Scanner Manual

Learn How to Use the Scanners.

How the four scanners fit together, what every setting means, and how I use them in a trading morning.

Written alongside the software, which is still being built and tested, so details may be refined before launch.

01The Big Picture

Four scanners, four jobs. Predictive Intelligence is the early warning: it watches filings and other quiet signals for companies that might be about to make news. The News Feed tells you the story, in plain English, the moment it breaks. The Momentum Radar shows you what is actually moving right now, with the price, float and volume a scalper cares about. And once you are in a trade, the Momentum Gauges show you how it is holding up, in real time, without taking your eyes off the chart. Any one of them is useful on its own. The real edge comes from how the first three line up, and the gauges help you manage the trade once you are in it.

A Trading Morning, Step by Step

Glance at Predictive Intelligence first.Before the open, look at the ladder. High scores and Bullish tags are names worth keeping an eye on. They are a shortlist, not a set of trades, and some will never make news.
Wait for the news catalyst.The News Feed is where the trigger shows up: breaking news on a low-float stock. No catalyst, no reason to chase. Patience is part of the method.
Make sure the news is bullish.Every headline carries a Bullish or Bearish tone. A bearish headline, such as a share offering or a warrant deal, is a reason to look elsewhere.
Read the decoded line if the headline is unclear.Press releases are full of jargon. Underneath each headline is a plain-English translation, and that is exactly why it is there. If you don't understand what the news means, don't trade it.
Check that it is also on the Momentum Radar.News is only half of the picture. The other half is the market agreeing: a stock between $1 and $10, with a float under 10 million shares, already up 20% or more, with real volume behind it.
Listen for the alerts.When a ticker appears on two panels you hear one sound, and when it appears on all three you hear a stronger one. More on those in section 06.
Once you are in, glance at the Momentum Gauges.Click the ticker on the Momentum Radar and the gauges show whether buyers still have control, whether the volume that got it moving is drying up, and how fast new volume is arriving. Keep them just under your chart and you can read them without looking away. They help you judge whether the trade is still working. They don't tell you what to do.
Then do the trading part yourself.Chart, entry, exit and risk. The scanners find the opportunity. They can't trade it for you.

Want less noise? On the Momentum Radar there is a “bullish news only” switch. Flip it on and the board narrows to tickers carrying breaking, bullish news. Flip it off and the full list comes back. It is there for the mornings when the board is busy and you only want the names with a bullish reason to move.

How Predictive Feeds the Other Two

Predictive Intelligence is where a ticker's story can begin. A filing lands. An insider buys. A trial finishes. The company may simply be starting its journey, with nothing on the news wires yet. If a catalyst follows, the headline appears on the News Feed, and if traders pile in, the ticker climbs onto the Momentum Radar. The order matters: a name you have been watching on Predictive, now lighting up on the other two, is one where you already know the background before the crowd catches on.

Plenty of Predictive tickers never go any further, and that is normal. It is a shortlist, not a forecast.

What It Means When Tickers Line Up

These alignments are across the three panels that find tickers: Predictive Intelligence, the News Feed and the Momentum Radar. The Momentum Gauges follow a ticker you have already picked, so they take no part in the overlap.

On one panel: worth knowing about, nothing more yet.
On two panels: worth your attention. Predictive plus News means a quiet signal now has a headline, so the story is arriving and the price may not have fully reacted. News plus Radar means there is a headline and the market is already responding. Predictive plus Radar means the stock is moving and the quiet signals were there beforehand. That last pairing is the one my Case Studies page tracks.
On all three panels: the strongest alignment the software can show. There is a filing-based signal behind it, a fresh headline driving it, and price and volume already moving. This is where I stop and look closest.

You don't have to be staring at the right panel to catch it. The software alerts you when tickers line up: a run-up sound for two panels, and the same run-up sounding higher for all three. Even so, an alignment is a reason to look, not a reason to buy. A stock can line up everywhere and still fade, which is why the Case Studies page shows the ones that didn't work as well as the ones that did.

The Software Is Only Part of the Story

The scanners narrow a market of thousands of stocks down to a handful. That is the first job done. They don't tell you when to buy, where to get out, or how much to risk, and those three decisions are what decide whether you make money or lose it. To get the most out of the software you also need:

Chart reading. How to read a 1-minute and a 5-minute chart: where price is, what volume is doing, whether a stock is stretched or still building, and where buyers and sellers are stepping in.
Entries. Where and when to get in. Chasing a vertical candle and waiting for a pullback are very different trades, even on the same stock.
Exits. Where to take profits, and just as importantly, the point where you are wrong and get out. Know both before you click buy.
Position sizing and risk management. How many shares, so that a loss is small and survivable. A limit on what you will lose in a day. The discipline to walk away.
Emotional control. Low-float stocks can move twenty cents in a second. Fear and greed show up fast, and a plan made before the trade is the only defence.

That is why the Learn section and the live stream exist alongside the software. The scanner finds it. You still have to trade it.

02Predictive Intelligence

Think of Predictive Intelligence as a ladder. Every ticker on it is there because something showed up in the paperwork: a filing, an insider purchase, a regulatory list. As more signals pile up over days and weeks, the ticker climbs. If the signals fade, it sinks. It isn't sorted by who is up the most today, which is how most retail scanners work. It is sorted by how strongly the signals point towards something happening soon.

Each row shows the ticker and date, the source of the signal, the event with its Bullish or Bearish tag, then price, volume, gain, float, relative volume and a score from 0 to 100. Scores of 80 and above are marked as high priority. Click the arrow on any row and you get the reasoning behind the score and a timestamped log of every signal that has built up on that ticker. There is also a search box, so you can type a ticker and find it straight away.

Only the kind of stock I trade makes it onto the ladder: priced between $1 and $10, with a small float, and with a normal three- or four-letter ticker. Five-letter symbols and most foreign share types are left out, because from long experience they tend to have wide spreads, thin volume and poor broker support.

How I Use This Panel

I don't trade off Predictive Intelligence. I watch it for names that might eventually reach the Momentum Radar. That means a small miss in a score matters very little. What matters is spotting the ticker early, so I'm not seeing it for the first time when it is already up 40%.

The Filings and Signals Behind the Ladder

These are all the sources the software currently watches. For each one, here is what it is and how it can point to news on the way. None of them is a guarantee. They are clues, and the score weighs them together.

SEC filings (EDGAR)

Form 6-KReport from a foreign company

Companies based outside the US but listed here don't file the same quarterly and current reports as American companies. They file a 6-K instead, and it is where they announce things: contracts, partnerships, financings, share sales, results, approvals. Many small foreign companies simply attach their press release to a 6-K.

Why it mattersA 6-K can appear before the headline reaches the news services, so it can be an early sign of news. The software reads what is inside. A contract or an approval reads Bullish. A new share sale or a financing reads Bearish, because it dilutes existing holders.

Form F-6American Depositary Shares registration

An F-6 registers American Depositary Shares, or ADS. These are certificates that let a foreign company's shares trade in the US. The software also picks up the amended and related versions of the form.

Why it mattersIt shows a foreign company setting itself up to trade in front of American investors. That can come before a listing, a fundraising or a bigger push for attention, so it is worth knowing about early.

Form 8-A12BRegistration to list on an exchange

An 8-A12B registers a company's shares on a national exchange such as Nasdaq or NYSE American. It is one of the last filings before a new listing, whether that is an IPO or a move up from the over-the-counter market, which is known as an uplisting.

Why it mattersIt tells you that a listing is close, and newly listed small caps can draw a lot of attention on day one. It is a heads-up about timing more than a verdict on the company.

Form S-1Registration statement, plus amendments

An S-1 is the document a company files to sell shares to the public: an IPO, a follow-on offering, or a registration that lets existing holders resell their shares. The software tracks the original and the amended versions, and it notes whether the offering is primary (new shares being created) or resale (existing shares being sold).

Why it mattersIt can mark the start of a company's move into the market, and the amendments show it is progressing. It also carries a warning: new shares mean dilution, which is usually Bearish. The software shows both sides so you know which one you are looking at.

Form 4Insider buying

Company officers, directors and big shareholders have to report their trades in the company's stock on a Form 4. The software looks for open-market purchases of at least $10,000 and filters out grants, option exercises and routine paperwork. What is left looks like an insider putting their own money into the stock. Looks like is the important part: a purchase is not always the vote of confidence it appears to be, so read what to know about insider buying before you act on one.

Why it mattersAn insider buying into a small float can come ahead of good news, and it is one of the clearer clues on the list. It isn't proof of anything. Insiders can be wrong, and some buys are part of the company's own share sale, which is dilution. Open the slide-out panel and check the context first.

FINRA daily list

Corporate actionsStructural changes to a stock

FINRA publishes a daily list of changes to securities. The software watches for five kinds:

Addition: a new security added to the list. A brand new ticker to know about.
Symbol change and name and symbol change: a company changing its identity, which often goes with a new business direction, a merger or a fresh start.
Acquisition, merger or amalgamation: companies combining, and often a story that is still unfolding.
Inactive security: a security marked as inactive. This is a structural flag, and on its own it is the weakest signal on the list.

Why it mattersChanges like these are often tied to the sort of story that can move a small stock, such as an uplisting, a reverse merger or a rebrand. They give you a clue about what is happening in the background before the headline arrives.

Short-selling pressure

Reg SHOThreshold securities list

Every day, Nasdaq publishes a list of stocks where a large number of shares have repeatedly failed to be delivered after being sold. To make the list, a stock has to have at least 10,000 shares failing to deliver, equal to at least 0.5% of its shares outstanding, for five days in a row. The software checks that list every day.

Why it mattersIt points to a stock that is heavily shorted, or where delivery of shares is under strain. If good news arrives, that kind of pressure can add fuel to a move. It is a fuel signal, not a catalyst, and the stock still needs a reason to run.

Biotech catalysts

Clinical trial status changesClinicalTrials.gov

The software watches for trials whose status changes to completed, or to active but no longer recruiting, then matches the drug company to its ticker.

Why it mattersA trial finishing usually means results are on the way, and results are one of the biggest catalysts a small biotech can have. It can be a clue that news is coming, though the news itself could be good or bad.

FDA drug approvalsDrugs@FDA

The software watches for recent new drug approvals and new-use approvals for existing drugs, and matches the company behind them to its ticker.

Why it mattersAn approval is often a direct catalyst, and a company might not announce it straight away. Seeing it early can put a ticker on your radar before the press release does.

03Momentum Radar

The Momentum Radar is the bread and butter. It is built to do one thing: pick up the day's high-percentage gainers in the kind of stock a scalper wants to trade, and put the best opportunities in front of you each morning, without you building a single filter.

The Settings

Price: $1 to $10. Cheap enough to move fast, expensive enough to avoid the worst of the sub-dollar chaos.
Float: under 10 million shares. Few shares available means a small amount of buying can move the price a long way. Stocks with a bigger float, say 15 to 20 million, just don't move as fast.
Gain: 20% or more. The radar only shows stocks that are already making a real move, not ones drifting up a few percent.
Common stocks only. Normal three- or four-letter tickers. Leveraged and inverse ETFs, and other security types that don't fit a single-stock scalping strategy, are left out.
All three sessions. It runs from 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET on trading days, covering the pre-market, the regular session and after-hours.

Why There Is Nothing to Adjust

There are no sliders or custom filters, and that is deliberate. Those settings are the result of years of trading this style, and they are set up so you can open the screen and start working. Every minute you spend fiddling with a scanner at 7 a.m. is a minute you are not reading a chart. The preset gives everyone the same board, built for low-float scalping, without the temptation to loosen the rules when the market is quiet.

Reading a Row

Each row shows the ticker, price, volume, gain percentage, float and relative volume (RVOL), which tells you how today's volume compares with what is normal for that stock. Once a ticker qualifies, the radar keeps tracking it through the session until it stops meeting the criteria, so a stock doesn't vanish from the list just because the market moved on to something else.

Two small icons sit at the end of each row. The speaker turns on spoken call-outs for that ticker (see section 06), and the arrow opens a detail panel for that stock. At the top of the panel is the “bullish news only” switch from section 01.

Clicking a row also sends that ticker to the Momentum Gauges, which mark it with a green stripe, so your trade follows you from the scanner to the gauges with a single click. More on that in section 04.

04Momentum Gauges

The Momentum Gauges are your eyes-on-the-trade panel. The other three scanners help you find a stock. This one is for after you are in it. Click a ticker on the Momentum Radar and it lands at the top of this panel, with its price, gain and relative volume. Three big gauges underneath show how the stock is performing right now. At a glance you can see whether the trade is still working, and you get an early heads-up when the momentum starts to fade.

Where to Put It, and Why It Looks the Way It Does

I'd suggest positioning the Momentum Gauges directly underneath your one-minute chart, or whichever timeframe you prefer for scalping, whether that is one minute or five minutes.

The gauges are colourful, thick and chunky on purpose. You should be able to keep your eyes on your chart and read them out of your peripheral vision, without taking your eyes off the price action. If you have to stop and study a panel in the middle of a trade, it isn't doing its job.

The Three Gauges

Each gauge is a half-circle dial in red, amber and green, with a needle pointing at the reading. The name is above each dial and a short note in brackets underneath says what it measures. Green is the healthy end for the trade you are in, and red is the warning end.

1Bull/Bear Strength

Shows who is in control, buyers or sellers. It looks at whether recent trades are going through at the ask, which is buyers paying up, or at the bid, which is sellers hitting the price. The needle swings towards green when buyers are doing most of the work and towards red when sellers are.

How to read itA needle sliding towards red while the price is still holding near its high is exactly the kind of change worth noticing. It is a clue, not a sell signal. This gauge runs on real-time trade data, so like the Large Print Alert it arrives with the real-time data feed, and until then it shows a dash.

2RVOL Decay

Compares how fast volume is coming in now with the fastest pace the stock has reached. When a stock first runs, the volume is heavy. When the crowd starts to leave, that volume dries up, and it can do so before the price shows it.

How to read itGreen means volume is holding up close to its peak. As the needle falls towards red, the volume that got the stock moving is drying up, which is often the first sign that momentum is fading. The figure underneath, for example “71% of peak”, tells you how much of that peak pace is still coming in.

3Pump Speed

Shows how fast volume is arriving right now compared with the last few minutes. Where RVOL Decay asks whether the volume is fading, Pump Speed asks whether it is speeding up.

How to read itA needle moving towards green means the pace is picking up, which often goes with a push higher. A needle dropping towards red means it is slowing down and the move may be running out of steam.

Good to Know

Real time only. There are no timeframes to pick and nothing to adjust. That is deliberate, for the same reason the Momentum Radar has no filters.
It follows the ticker you clicked. Click a different row on the Momentum Radar and the whole panel switches to that ticker.
Give it a minute or two. RVOL Decay and Pump Speed are worked out from the Momentum Radar's live volume updates, so after you click a new ticker they need a short run of readings before they show anything. Until then you will see a dash.
It is a window like the others. Drag it, resize it, collapse it, or pop it out onto another monitor, as described in section 07.
It doesn't count towards the overlap. The gauges follow a ticker you have already picked, so they take no part in the two-panel and three-panel alerts.

Like everything else here, the gauges are a guide to where your attention should go, not a prediction of what the stock will do next. A needle in the green doesn't mean a stock will keep going, and one in the red doesn't mean it has to fall.

05News Feed

The News Feed is built to match the Momentum Radar. It follows the same kind of stock, with a float under 10 million shares, but it doesn't require the stock to be up 20% first. That is the point: the Radar shows you what has already moved, and the News Feed can show you the headline that might start the move, or explain one that is happening now. It only carries breaking news on low-float, small-cap stocks, the ones relevant to a scalping strategy, so you aren't wading through a flood of headlines about companies you would never trade.

What You See on Each Line

Time (ET): when the news came out.
Ticker: the stock the headline is about.
Since news: how long ago the headline hit, so you know whether you are looking at fresh news or something that has already been digested.
Tone: a Bullish or Bearish verdict on the headline.
Headline and decoded line: the headline as the company wrote it, with a plain-English translation underneath.
The flame: a flame marks news on a ticker that the other scanners are also showing. It means the news has company, and the stock has more going on than a headline alone.

Why the Decoded Line Is There

Press releases are written by lawyers, not for traders. “Notice of allowance,” “warrant inducement,” “registered direct offering”: some of these are very good news and some are very bad news, and the wording gives little away. The decoded line says what it means in everyday language. If a headline doesn't make sense to you, read the line beneath it before you do anything else.

06Alerts and Audio

The scanners are designed so that you don't have to watch every panel at once. When something important happens, you hear it.

The Overlap Alerts

Two panels: when a ticker shows up on two of the three scanning panels (Predictive Intelligence, the Momentum Radar and the News Feed), you hear a rising digital run-up.
Three panels: when it shows up on all three, you hear the same run-up an octave higher, which is the sound to look up for.

Because it is the same sound at a different pitch, you can tell the two apart without looking. The three-panel alert is the rarer of the two, and the stronger alignment, as described in section 01.

The Speaker Icon

Click any row on the Momentum Radar, or its speaker icon, and the software starts calling that ticker out loud. Click it again and it stops. It means you can keep your eyes on the chart while the software keeps an ear on the scanner for you.

The Large Print Alert

This one watches Time and Sales, the running list of every trade that actually goes through. Switch it on for a ticker and it calls out the large prints as they happen, with the size and the price, for example “55,000 shares at $4.20,” in big, clear text and in a voice. The aim is to help you confirm that you are on the right side of a trade while you are in one, without having to scan the tape yourself.

Two things to remember. A print is a trade that has already happened, not an order waiting to be filled, and a big print can be a seller as easily as a buyer. It is a piece of evidence, not a signal. And because it runs on real-time Time and Sales data, this alert arrives with the real-time data feed.

07Your Screen

Every trader sets up their desk differently, so the dashboard doesn't force a layout on you. Each scanner lives in its own window that you can move, resize and arrange however you like, and the windows snap neatly against each other so the screen stays tidy.

Several monitors: if you trade on more than one screen, each scanner has a pop-out button that lets you move it onto another monitor. Put the Radar on one, the News Feed on another, and your charts in the middle with the Momentum Gauges underneath.
Together and independent: the windows can sit side by side or on completely different screens, and they still work together. The alerts, the speaker call-outs and the overlaps all keep working, and each window carries on running on its own wherever you put it.
Save your layout: once the screen is arranged the way you like it, save it, and it will be there next time you open the dashboard.
Reset everything: if you want to start again, or you get your windows in a tangle, one button puts everything back to the default layout.

08Glossary and Settings Recap

The Settings at a Glance

Panel	What it does	The settings
Predictive Intelligence	Early warning: ranks tickers by how strongly their filings and signals point to something coming	$1 to $10, float under 10 million shares, three- or four-letter tickers. Score 0 to 100, with 80 and above as high priority. Form 4 purchases of $10,000 or more.
Momentum Radar	What is moving now: the day's high-percentage gainers for scalping	$1 to $10, float under 10 million shares, up 20% or more, common stocks only. Runs 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET. Preset, nothing to adjust.
Momentum Gauges	Eyes on the trade: how the ticker you clicked is performing right now	Follows the ticker clicked on the Momentum Radar. Three gauges: Bull/Bear Strength, RVOL Decay and Pump Speed. Real time, no timeframe to set. Best placed under your one-minute or five-minute chart.
News Feed	The story behind the move, decoded	Breaking news on low-float stocks matching the Radar's criteria, float under 10 million shares, without the 20% gain requirement. Bullish or Bearish tone on every headline.
Alerts	Hear it without watching for it	Rising run-up for two panels, the same run-up higher for three. Speaker call-outs per ticker. Large Print Alert on Time and Sales.
Your screen	Your layout, your monitors	Floating, resizable, snapping windows. Pop-out to another monitor. Save layout and reset to default.

Everything in that table points the same way. It is a toolkit built for one job: scalping low-float stocks in the pre-market and into the open, when news, thin supply and a crowd of traders collide. The price band keeps you in stocks that move fast. The float cap keeps you in stocks where little buying makes a big difference. The 20% rule keeps you in stocks that are already proving themselves. The news and the filings tell you why, the alerts make sure you hear about it while it matters, and the gauges help you judge the trade once you are in it.

Plain-English Glossary

Float: The number of shares actually available for the public to trade, not counting shares held by insiders and other large holders. A low float means a small supply, and a small supply means a rush of buying can move the price a long way, in either direction.
RVOL (relative volume): Today's volume compared with what is normal for that stock at that time of day. An RVOL of 3x means three times the usual amount of trading.
Gain %: How far the stock is up from the previous day's close.
Pre-market and after-hours: Trading outside normal hours. Pre-market runs from 4:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. ET, and after-hours from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET. Volume is thinner and moves can be sharper.
Scalping: Very short-term trading, from seconds to a few minutes, taking small gains repeatedly instead of holding for a big one.
Catalyst: A piece of news or an event that gives a stock a reason to move.
Dilution: When a company issues new shares or warrants, each existing share becomes a smaller slice of the company. It usually puts pressure on the price.
Uplisting: A company moving from the over-the-counter market to a national exchange such as Nasdaq or NYSE American.
ADS (American Depositary Share): A certificate that represents shares of a foreign company and trades in the US.
Time and Sales: The running list of every trade that goes through, showing its size, price and time. Often called the tape.
Bid and ask: The bid is the highest price buyers are currently offering, and the ask is the lowest price sellers will accept. A trade at the ask is a buyer paying up, and a trade at the bid is a seller hitting the price. The Bull/Bear Strength gauge is built on that difference.
Print: A single trade appearing on Time and Sales. A “large print” is a big one.
Form 4, Form 6-K, Form S-1: See the filings guide in section 02.

A Tool, Not a Promise

The scanners are a tool for focusing your attention. They are not advice, a signal service or a promise that any stock will move. Past results don't predict future ones, and trading small, low-float stocks carries a high risk of loss. Please read the full Disclaimer.

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