What Criteria Define a Technical Scan?
Technical scans express what you would look for on a chart as machine-readable rules. Price above a rising fifty-day moving average. Close within five percent of fifty-two-week high. Relative volume above two with price up more than three percent. RSI above sixty with higher highs. New twenty-day high on above-average volume. Each condition proxies a visual judgment you would make manually. The art is choosing conditions that correlate with your actual entry trigger—not every green candle deserves a scan hit.
Align scan timeframe with trading timeframe: daily filters for swing trades, intraday filters for day trades.
Which Technical Filters Are Most Useful?
Relative volume and percent change separate movers from the crowd. Distance from moving averages identifies pullback depth in trends. New high and new low counts locate breakouts and breakdowns. ATR filters volatility so stops are feasible. VWAP position matters for intraday bias. Indicator filters—RSI zones, MACD cross—work best combined with trend filters, not alone. Avoid stacking five redundant momentum measures; one volume filter plus one trend filter often suffices.
Dollar volume floors eliminate names that show high percent change on trivial share count.
How Do You Scan for Breakouts Versus Pullbacks?
Breakout scans: price at or above resistance proxy—twenty-day high, consolidation ceiling, pre-market high—with rising volume. Pullback scans: price above long-term average but below short-term average, or percent down from open in an uptrend symbol. Mean-reversion scans: price two standard deviations below twenty-day mean with RSI oversold in a range-bound sector. Running breakout scans in a range market produces false breaks; tag scans by regime and pause misfit types when indices chop.
Pre-market high and prior day high are practical resistance proxies for ORB-style breakout scans.
How Should You Validate Technical Scan Results?
Open the chart for every alert: does structure match the thesis? A new high on low float with wide spread may be untradeable. A breakout without volume may fail. Check higher timeframe—daily trend should support intraday long scans. Note time of day: lunch-hour breakouts behave differently from open-drive moves. Keep a reject log with reasons—liquidity, extended, counter-trend—to refine filters. Validation is two steps: scanner qualifies, trader confirms on chart.
Set a maximum chart review time per alert; if you cannot decide in two minutes, the setup is likely marginal.
What Mistakes Do Traders Make With Technical Scans?
Overfitting filters to last week's best trade. Ignoring float and spread while chasing percent gainers. Using lagging indicator crosses as real-time alerts without price confirmation. Running the same scan in all market regimes. Treating scan hits as automatic entries without stop and target planning. Technical scanning works when filters encode a repeatable edge and discipline limits you to A-quality confirmations.
Revisit scan parameters monthly with thirty-plus logged outcomes—adjust on distributions, not one outlier session.