What are your favourite Stockopedia Alerts.....

24th Jul '18 by Carey Blunt

21 comments 4419 reads

Hi all,
I'm interested in which alerts people are using on Stockopedia.
I think we all probably know how to set up and get value from a Price Greater than or Price less than alert but there are a huge range of options, many of which I can't actually get to work how I think they should.

If anyone from Stockopedia reads this, I would love some articles on setting up Alerts and getting the best out of them.

Do any of you rely on or find any specific alerts useful. An alert that triggers after some EPS forecast upgrade? An alert when the price crosses a moving average line?
Are these possible and do any of you use them?
What other alerts do you find useful?

Cheers
Carey

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About the Author

Carey Blunt

Premium Member

Just an IT professional trying to make a decent return on whatever money I can get together.

21 comments

mmarkkj777

24th Jul '18

I cant get them to work. I have probably blundered in the setting up, knowing me.

Carey Blunt

24th Jul '18

So far three people all confessing to not being able to get much out of the alerts despite the potential of them then. Anyone else more successful in mastering good alerts?

HumourMe

26th Jul '18

I did use them, briefly, however, they are superseded by limit orders for breakouts and trailing stops. In the absence of broker functionality they would be useful to me.

mmarkkj777

26th Jul '18

Hi HumourMe,

I also use broker Alerts, but this is limited to stocks I actually own, rather than ones I might own if certain conditions are met. Hence the Stocko alerts.

Albertos

26th Jul '18

I use my eyes - I've enough s**t hitting my e-mail each day.

Phil

Edit: Sorry - slightly grumpy today

gwhittick

26th Jul '18

I'm glad I am the only one who hasn't been able to get them to work properly - as someone said above, it would probably help if there were some articles to help us through the process with some use cases

Carey Blunt

27th Jul '18

We forgive your grumpiness. The idea is that these would be e-mails that you actually wanted to see rather than junk and maybe the delivery mechanism won't be e-mail in future.
With the potential of a Stocko app on the horizon then push alerts and other things could be possible....but only if we understand how to set up decent alerts in the first place.

Benson212

27th Jul '18

Hi Carey,

I use Stockopedia's Stock Alerts to notify me when I need to sell a stock, but I don't use them for buying.

I've set up three sell criteria on all my holdings:
- Momentum Rank < 90
- Price < 130DMA
- Price < -20% from 52 Week High

My criteria is bespoke to my strategy and I can't provide useful or specific alerts as it will depend on your strategy. However, the reason why I use alerts are more powerful.

Using alerts allows me to remove myself from the market. I'm relatively new to trading (started in November 2016) and I will admit, I have struggled to maintain discipline when it comes to selling. Each time the market went through a bit of volatility, I would stupidly panic sell! I was glued to the ticker screen and watched my portfolio fluctuate in real-time.

Setting up alerts allows me to ignore the daily fluctuations in my portfolio and become more systematic. If I don't receive an alert, I don't sell, even if the market is tanking. My performance has improved significantly over the last year since using alerts, as I know longer make emotional sell decisions.

In terms of functionality, the alerts are useful but could be improved. First, the alerts need to be set up manually. It would be ideal if alerts were automatic when a stock enters or exits a specific screen. Secondly, you can only set up an alert using 'screenable' criteria which limits you if you use technical signals such as MACD or RSI.

madnomad

31st Jul '18

I use 50 DMA and 200 DMA along with stock rank >80 to identify a shortlist.
I am hoping Stockopedia will allow creating a bespoke screen like a 4/9/17 DMA cross overs and so on

Carey Blunt

8th Sep '18

Forgive me for bumping this thread again but I would really like to make better use of alerts, lets take a simple example...lets say I want to create an alerts when a stock is no longer a "Sucker Stock" and has transitioned to another stock rank style.

I can see Stockrank style is a selectable alert criteria but you can only choose <, >, >=, = or <= as operators and the value box seems to suggest a numeric value.
Is there a table somewhere that shows the numerical equivalent of each style, i.e. Sucker Stock = 0, Turnaround = 1 etc or actually is it not a real selectable alert criteria?

If no one here can help me then i'll log a support ticket but does anyone know how to achieve the use case above.
Thanks again to the previous contributors to this thread who have helped me with some of the other simple alerts.
cheers
Carey

Velo

8th Sep '18

I would really like a true Trailing Stop Loss facility. The nearest to it, is BH1991's suggestion of -

Price < -20% from 52 Week High

I thank BH1991 for sharing that. I also think it's worthy of being saved as a Stocko tip by all on here should you be in the market for something resembling a Trailing Stop Loss Alert.

I imagine it would be so easy for Stocko to make one available, as a an investor is only interested in a Trailing Stop Loss that falls 20% from the high - that is from a high that only occurs in the time after they've bought a share.

(Technically, don't confuse with a normal stop loss that triggers should the SP fall 20% below the price you paid).

For instance, with the Trailing Stop Loss, say the SP rises 30% some time after you buy, but then falls 20% - the alert triggers as it crosses over that threshold. So taking 100p as the buy price - it rises to 130p then falls 20% to 104p and triggers the Trailing Stop Loss alert.

In this case it's still 4p above what the investor paid, whereas a traditional Stop Loss is waiting for the SP to fall 20% below the actual purchase price, before it triggers - in that case a loss, as it would be 80p.

The above suggestion by BH1999 of ** Price < -20% from 52 Week High ** will suffice for now, and I thank him for it.

Carey Blunt

9th Sep '18

Apologies if I'm being a dummy but if you are trying to implement the use case you are discussing above.... Price < -20% from 52 Week High.

How are you configuring that in the system? In the picture above I have put in the Alert setup boxes and numbered them 1 through to 4. What are you putting in each box to achieve what you are trying to achieve?

I think its probably...

1) The Stock Ticker (obvious)

2) "% vs. 52w High"

3) <=

4) 80

With the idea that when the price (this criteria is implied) is less than 80% of the 52w High then the alert will trigger. Or should it be....

1) The Stock Ticker (obvious)

2) "% vs. 52w High"

3) <=

4) -20

or are you manually calculating what 20% off the 52week high would be outside Stocko on a calculator and then doing...

1) The Stock Ticker (obvious)

2) "Last Price"

3) <

4) your manually calculated price value that you worked out previously yourself

I've played about with a few things but i'm not sure what will actually work.

Can anyone else explain what alerts they like using this 1 through 4 format?

cheers

Carey

Howard Adams

9th Sep '18

Carey

I would implement it as per your second version.

1) The Stock Ticker (obvious)

2) "% vs. 52w High"

3) <=

4) -20

As you are seeking to trigger alert at -20(%) below the % vs. 52w High.

I use a variant of the % vs. 52w High in my momentum screen whereby I am seeking to find stocks which are within 2.5% of the 52w high.

My screen tests is ----- % vs. 52w High > -2.5 ------ i.e. I am testing of stocks between 0, and -2.5% lower than the 52 week high

this operand is the opposite way to the test you want but I know this works therefore if you reverse the operand and replace -2.5 with -20 it should work for you.

Regards
Howard

andrea34

9th Sep '18

I have always (for decades) calculated stop losses based on the trailing share price, in other words based on the highest price it reached. I don't know why anyone would use a 'traditional stop loss', as you call it - if one bought at 100p and the price after some time went up to 200p, why would one watch it go all the way back to 80p before selling?

p.s. I don't use alerts, all my stop losses and holdings are held in a spreadsheet, where I also use colour-coded formulae to highlight areas of weakness. Maybe I'll give them a go after reading this though....

mmarkkj777

9th Sep '18

I use stop losses on my borkerage account only, and move the stop loss higher manually as the share price (if the share price) rises. My broker doesn't accommodate training stops. The gap I set between the price and the stop will depend on certain criteria. E.g. market cap, volatility, normal daily range, my personal risk level for a particular stock, div/ex div dates, etc.

What I would like to set up on Stocko are alets for other indicators, e.g. if I like a stock for many other reasons, but the price is langushing at a low point or falling, I'd like to set up an alert when it starts to rise/go though a particular gate (say 5-7% increase). I struggled to get them to come through to my email, but I may be setting them up wrong. I'll have another go now you have reminded me.

Carey Blunt

10th Sep '18

Hi Mark,
I think you have hit the nail on the head about the point of this thread. There are loads of alerts that lots of us would like to make use of but almost none of us know how to set them up or have confidence we have done it correctly!
Please share anything you learn when you have another go at them.
Carey

mercury61

11th Sep '18

Thanks all. A good thread with helpful and interesting pointers.
I wonder what people's experience is of how long alerts take to come through?

Velo

11th Sep '18

Quite quickly. I deliberately set experimental alerts within fractions of a down trending share and the price triggered that same day - the alert came through on an email that evening. Experimented for awhile and (from memory) the triggered alerts varied from emailing that day to the following morning.

Pretty sure some emails came through within hours that trading day, that they were set, too.

All from memory only. Was deliberately setting close alerts to determine if I had set the alerts correctly in the first place, and to investigate that very question, Mercury.

Carey Blunt

11th Sep '18

I *think* the plan is that when the Stocko mobile app comes out then maybe there will be something more push notiification based but i’m Largely guessing that based on things i’ve read about the future roadmap.

Carey Blunt

11th Sep '18

Also.... I recommend that everyone interested in Alerts goes to the Stockopedia ideas section and votes for the alerts features they would like to see....

http://ideas.stockopedia.com/forums/18977-stockopedia-suggestions?category_id=144888&filter=top&page=1

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Carey Blunt

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