (Spread) on every window.
• Halts. A stock can stop trading for five minutes or more and reopen far from where it stopped. Halt (HALT) and Resume (RESUME) tell you when, but they cannot get you out during the halt.
• Short sale restriction. When a stock falls 10% from the prior close, the SEC’s Rule 201 short sale restriction limits short sales for the rest of that day and the next. Shorts can then only be filled at a price above the best bid. Trade Ideas does not have an SSR filter, so check your broker.
• Pattern day trader rule. In a US margin account under $25,000, FINRA limits you to three day trades in five business days.
• Overtrading. A busy window fires hundreds of alerts. Tighter filters protect you from yourself as much as from bad stocks.

If you are still choosing a tool, our best stock scanners for day trading page compares Trade Ideas with nine others on speed, halt alerts, small-cap filters and price, with each price checked on the company’s own page.

Float Turnover (FloatTurn) is today’s volume divided by the float. A reading of 1 means every share of the float has changed hands once today. Low float runners with turnover above 1 are where the biggest intraday swings tend to happen, both ways.

Most day traders watch five to ten stocks at a time. The filters on this page are there to get you to that short list fast. If a window fires more than you can read, tighten it before the open, not during a trade.

Fast stocks reverse fast. Size small.

Chasing alerts after a long run is a common mistake.

Test your rules in a simulated account first.