8/30/2010

Blue Fin Screener Free Trial for Stockbee readers

This is a guest post by Dan of Patient Fisherman Blog.
--------------------------
When I first joined the Stockbee site back in 2007, I knew I stumbled onto something significant but didn’t realize how much of an impact the site would have over the next few years.

From time to time, Pradeep will post on self-efficacy and the basic psychological issues to deal with in trading. Trust me, I had a LOT of these…talk about baggage.

Early on I was confronted with several Inhibitors. “Inhibitors are things which inhibit us from acting on our knowledge.”

With everything laid out in front of me, the scans, how they worked, why they worked, and when they worked, I was still having issues executing on this information.

A few of these inhibitors were:

1. I work full-time so how do I gather all the information in a timely and efficient manner while not interrupting my normal workday.

2. If I was on the road how could I access the results?

3. When trading an EP, catalyst is very important. How could I quickly access the information such as; earnings surprise, sector strength, guidance, and sales and eps data?

4. We constantly talk about sector and how much of a role it plays in stock movement but we really did not have a way to easily find which sector any given stock was in.

5. Pullback EP trades can work much better if a stock gaps up a lot on the first day. How could I easily keep track of every earnings surprise so I could enter at a later date, at a lower risk buy point?

After weighing these problems, I was confronted with three options, quit and try to trade full-time, quit trading, or create an option that would allow me to access this data so I could make a trade decision within minutes.  

Taking the more sensible and conservative option, at least that’s what my wife told me it was!  I decided to build a tool that would allow me to access all of the scan results from any where at any time: Bluefin.

Now I can find a Pullback EP by selecting the Post Earnings Surprise watch list, then clicking the Vol Surge column header. This will sort all stocks in the watch list by volume surge. Scroll down looking for a 4% move and then click the symbol to get a chart. I also use the 5DG, 10DG, and 30DG growth columns to figure out if the stock are overextended or not.

We can do the same for Sector EP by running the StockBee Episodic Pivot scan across all watch lists. You can then focus on stocks with EP in Top Stocks Ranked by Momentum and Sector Momentum and Emerging Opportunities watch lists.

During Earnings Season I primarily use Today's Earnings watch list looking for candidates meeting  EP criteria. Normally, I sort by Vol Surge and look for 4% breakout or higher. I keep the Earnings Google spreadsheet handy because this contains the Eps/Sales and sector data. At some point this will get migrated over to Bluefin.

Through-out the day I review the StockBee Top 25 breakouts by clicking the watch list Top 25 Break Outs. You can see all of the results and then sort by 5DG or 30DG growth to look for stocks breaking out on prior weakness. I also add a filter in the 6MthHi column to only show stocks within 10% of their 6 month high.

To find Stocks moving in the top sectors I run the StockBee MDT Break Out scan and look for stocks in the Top Stocks Ranked by Momentum and Sector Momentum and Emerging Opportunities watch lists.

We’ve been discussing the Kirkpatrick Method on the Stock Bee site over the past few days. We added a scan to mimic the results from the Kirkpatrick criteria found in “Invest By Knowing What Stocks to Buy and What Stocks to Sell”.  Click the StockBee MDT Break Out and then filter the watch lists by selecting Top Stocks Ranked by Momentum and Value from the drop down found in the watch list column.

Another attribute we often look for are stocks with a high short interest. This list is shorter than the others so normally I will click Top Stocks Ranked by Momentum and Short Interest and sort the stocks by Vol Surge column to see who’s getting attention for the day.

Finally, if the market is showing weakness we can hop into the Bottom Ranked Stocks by Momentum and Sector. This watch list finds the weakest stocks in the weakest sectors.

As with most applications, this is a work in progress and you can expect to see new features added monthly. Some ideas I have on the to-do list are:

  1. Add the mutual fund ranking tool to the system. You can add your funds and it will store them for future reference and ranking.
  2. Customizable columns? Choose which columns you want on your dashboard.
  3. Sectors on the Move – which sectors are moving on higher volume.


To access the Bluefin screener, follow these steps:
  1. Go to http://www.patientfisherman.com/dashboard
  2. When the login screen appears Click “Create Account” on the bottom right of the dialog box.
  3. Enter the appropriate information, and click “OK”.
  4. You will receive a message saying your account has been created. Close this dialog box by clicking “Cancel” button.
  5. Now enter your email address and password and click “OK”.
  6. From this point on, you should not have to enter your email or password when you come back to the URL: http://www.patientfisherman.com/dashboard
  7. When you are presented with the dashboard, the default screen will be the “Percolator” scan. You can update your Trading Capital by selecting the “update” button next to “Total Trading Capital”.



Below are some descriptions for your reference of the watch lists and columns found in Bluefin.

I hope you get as much use out of this tool as I have over the years. The entire purpose of starting this site was to offer tools that make things just a little bit easier.  Good luck and happy trading.


The watch lists provided are:

Today’s Earnings – This list provides stocks with earnings from the close of the previous day to before the open of today.

Post Earnings Surprises – This list provides all stocks with an Earning Surprise greater or equal to 50 in the past quarter.

Emerging Opportunities – This list spots stocks in the top sectors that haven’t caught up with the leaders found in the Top Stock Ranked by Momentum and Sector. All stocks in this list will have a 30-day growth less than 10%. .

Top Stocks Ranked by Momentum and Sector Momentum – This list takes advantage of the concept “Stocks move in groups’. It compares the individual stock strength along with the sector strength to give us a list of stocks currently leading the market. .

Top Stocks Ranked by Momentum and Value – In an effort to reproduce the Kirkpatrick method of stock selection, we took stocks with a high relative strength and compared that against the valuation of that stock to get this list.

Top Stocks Ranked by Momentum and Short Interest – These stocks are hitting higher levels of momentum with a high amount of short interest. We’re attempting to catch a Short squeeze.

Bottom Ranked Stocks by Momentum and Sector – This list was created for traders who are looking for stocks to short when the market turns. It lists the weakest stocks in the weakest sectors.

The following columns are provided:

Symbol – The symbol for the company. You can click the symbol to open a new window over at StockCharts.com. This is how I view the chart on a mobile device.

Sector – The sector name for the stock.

Watch List – The specific watch list the stock is in. Many times you will see the same symbol listed because it is across many lists. I find this useful because with a glance I can see if the stock was an earnings surprise as well as being in the Top Stocks ranked by Sector and Momentum.

Last – The last price traded for the stock. Quotes are 20 minute delayed.

%Chg – The percent change for the stock.

Vol Surge – The volume surge the stock is experiencing. Volume surge is the 100 day average volume divided by today’s volume.

Float – The number of shares available to the public for trading.

RSRank – The Relative Strength for the stock (C - AVGC126) / AVGC126.

5DG – 5-Day Growth as of yesterday’s close.

10DG – 10-Day Growth as of yesterday’s close.

30DG – 30-Day Growth as of yesterday’s close.

6MthHi – Percent from six month high.

1MthHi – Percent from one month high.

Stop – The stop price for your stock. Calculated as low for the past two days.

TotShrs – Total shares you can purchase based on your total capital.

Risk (1%) – Total amount at risk for a 1% risk trade.

1 comment:

Joshua said...

Very Cool!

Thanks Dan & Pradeep.