In BullCharts, if you open an existing Scan or create a new Scan, there are four tabs in the BullScan Properties dialogue box. One of these tabs is "2. Scan Criteria". This is where you can specify a number of "things" (or properties) about the scan, to define which stock market data we will search through, and in which time period, and which time frame, as well as the individual "stock selection" (or "scan") criteria.
To create a new Scan Criteria, simply click on the "New..." button near the bottom of the dialogue box.
In the notes below, we take a quick look at just some of the available selection criteria. I will cover other options in future editions of Brainy's Tip Sheets.

In the BullScan Properties dialogue box, if you click on the "New..." button to create a new Scan Criteria, the top portion of the next dialogue box ("BullScan Criteria Properties") looks like the figure here. If you view the details of the "Category" drop down, you will see there are six different types of values that we can use for comparison.

In the text here we will only talk about the first option - "Is a price or chart field". But, note the other options, including: "Is an indicator", and "Is a fundamental". I will cover those in future Tip Sheets.

If you choose "Is a price or chart field" as the First value to compare (as described above), then you have 14 different choices for the next drop-down (see the accompanying figure).

The most commonly used ones include: Open, High, Low, Close and Volume. But note there is also: "Value Traded" (ie. the dollar value), so that you might choose only stocks with more than, say, $100,000 traded in a day, or perhaps $500,000 in a week.

Also "Trades" (ie. the number of buy/sell transactions in the period - day or week). You might want to choose only the stocks that have had more than, say, 50 trades in a day (or 250 in a week). This will help you avoid thinly traded stocks. If you want to exit the stock in a hurry, there needs to be enough liquidity.

NOTE: If you have these criteria for stock selection, then they must be recorded in your written version of your Trading Strategy (see Brainy's Monthly eNewsletter articles for more details).

Also note these options: "Previous Close", "Price Change", and "Price % Change". These help to compare a Close price to the previous close, or to look at the actual change in price compared with a Close price at some stage in the past - either in dollars, or percentage change. In the latter case, you might want to search for a stock that has changed by, say, 10% over a 5-day period.

Two other useful ones are "Highest High" and "Lowest Low". You can use these to look for a situation over, say, an 8-bar period, or maybe 21 or 34 bars. If a stock is making Higher Highs, then perhaps an uptrend is confirmed?

The last two on the list are "Typical Price", and "Median". More about these in a future article.

Having chosen the "Price or Chart field" option, and then a specific item, you can choose the "Type of Comparison" to make. Remember that further down in the dialogue box is the "2. Second Value to Compare" option. So the "Type of Comparison" will compare the "First value..." with the "Second Value...". Depending on how you think, sometimes it is useful to do it in this sequence:

• Set the "First Value to Compare...", then
• Set the "Second Value to Compare...", then
• Go back and set the "Type of Comparison".

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