Trade Ideas Scanner Review: Evaluating Alert Quality
A useful stock alert should identify the event you intended, arrive with enough context to evaluate it, and fit a repeatable trading process. Trade Ideas provides configurable stock scanning, event alerts, AI-generated ideas, and strategy-testing tools. Those capabilities can shorten research, but their presence does not establish a profitable trading edge.
This review examines documented functionality and explains how to evaluate alert quality. It does not report an independently executed live-trading test or a verified platform-wide win rate. Product details were checked September 8, 2026. Alongside the scanner, LuxAlgo charts and Quant, our coding agent, offer a way to investigate selected price rules with editable code and simulated strategy results.
Key Takeaways
- Understand the output: Alert Windows report events; Top Lists rank stocks meeting filters.
- Configure deliberately: multiple alerts use OR logic, while the window’s filters must all pass.
- Evaluate the process: record timestamps, trigger conditions, missed signals, and execution assumptions.
- Keep tools separate: Holly ideas, TI Wave, OddsMaker, broker connections, and LuxAlgo strategy development perform different jobs.
Trade Ideas Alert Window: Official Setup Walkthrough
Episode 9 of the official Trade Ideas User Guide series demonstrates how to build an Alert Window. Published March 17, 2022, it remains linked from the current Getting Started guide. Use its desktop interface as instructional context and check current plan and version details before applying a setup.
Quick Overview
Trade Ideas is most relevant when stock discovery is a major part of your routine. Rather than opening charts one by one, define the universe and conditions that deserve attention. Then inspect the resulting names. The number of alerts is less important than whether each one answers a question you can act on consistently.
The service offers a Windows desktop application and browser experiences. The Web Version guide describes a slimmer interface with different capabilities, while Market Dashboards provide browser-based access across devices. Do not assume that a phone browser has every desktop tool or that a free dashboard is using live data.
Main Features
Key Functions
| Tool | Role in the workflow | Question to check |
|---|---|---|
| Alert Window | Reports a defined event for a qualifying stock | Did the intended event and every filter condition occur? |
| Top List | Ranks stocks that currently meet filters | Which field determines the order and refresh behavior? |
| Holly AI | Provides generated ideas with entry and exit information | What assumptions and risk controls apply to this idea? |
| OddsMaker | Tests alert-based strategies using historical data | Are the modeled entries, exits, and costs realistic? |
| Brokerage Plus | Supports configured trading workflows with supported connections | Is this simulation or a live account, and what was actually filled? |
The AI overview describes Holly, TI Wave, and Money Machine separately. TI Wave’s chart signals and adaptive bands should not be treated as the mechanism behind every custom scanner event. Neither a generated idea nor an on-chart marker guarantees a fill, a favorable price, or a winning trade.
Setup Guide
Begin with the Getting Started series and a small layout: one chart, one Top List, and one Alert Window. Choose a docked or floating arrangement that keeps the event timestamp and chart visible. Load a starter layout, inspect its settings, and save your own version before making experimental changes.
- Set the exchanges or symbol list you intend to monitor.
- Choose one recognizable event and a few understandable filters.
- Display the price, event time, and fields needed to verify the setup.
- Practice interpreting the output in simulation and record why a candidate is accepted or rejected.
Use the support center for the current live-session schedule and documentation. Building a complex layout is not a prerequisite for a useful scanner. Add another window only when it supplies information that changes your review decision.
Alert System Details
Alert System Basics
The Alert Window is event-based. A Top List is a ranked snapshot, with a documented 30-second refresh cycle. A stock remaining on a list does not mean a fresh event has just triggered. Keep event time, quote time, and screen-refresh behavior separate when judging responsiveness.
Alert Settings
In the Select Alerts tab, multiple selected alerts operate independently: any one can trigger, provided all window filters are satisfied. Selecting a breakout alert and a volume alert therefore does not require both events to happen together. Use an appropriate volume filter if that is a required condition.
At least one alert is required. If none is selected, the documented default Heartbeat checks periodically for stocks meeting the filters without requiring a particular price event. Check this setting when a scan appears to fire for reasons you did not intend. Some alert parameters use days, dollars, shares, volume, or percentages; verify units before entering a threshold.
The Formula Editor combines available data points into custom filters. It is not a general code compiler and does not create custom alert types. Check the formula’s units, supported window types, and output on known examples. Editing a shared custom-filter identifier can affect other scans that use it, so record the dependency before changing it.
Alert Examples
| Scan idea | Define before configuring | Review after an alert |
|---|---|---|
| Premarket gap | Gap reference price, session, and minimum activity | Spread, news timestamp, and whether the required filters have premarket data |
| Breakout | The level or lookback that price must exceed | Whether the event happened before or after the displayed candle close |
| Unusual volume | The baseline and observation interval | Time-of-day effects and thin trading |
| Pullback | Trend condition, retracement rule, and invalidation | Whether the move is still a pullback or has changed the broader structure |
The Stocks Like This guide describes a historical snapshot of the alerts and filters a symbol met at a selected time. It can help explain a missed candidate or suggest conditions to investigate. It does not identify a universally winning combination. Start with several examples, including failed moves, so a single attractive chart does not define the entire scan.
How to Evaluate Alert Quality
Test Methods
Before measuring returns, test whether the scan behaves as specified. Fix the configuration, universe, and observation session. Save the rules and record every relevant event during that window, including repeats and candidates you decline. This creates an auditable sample instead of a collection of memorable winners.
| Evaluation dimension | Record | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger correctness | Event, filter values, symbol, and timestamp | Did the scan implement the intended rule? |
| Timeliness | Event time, observed arrival, and any connection issue | Could you still evaluate the setup when it appeared? |
| Usability | Duplicate alerts and time spent checking them | Does the scan reduce work or produce avoidable noise? |
| Execution realism | Available spread, order assumptions, and actual or simulated fills | Was the displayed price realistically accessible? |
| Trading outcome | Entry/exit rules, costs, losses, gains, and sample size | Does the defined strategy merit further evaluation? |
Keep configuration failures separate from losing trades. An alert can accurately identify a breakout that later fails. Conversely, a trade can profit even though the scanner triggered for the wrong reason. Both distinctions matter when deciding whether to change the signal, the filters, or your execution process.
Backtesting and Result Interpretation
OddsMaker supports market-wide or watchlist-based tests of alert strategies. The detailed guide describes starting equity, position size, commissions, calendar results, and individual trades. Inspect the settings and the available date range in your account rather than assuming every scan has the same historical coverage.
Documented limits include one-minute candles, no current-day or pre/postmarket tests, no re-entry into the same symbol later that day, and modeled exit prices that exclude the spread. These constraints matter when evaluating short holding periods or extended-hours alerts. A backtest of regular-session bars cannot establish how a premarket strategy would have filled.
A win rate above 60% is not a sufficient quality test. For illustration, six wins of $10 and four losses of $20 produce a 60% win rate and a $20 loss before costs. This is arithmetic, not measured Trade Ideas performance. Evaluate average win/loss size, drawdown, costs, trade count, and a separate period not used to tune the scan.
Trade Ideas’ March 2024 swing-scanning article uses AMD as a hypothetical example for recreating setup characteristics. It does not document a verified alert that generated profits for a defined group of users. Use that example to understand scan construction, then collect your own complete evaluation record.
Pros and Cons
| Capability | Potential benefit | Practical limit |
|---|---|---|
| Configurable scanning | Narrow broad stock coverage to a focused list | More filters can hide useful candidates or fit past examples |
| Event alerts | Draw attention to defined changes | A timely alert may still be unsuitable or unprofitable |
| Historical testing | Inspect a rule across recorded market behavior | Simulation and data constraints differ from live execution |
| AI-generated ideas | Supply additional candidates for review | No independently verified universal success rate is established here |
| Browser and desktop access | Support different research settings | Capabilities and live-data sessions differ by interface |
Trading Applications
Trading Styles and Market Coverage
Day traders may focus on session-specific gaps, activity, or breakout events; swing traders may use broader trend and pullback conditions. Define the holding period and exit before evaluating either approach. Extended-hours screening requires filters with data available during that session, and thinner liquidity can make displayed prices harder to trade.
The Exchanges tab guide lists the main U.S. exchanges and additional selectable markets. It also describes Canadian scanning but explicitly restricts Canadian price, volume, and chart data under its licensing arrangement. Confirm the exact symbols and exchange entitlements you need rather than treating a headline stock count as complete usable coverage.
Broker Links
The current broker page distinguishes API integrations, including Interactive Brokers, E*TRADE, TradeStation, and Alpaca, from other partnerships. Consult the instructions for your specific account, software version, and order workflow. External symbol linking, order entry, and automated execution are different functions; a connected symbol does not establish that an order was sent.
Test the intended behavior with simulation first. Check position size, duplicate-order handling, cancellation, stop behavior, and rejected orders. Avoid applying a generic instruction to run every program with elevated privileges; follow the current connection guide for the particular broker and operating environment.
Standard Trade Ideas pricing currently lists Core/TI Standard at $127 monthly or $1,068 annually, and Apex/TI Premium at $254 monthly or $2,136 annually. Annual equivalents are $89 and $178 per month. Apex adds AI signals and backtesting among its features. Compare current entitlements and renewal terms, excluding temporary promotional discounts.
LuxAlgo Charts and Quant for Follow-Up Research
Use LuxAlgo charts to inspect a candidate in its broader price context. Organize selected symbols in a watchlist, compare relevant timeframes, and describe the behavior you want to study. This is a manual research handoff from a stock scanner, not an automatic reproduction of Trade Ideas’ proprietary logic.
With Quant, our coding agent, specify an indicator or strategy in concrete terms. For example, investigate a close above the previous 20 completed bars’ high, excluding the current bar from the threshold, with explicit position size, stop, and exit rules. Review Code, sign in, and click Run on the selected chart.
The strategy viewer helps inspect simulated trades, drawdown, and other results. Configure costs, use standard price bars, and check a separate evaluation period. Testing today’s selected symbols does not backtest a historical scanner universe or reconstruct past fundamental data. Keep those selection assumptions visible when comparing results.
Final Assessment
Trade Ideas is worth evaluating when configurable stock discovery can remove a recurring bottleneck. Start with a narrow scan, verify why alerts appear, and record the complete sample before judging trading outcomes. Use LuxAlgo charts and Quant when the next question requires custom price analysis or editable strategy development. Each tool should earn its place through a clear role in the process.
FAQs
How does the AI in Trade Ideas Scanner improve trading decisions compared to traditional tools?
Holly supplies generated ideas with entry and exit information that can supplement configurable stock scanning. It does not establish a guaranteed edge. Review the assumptions, costs, and outcomes of a defined process before relying on the signals.
How can beginners quickly learn to use the Trade Ideas Scanner effectively?
Use the official Getting Started series, a small starter layout, and the current support resources. Configure one event and a few filters, verify the output, and practice in simulation before expanding the setup.
Can I connect the Trade Ideas Scanner to my brokerage account for easy trade execution?
Supported broker connections are available, but capabilities depend on the account, software version, and configured workflow. Check the current broker documentation and test order behavior in simulation. Symbol linking, manual order entry, and automated trading are separate functions.
References
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