So what is the best way to scan for squeezes in the thinkorswim platform in
this video I'm gonna walk you through how to set up your scan so you can
quickly and easily find the best squeezes for your training hey how's it
going on this channel you will learn the steps it takes to make a full time
income trading in the stock market so if you're new here consider it subscribing
and today we're setting up scans for the squeeze indicator so if you're new to
sign up scans in the thinkorswim I'm not gonna walk through all the basics but I
will walk through everything and setting up this scan for the squeeze now right
now we're in the monitor tab you're gonna want to go over to the scan tab
and then you'll see there are a few tabs in the scan tab so we are gonna be under
the stock hacker or stock scanner tab and that's where we're gonna have this
setup so I already have this scan setup but I'm gonna walk you through the
settings of it and why I have them and then also setting up the actual squeeze
indicator alert scan because that can be kind of confusing so these first two
right here are actually stock filters so for the scanner you can set up different
kind of filters up here you can see that there are filters for stocks there's
study filters and there's also filters for options and then fundamentals and
the first two I like to put our four market cap and then volume and so what
these do is they make sure I am looking at stocks that are a decent size and
then they also have a good amount of trading volume so I know that there are
a strong company and that there's liquidity and people trading it you
don't really want to be trading stock that no one's trading because that can
just cause a lot of different issues and I'm not going to go into in this video
and then you just want to filter by market cap also because definitely the
smaller market cap stocks will have liquidity or volume issues as well and
we're more looking for trading large or very strong training grow stocks
with decent size so what I have for the market cap size is a billion so it's
essentially if the company is a billion or larger in market cap this gain will
pick those up and then for volume I have a kind of an arbitrary number it's not
set in stone but roughly about four hundred thousand you could do half a
million or even a million shares and so this is traded a day so generally these
companies if they're traded that many shares a day they definitely have enough
liquidity for you not to have issues now this can sometimes knock out some larger
cap companies that have a large share price that trades small amount of shares
just because their share value is so big generally those are hard to trade anyway
with you their options or shares because they cost so much to trade anyway I'm
okay avoiding those now the next one is the actual squeeze indicator alert and
I'm just gonna walk you through how to set that up because there are a few
settings in here you can't see that are important to making sure it works
properly so what you're gonna want to do to add this is you want to go to add
study filter because this is a study and then down here you'll see that it brings
that up and we're gonna want to go to custom and then we can just we'll delete
what it default puts in and then add condition and that's just adding a new
study and so we want to click on add study and then we want to look up study
and so I'm just gonna type in squeeze and then there it comes up and you want
to make sure that it plots the squeeze alert and so that's gonna be those red
dots in the squeeze and so that's what we're looking for we want to know when
it's in a squeeze and all these other settings are fine to just leave on the
default you just want to make sure you change the plot to your squeeze alert
and then we want to set is equal to and then it'll bring up a condition and then
click value and we want to make sure that value is zero
now within bars is because this is going to be a daily scan this will just say
that within the last bar or the most recent bar or
dey's bar it is showing that is in a squeeze we're looking for stocks that
are currently in a squeeze we want to leave this at within one bar all that is
saying is that within the last bar or the most recent bar it is showing that
is in a squeeze and that's all we're looking for here is we're looking for
stocks currently in a squeeze so we can look for them in a trade now these are
all the segments for it we're just gonna click Save and then click OK and that's
gonna add that down here now I'm just gonna exit this because I already have
it up here but that's all the settings you need for that the rest of these are
all moving average scans so all you're gonna do is just add study filter and
then make sure you find moving average scan and then change those to the
settings that I have here now these are just moving exponential moving averages
and all these scans are doing is seeing that the stock is above these moving
averages now you will see that over here on the right I have a moving averages
for daily and then also weekly moving averages and so all these are doing is
for the weekly ones it's saying that okay on a weekly chart the stock is
trading above the 21 EMA and the 8 EMA and so this is saying that on a weekly
chart the stock is trending well and then on these daily charts this is
showing that it's above the 34 EMA and then the 200 and the 55 these are much
larger moving averages but again with this scan all I'm trying to do is seen
if it's in a squeeze and if the overall trend is really strong so these are all
the settings and then we can click down here scan and it will scan and find all
these stocks in the squeeze now the best part about this is you don't have to
look at these and then click on charts and then type them in you can tell it to
add into a watch list so over here on the top right of this we're going to
click and save as watch list and then this is going to go in and watch this
that we can look at while we're looking at charts so I'm just gonna put in daily
squeeze tests here and then click Save and that's going to
say as a watch list for us and then going back quickly to show you something
up here you want to make sure that these squeeze is in a daily because right now
we're just scanning for daily charts you can change this to different time frames
so if you're looking for smaller squeezes or longer-term time frame
squeezes you can sadly you can't change us to custom time frames like 195 minute
squeezes or 78 minute squeezes you can't do that here I have called them and
tried to see if you can but there's no settings in the platform at the moment
to do that now that we have this squeezed saved we can go into charts and
start looking at our watch list and scanning for squeezes and checking out
squeezes that our watch list has brought up so over here on the Left I have watch
lists and then I'm gonna click on this little tab it has and then it's gonna
bring up personal and so here all the personal watch lists that I can have and
then we're just going to go to daily squeeze tests and so see that watch this
changed here and a quick thing you want to make sure you do is right here you'll
see that normally it'll look like this you'll have the little link here you
want to make this link the same color as the link on your chart and all this does
is that it allows you to link your watch list and your chart so you can quickly
click on your watch list over here without having to type in the ticker up
here you just can click on this and quickly scan through these stocks and
that's the best part of having this watchlist setup is all the scan does is
tell me if it's in a daily squeeze and if it's in a strong uptrend but it
doesn't scan exactly for what I'm looking for now I haven't tweaked with
the scan to find the exact perfect setup every time but that's okay because for
me I can quickly look at the fifty to a hundred stocks of this scan shows and I
can quickly find you know five or ten then I want to start watching and look
for for entries in trades now you can try and tweak with the scan setup to
maybe find less squeezes but once you get really good at this it'll take you
about two seconds to look at it and then know that okay I do like this
squeeze or I don't like this squeeze the whole idea of the scan is just to find
squeezes in long uptrends so you're not looking through thousands of stocks
because there will always be plenty of stocks in squeezes but quite often a lot
of them won't work very well it squeezes a continuation indicator and we want to
find stocks that are in a strong uptrend looking for that next continuation leg
higher so to quickly look at a few of these we can see this first one actually
is Apple and right now you can see that down here
it is in a squeeze based on those red dots now it's been in the squeeze for
the last few days and sadly it has earnings but other than that this Apple
does look pretty good to the upside with this kind of overall bull flag pattern
and then the squeeze setting up now this isn't the greatest setup just because
it's been really choppy for a while so I wouldn't necessarily take this trade but
it's definitely one to keep an eye on for now moving down the list we'll just
take a look at a few more of these now I don't really like this one because it's
a little too choppy and we have earnings right around the gate quite a few of
these have earnings coming up and we are in earnings season so a lot of those
squeezes or all of them I won't take I don't like taking trades and holding
through earnings because for me earnings is kind of a crapshoot and it's
essentially just gambling you don't know if this sucks can go up or down after
earnings and the main point with this trade strategy is going off what the
chart is telling you and the chart can be telling you one thing and then
earnings can come out and tell you a complete different thing and this chart
right here has earnings as well and after earnings it could be down all the
way down here at $13 and right now this chart looks great we have that general
pattern of the stock just made a strong up move and then it's selling off a
little bit it's beginning to start that flag out and consolidation period and
then you have that squeeze and so this would be a stock that if it didn't have
earnings right here you see earnings by this red and blue little circle and this
would be great candidate for potentially looking for a
move up here too you know 15 and a half or just you know a continuation move
higher and that's what you're looking for with these trades is these general
strong up move and then kind of consolidation period followed by the
squeeze forming and that's when you want to be looking to get in but again we
have earnings here and I don't like holding through earnings you're welcome
to but I wouldn't suggest it it's it can definitely be a coin flip very
frequently you will also have a problem with if you are trading options you will
have a volatility crush as the earnings come out so if you have calls they will
decrease in value even as the stock doesn't move at all just because of that
volatility crush now if you don't know what that is I would very highly
recommend not holding the options through earnings I would definitely look
that kind of stuff up before you try and trade stuff and hold options through
earnings also what this scan does is as you can see on this chart this stock
over the last year has just gone basically up and that is generally what
I'm looking for with these kind of trades I'm looking for to see the stock
have a very strong uptrend and then you know this just general lag out move and
then the squeeze develop it shows you that this stock is very strong and that
it is highly likely it is going to keep going up and all this squeeze does is
tell you when there's a consolidation period and when is there a very strong
time for you to get in and buy before it makes that next move higher now you can
see there aren't a ton of stocks in here that we can go and look through and
generally they are showing this upward trend over last year and then kind of
this flag out now this kind of squeeze right here you can see it's been
essentially squeezing for the last you know month or two and that's definitely
not what I'm looking for you're wanting to see something that squeezes and then
in a few days takes off so you want to be finding these pretty quickly and so
generally if you're trading these are gonna want to be looking at this scan
and scanning for new squeezes pretty frequently because the strong stocks
will go into a squeeze only for few days and then continue higher so you
don't want to be trading these stocks that have this kind of setup where
they'll go up and then sit there for two months now if you're trading at a longer
term timeframe if you're you know just wanting to buy stock and hold it for a
few months this stock looks great right this last squeeze right here you can see
it flagged out and then you know took off and did great over the last few
months and then now it's kind of doing that same thing its flagging out you see
this kind of squeeze here it looks like it's gonna start maybe making that leg
higher it made new highs two days ago and so maybe it's gonna start going up
again and then make a similar move to this now you don't necessarily know that
of course but generally it is a pretty good indicator and that's all trading is
is making educated guesses that a stock is gonna do what you want now you might
want to make a watch list with just stock so you want to be generally
looking at consistently and seeing when they go and squeeze this now you might
want to be looking that if they're you know in a daily squeeze a 195 minute
squeeze or a few hours squeeze all the time because there are such strong
stocks now a stock like this could be like Amazon or Google or any of the
really large cap stocks that are trending and growing really well those
stocks can be amazing for squeezes now another one or another list of stocks
that is really strong is the IBD 50 the investor's business daily 50 now this
stock list you actually do have to pay for but I will say that there is an ETF
that follows the stock lists exactly and you can look at what stocks are in that
ETF exactly I don't remember the ticker but all you need to do to get that list
without paying for it is just look for the IBD 50 ETF and you will be able to
see every stock that is in the IBD 50 without having to pay you know I think
it's like $30 a month for that list so that is another strong list of stocks
because those are the top 50 grow stocks in their mind and I have used that list
before generally it is very powerful in looking
for stocks now what you're gonna want to do with those is you can put those in a
watch list and I actually have a watch list with those and then what you can do
is in another video I'll show you how to set up a watch list
that'll in the watch list show you that if it's in a daily or hour 2 hour 1 hour
30 minutes squeeze without having to scan and look at the stocks on the watch
list it'll just say yes or no or green or red if it's in a squeeze and so that
can be really powerful look for looking at pre-made watch this like this like
the IBD 50 and and save you a ton of time when scanning for these squeezes so
thanks for Travis video if you want to learn more about that squeeze watch this
I'll make sure to put a link to that right here now if you want to learn more
about the stock market make sure to subscribe and if you have any questions
feel free to ask them in the comments below