Running a manual market scan

A screener is just a list of rules until you actually run it. The manual scan is where everything becomes concrete: you pick a universe of assets, launch the screener, and a few seconds later you get the list of assets meeting your conditions at that moment. It is also the best laboratory for learning: every scan immediately shows you what your rules produce, and lets you refine them before automating. This guide covers the full cycle: run, read, iterate.

Manual scan and autoscan: two complementary uses

A manual scan runs when you decide: you click, it runs, you read the results. An autoscan runs on its own at every candle close of the screener's timeframe and alerts you by e-mail when something matches. The two are not rivals, they are stages: the manual scan is for exploring, testing and tuning your screeners; the autoscan takes over once a screener has proven its worth. Starting straight with automation means automating a tool you do not understand yet.

Choosing the screener and the universe to scan

Running a scan requires two choices. The first is the screener: the one you just built, or any of your saved screeners. The second is the universe, meaning the set of assets the rules will be evaluated on:

• The full market: the widest net, useful for discovering assets you would not have thought of.
• A category: only cryptocurrencies, stocks, ETFs, indices, forex or commodities, when your strategy targets a specific kind of market.
• One of your watchlists: the most focused universe, limited to assets you actually follow. It is the recommended choice when starting out: fewer results, but results you know how to interpret.

The size of the universe changes the nature of the exercise: on the full market, your screener must be very selective to stay readable; on a thirty-asset watchlist, it can afford looser rules. Match one to the other.

Reading the results: from the table to the chart

Once the scan finishes, you get the list of assets meeting all your rules at scan time. Resist the temptation to stop there: a scan produces candidates, not decisions. For every result that interests you, open the chart in one click from the list and validate visually: does the setup detected by the rules look the way you imagined? Does the broader context (underlying trend, nearby levels, volume) confirm the signal's interest? This visual validation is the essential bridge between mechanical filtering and a trading decision.

Browsing the matches on the chart

When you save a scan, the app stores the result in your history and also creates a list containing every match, as long as the count fits your plan's list capacity (50 symbols per list on the free plan, 200 on Swing, unlimited on Day). The "Explore on chart" button then opens the first asset with that list in the side panel: click a symbol, or use the keyboard arrows on desktop, to move from one match to the next without reloading the page.

Your history keeps 3 saved scans on the free plan, 10 on Swing and 50 on Day trading, autoscan results included: beyond that, delete an older scan or upgrade.

Iterating: too many results, or none at all

Your first scans will rarely hit the right balance on the first try, and that is normal: tuning is part of the job. Two typical situations:

• Too many results: your rules are too permissive. Tighten the thresholds (an RSI below 30 rather than below 40), add a confirming condition (an underlying trend, a minimum volume) and run again. A fifty-candidate list is not a scan, it is a directory.
• Zero results: your rules are too strict, or the setup you seek simply does not exist right now. Loosen the thresholds slightly, drop the most restrictive condition, or change the timeframe: a setup absent on the daily may exist on the 4-hour.

A scan returning zero results is not a failure, by the way: if your rules are well designed, it simply means there is nothing to trade today. Knowing when not to trade is a skill: the empty scan teaches it to you for free.

Save, then automate

When a screener starts producing consistently decent candidates, save it: it joins your library, ready to be re-run in one click on any universe. And when re-running the same scan every evening becomes routine, that is the signal it is ripe for the next step: create an autoscan from that screener, and let the platform re-run it at every candle close, alerting you by e-mail. The manual scan was your test bench; the autoscan turns the result into a permanent watch system.

Limits per plan

The free Position trading plan allows 3 manual scans per day, on at most 50 symbols, and only on your watchlists: enough to learn seriously, provided you curate your lists. The Swing trading plan (€12.99/month) removes those limits: unlimited scans and full-market access. The Day trading plan (€24.99/month) adds importing your own symbol lists, handy for scanning a universe prepared outside the platform.