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If you are looking for a stock scanner and which stock scanner is better for you, Trade Ideas or Benzinga or StocksToTrade Or Scanz?
After trying out all these stock scanners, I will share with you all the pros and cons of each one as well as a detailed comparison of Trade Ideas, Benzinga Pro, StocksToTrade and Scanz.
Trade Ideas Vs Scanz
First of all, let’s compare Trade Ideas with Scanz.
For both Trade Ideas and Scanz, you need to download and install the software on your computer before you can use it.
However, for Trade Ideas, you also get a web version where you can access it anywhere from a website browser on any mobile or computer.
Personally, I don’t think this would make a big difference because most professional traders need multiple screens and desktop to trade.
In terms of broker integration, Trade Ideas allows you to connect to Interactive Broker, Lightspeed Trading, E*trade and Scottrade while Scanz lets you trade directly within the Scanz platform through Interactive Brokers and TD Ameritrade.
Furthermore, both Trade Ideas and Scanz provide real-time stock scanner to help you scan the market for trading opportunities.
So, what is the key difference between Trade Ideas and Scanz?
First of all, Trade Ideas’ stock scanner is significantly more powerful than Scanz.
Here’s why.
With Trade Ideas, not only you can create all the stock scans that Scanz allows you to do, but you can also do much more.
Let’s take a closer look at the filters that Trade Ideas and Scanz provide.
Scanz Pro Scanner has about 100 filters (i.e. price, volume, fundamental, and technical filters) for you to choose from, as shown below.
On the other hand, Trade Ideas has something called a “Top List”.
What “Top List” does is that it will continuously scan the market and show you all the stocks that meet your pre-selected filters.
Trade Ideas has a wide range of both fundamental and technical filters (i.e. over 200 filters) for you to choose from.
Here are just a few examples of the filters:
- Market cap, EPS, Dividend, Float, etc
- Below high of the day
- Above low of the day
- Consecutive up/down days
- Position in range
- Consecutive up/down candles
- Change from SMA
- Relative volume
On top of that, Trade Ideas has a feature called “Alert Window”.
For stocks to show up on the “Alert Window”, an event must happen.
For example, Let’s say you want to see what stocks have just made a new intra-day low, you can create an alert for this event.
So, only stocks that meet the criteria for this alert (i.e. have made a new intra-day high) as well as satisfied all your pre-defined filters will show up in the Alert Window.
In this case, you are including both filters and alerts for this particular alert.
The reason why you want to add filters is that you can limit the number of alerts you receive and avoid getting overwhelmed.
For example, you might only want to trade stocks of a certain price range with high trading volume.
There are many different alert windows that you can create based on your trading style and trading strategy.
These alert windows will scan the stock market in real-time to find stocks that meet the conditions of your desired trading strategies.
Inside Trade Ideas Platforms, there are already pre-configured trading strategies (i.e. bullish, neutral, and bearish strategies) that you can choose from, as shown below.
For example, below is a list of pre-configured bullish strategies that you can use to find stock ideas.
If you cannot see clearly, here are just a few examples of pre-configured strategies:
- High Volume Moving Average Breakouts
- New Highs on 2x Relative Volume
- Oversold Based On RSI Below 30 on Daily and 15-Minute Chart
- Rallying off of the Bottom
Of course, you can also easily create your own trading strategies from scratch, without any programming knowledge required.
Here are just a few examples of alerts that you can mix and match to create your strategy.
- % Down for the Day
- % Up for the Day
- 75% Pullback from High
- 25% Pullback from High
- Gap Reversal
- Cross Above Resistance
- Cross Below Support
- Crossed Above the 200-day Moving Average
- Crossed below the 200-day Moving Average
- Crossed Above VWAP
- Crossed Below VWAP
- Channel Breakout
- Channel Breakdown
- Double Top
- Double Bottom
So, in terms of stock scanners, Trade Ideas beat Scanz hands down.
There are also several unique features that Trade Ideas have but Scanz does not.
Recently, Trade Ideas introduced a tool called “Stock Racing”.
This is a new way of visually transforming the stock market into a graphical race, as shown below.
There are pre-defined stock lists (e.g. Biggest Gainners, Biggest Losers, etc.) for the stock race.
You can also use any Top List and launch a real-time stock race to let your top-ranking stock race against each other.
For example, Trade Ideas has a feature called “Odds Maker”.
It allows you to run backtests and optimize your trading strategy before you use real money to trade it.
This is very important for traders who want to test and fine-tune any new trading strategies.
Lastly, if you are into algorithmic trading, you would love Trade Ideas AI Holly.
First of all, there are three versions of Trade Ideas Holly Artificial Intelligence which are Holly Grail, Holly Neo and Holly 2.0.
So, what is the difference between them?
Holly Grail runs algorithms that are mostly technical analysis-based.
For example, you will see popular trading strategies such as Fibonacci pullback, Breakout, Engulfing, VWAP Bounce, Topping Formation, Not A Double Bottom, Gap Up, and Gap Down.
Holly Neo only looks at stocks with high trading volume and are also in the news.
It runs two trading algorithms on these high-volume and news stocks:
- Breakout Long (or Short): Algorithm trying to take an early move in the stocks in the direction of the big move
- Pullback Long (or Short): Algorithm trying to look for stocks that are moving sideways before pushing higher again
Holly 2.0 is built from scratch using all the knowledge gathered from running machine learning artificial intelligence for years.
It runs about 8 algorithms each day, which include some very interesting trading strategies that are different from your conventional chart pattern-based strategies.
For example, one of the algorithms called “Bear/Bull Trap” is looking for a classic trap pattern where a stock will break high of yesterday just barely and then start to reverse to force the other side to sell.
So, how exactly does Holly AI work?
In other words, how does it find high-probability trade ideas for you?
Every night after the market closes, Trade Ideas Holly AI runs backtests on their algorithms for the past 3 months.
Then, it looks at the backtesting results such as equity curve, risk-reward ratio, and drawdown, and subsequently optimizes the strategies.
There are over a million trade scenarios being run by Trade Ideas Holly AI overnight.
Once it has done that, it will take into account the current market condition and look at everything from fundamental to social.
In the end, five to eight trading strategies with the highest win rate will be displayed in the AI Strategies Window before the market opens.
What’s more, it also shows you exactly when to enter and when to exit.
Basically, it gives you a complete trading plan.
In terms of pricing, these are two pricing plans currently offered by Trade Ideas:
- Trade Ideas Standard: $999/year (or $84/month)
- Trade Ideas Premium: $1,999/year (or $169/month)
The difference between Trade Ideas Premium and Trade Ideas Standard is that you get access to Holly A.I., Odds Maker, and Auto-trading under the Premium Plan.
If you are a day trader who is just looking for a powerful real-time stock scanner, then Trade Ideas Standard is more than enough for you.
On the other hand, Scanz offers three different pricing plans:
- News: $79/month
- Scanner: $99/month
- News+Scanner : $149/month
As you can see, Trade Ideas Standard is a much better option than Scanz Scanner if you are only looking for a good stock scanner.
If you are mainly trading news, then I would recommend Benzinga Pro which live streams fast and actionable stock news as well as allows you to scan for the stock news and set real-time alerts on news (i.e. SEC filing, Press releases, etc) that you care about.
Trade Ideas Vs Benzinga Pro
So, what is the difference between Benzinga Pro and Trade Ideas?
Benzinga Pro is specifically designed to help traders trade news events because stocks typically make huge moves during news such as mergers & acquisitions, trial results, earnings results, and product launches.
On the other hand, Trade Ideas is a very powerful trading platform with an advanced real-time stock scanner, A.I. stock trading, event-based backtesting, simulated trading, and automated trading.
Now, let’s look at how Benzinga Pro can help you profit from news events.
Inside the platform, you can use the feature called “News Feeds” to pre-configure the types of news that you want to see.
There are many different filters that you can mix and match.
For example, you can choose from Sources (i.e. SEC, Press Release, etc), Categories (i.e. Economics, M&A, Analyst Rating, IPO, FDA, etc), Screener (i.e. Sector, Market Cap, Price, Volume, etc), and Watchlists.
Benzinga also lets you color code it, so you can quickly identify which type of news it is.
Furthermore, you can easily customize alerts in the Newsfeed with different sounds for different categories.
If you prefer a desktop notification to pop up on your screen or an email notification, that can be done as well.
Benzinga Pro also has this awesome feature called Audio Squawk which is a fast, timely audio news broadcast that delivers only the most critical market-moving news, so you can focus on what matters most.
If you are a news trader, you will love this tool called “price sentiment engine” that tells you how likely news is to move a stock and in which direction.
Also, there are two other very useful tools for traders:
- Signals tool (i.e. it alerts you to price or volume-related events in real-time such as Price Spikes, Block trades, Trading halts, Option activities, Opening gaps, and High/Low)
- Benzinga Pro Movers tool ( i.e. it brings you an up-to-the-minute feed of the biggest gainers and losers in the stock market and you can see if this huge move is caused by news or not)
Every feature inside Benzinga Pro is designed to help traders profit from news events fast.
So, if you are primarily trading news, then I would highly recommend Benzinga Pro.
But, if your trading strategy is based on technical analysis and price action, then Trade Ideas would be a better option.
Anyway, I strongly recommend that you sign up for a free trial of Benzinga Pro and test it out by yourself.
Every now and then, Benzinga will have very attractive promotional offers emailed to their free trial users. So, if you decide it is a good fit, then you can take advantage of these great offers when they come
Try Benzinga Pro For Free (No Credit Card Required)
Trade Ideas Vs StocksToTrade
Now, what is the difference between Trade Ideas and StocksToTrade?
StocksToTrade is a stock scanner that is specially designed with penny stock traders in mind by famous penny stock trader Timothy Sykes.
I must say that Timothy Sykes, who allegedly made millions by trading penny stocks, is also a very smart businessman who built a very profitable business of selling his penny stock trading program as well as his trading software StocksToTrade.
So, what is unique about StocksToTrade?
It has a built-in stock scanner that scans the market for the Biggest $ Gainers or Biggest % Gainers that are under $20, under $10, under $5, and under $1.
Clearly, this pre-built scanner is specially created for penny stock traders with input from Tim Sykes.
Is it very special?
Personally, I don’t think so.
First of all, it is a super simple stock scan.
In fact, you can easily create it using Trade Ideas.
What is more, Trade Ideas allows you to easily customize your real-time stock scan based on your own trading strategy as well as using Trade Ideas’s pre-configured trading strategies.
If you want to customize your stock screener, StocksToTrade allows you to do that with its Screener +.
With Screener+, you can build your own stock screener by combining different criteria such as:
- Price data
- Volume data
- Technical indicators
- Fundamentals
- Catalyst (e.g. news, earnings, filing)
Then you can select the appropriate parameters to build your scan.
Personally, I don’t like the visual representation of the scanning criteria.
It is just too colorful and distracting.
I would prefer something that is simple and clean.
Anyway, it’s my personal preference.
Once you have built your scan, you need to click “Run” at the bottom right corner to generate the list of stocks that fit your criteria.
The scanner will run in real-time, but you have the option of pausing it at any time.
So, is this scanner good?
StocksToTrade’s stock scanner has a decent amount of filters for you to build your own scans, but other stock scanners like Trade Ideas provide many more options to help you scan the stock market for your favorite trade setups in real time.
Next, let’s take a look at another StocksToTrade feature called Oracle.
Oracle is essentially a prediction algorithm that helps you generate a watch list every day.
Here’s how.
During pre-market hours, Oracle scans the market and finds the most volatile and active stocks using its proprietary algorithm which is based on numerous technical factors.
Then, it will further filter down the list to 15 stocks during market opening with the most potential to break through support and resistance lines.
For each of these 15 stocks, you will get the directional signal (i.e. both short and long) with a pre-determined entry price, possible resistance level, and maximum move in the up or down direction.
While it all sounds amazing, I would love to see some proof of the past performance of these so-called “directional trade alerts”.
However, I’ve not found any on its website or anywhere else online.
Lastly, it has a news scanner that allows you to help scan for news from various sources, SEC filings, and Twitter chatter while Trade Ideas only provides the latest news feed on its platform.
However, if you are primarily trading news, I would recommend Benzinga Pro instead because it has a much more powerful real-time news scanner as well as a dedicated news desk that brings you the latest actionable stock news.
Is it really worth paying for it?
Let’s take a look at its pricing.
StocksToTrade offers two pricing plans:
- Monthly Plan: $179.95/month
- Annual Plan: $ 158.25/ month
On the other hand, Trade Ideas offers more competitive pricing as shown below:
- Trade Ideas Standard: $118/month (or $84/month if paid annually)
- Trade Ideas Premium: $228/month (or $167/month if paid annually)
As you can see, the price is on the high end.
For this price, I would highly recommend Trade Ideas over StocksToTrade for three main reasons.
First of all, Trade Ideas has a much more powerful real-time stock scanner with hundreds of filters and alerts that you can mix and match to customize your stock scans.
Secondly, Trade Ideas has Holly A.I which runs about 50 proprietary trading algorithms every day and gives you 5 to 8 trading strategies with the highest win rate based on millions of simulations.
You will get a complete trading plan with the exact entry price and exit price.
What’s more, Trade Ideas publishes its Holly A.I performance every month and it has been consistently beating the market without you taking more risk.
So, I would definitely choose Trade Ideas Holly A.I over StocksToTrade Oracle every single day.
If you are always designing, testing and optimizing your trading strategies, Trade Ideas has an excellent backtesting tool called “Odds Maker” that helps you back-test and fine-tune your strategies before you trade real money.
On top of that, Trade Ideas also allows you to do automatic trading through Interactive Broker and Lightspeed Trading.
Lastly, there have been complaints from StocksToTrade users about the platform crashing often.
Personally, I think the uttermost important thing about a trading platform is its reliability.
Without it, all its features wouldn’t work.
So, I would definitely recommend Trade Ideas instead of StocksToTrade.
Having said all that, you should always test-drive any trading software before committing to it.
Every month, Trade Ideas runs a 14-day test drive to let you try out its full features at less than $1/day.
I would encourage you to take advantage of this offer to see whether Trade Ideas is a good fit for you.
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