StockCharts Support Forum

[Sexton O Blake]

Huge Improvement - Exclude GROUPS and FAVORITES!

I put in a request this past spring and they forwarded it to the programmers and on Aug 23rd they made a post in the What's New:

23-Aug: Members can now scan for stocks that are NOT in a group! For example you can now scan for stocks that are not ETFs by adding "and [group is not ETF]" to any Advanced Scan. Small Cap investors might use "[group is not SP500]" in their scans. etc.

I tried favorites and it did not work but after sending feedback I had the syntax wrong and now they work too!
"and [favorites list is NOT 20]"

You need to determine the favorites number. You can do this via the advanced engine by INSERTING a favorites (by name) then it will say: "and [favorites list is 20]" (it shows in the drop down of the INSERT - [##-Favorite Name])

then you merely add the NOT:
"[favorites list is NOT 33]"

Purpose?
When you write scans you might find that certain stocks appear that you would perhaps (for whatever reason) never want to see. An industry, one or more symbols, or perhaps even one that qualifies in your criteria but is currently being "taken over" (undesired, and will repeat night in and and night out).

Cumbersome to string together a list of symbols within the scan. So I wanted a way to "store a list" of symbols to exclude.

Create Your Exclude List
You can create your own LIST then manually add or delete securities you never want to see. That is the real power for me. Then I can figure out the list number (#20) and merely add that exclusion to EVERY SINGLE SCAN. My list can be any symbol from any exchange, even if my "base scan" only deals with one exchange.

So I would add: and [favorites list is NOT 20]

A SINGLE list to update. The only way to fly!

Case Study: Exclude Trusts
In Canada you might want to exclude all trusts - so you could build a scan to isolate all:
[type = stock] and [country is CANADA] and [symbol ends with '/UN.TO']
... then put those in a LIST (Trusts)
(you establish that "Trusts" is #45 as per the above)

Then add that to your other scans: [and favorites list is NOT 45]

... and maybe string along the EXCLUDE LIST from above as well:
[favorites list is NOT 33] and [favorites list is NOT 20]

So a scan may look like:
[type = stock] and [exchange is NYSE] and [Bullish Engulfing is true] and [favorites list is NOT 10] and [favorites list is NOT 20] ...

"HUGE Jerry - it's HUGE!!!!!!"

Cheers!
iSoB