TWS Scanner vs. Trade-Ideas Stock Scanner

Livermoreghost has asked in a comment to a previous post about the difference between the results I get from InteractiveBrokers’ Trader WorkStation built-in scanner and the Trade-Ideas scanner so I thought others might be interested in the same and I put my response in this post. This isn’t an all out comparison of the two scanners but just how they fit into my own trading.

Hi livermoresghost, IB’s TWS scanner is great but it requires more manual work out of me since it’s less granular. So when I got Trade-Ideas I was able to build the manual eyeballing and filtering I do on the TWS scanner results into the TI filter. The TI filter then gives me the most interesting subset of results. You can do with just TWS but it’s a bit more tricky, requires closer watching of the scanner and more experience on the trader’s part. I like to use both since it helps reduce the clutter and makes the decision making on trade candidates easier. Anything that takes decision making load off of me during the trading day is blessed since there’s enough information overload as it is.
It’s quite easy to take the Trade-Ideas tool for a test drive as there’s a 7 day free trial in which you get full functionality. I don’t use most of the functions in the tool but the wide selection means that people should be able to squeeze the best out of the few functions they focus on. And that’s all you really need to select profitable trade candidates.

Other possibly related posts:

• links for 2008-03-18
• Been a while
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