How to Use the Trade Ideas Scanner: Beginner's Guide (2026)

What Trade Ideas Actually Does

Trade Ideas is a real-time stock scanner that monitors every stock on every US exchange simultaneously. It applies your filter criteria to live tick data and surfaces stocks the moment they match.

The difference from other scanners: Trade Ideas processes data in real time during market hours, not on a delay. When a stock breaks through a specific price level or prints unusual volume at 9:45 AM, Trade Ideas shows it in your scanner window within seconds.

The platform has two major components:

• Scanners — custom filters you define that run continuously on live market data
• Holly AI — an automated trading system that generates buy/sell signals based on backtested strategies, included with the Premium plan

Most beginners focus exclusively on Holly at first. That's backwards. The scanner is where you build your own edge. Holly is a tool for understanding what an AI-optimized approach looks like, not a substitute for your own process.

Setting Up Your First Scan

After logging in, you'll see the main interface with multiple windows. The scanner window is typically in the top-left quadrant.

Step 1: Open the Scanner Config

Click the gear icon on any scanner window, or go to Scans → Create New Scan. You'll see a filter panel on the left and a results panel on the right.

Step 2: Start With a Pre-Built Scan

Trade Ideas ships with 100+ pre-built scans. For beginners, the most useful starting points are:

• Gap Up Pre-Market — stocks gapping up 2%+ before open with meaningful volume
• High Relative Volume — stocks printing 3x or more their average volume for the time of day
• Breaking Out of Range — stocks crossing above a consolidation high on above-average volume

Load one of these as a starting template. You'll modify it to match your specific strategy, but starting from a working example is faster than building from scratch.

Step 3: Set Your Universe

Before touching individual filters, define your stock universe. Most beginners skip this and end up with scan results full of penny stocks and illiquid small-caps.

Recommended universe filters for beginners:

• Price: $5 minimum (eliminates most pump-and-dump targets)
• Average Daily Volume: 500,000+ shares (ensures you can enter and exit without moving the stock)
• Exchange: NYSE + NASDAQ only (removes OTC stocks)

These three constraints cut the universe from ~8,000 stocks to roughly 1,500-2,000, all of which are tradeable.

The 10 Filters That Matter Most

Trade Ideas has 500+ filter criteria. Most of them you'll never use. Here are the 10 that show up in the majority of effective scans:

1. Relative Volume (RVOL)

Volume compared to average volume for the same time of day. An RVOL of 3.0 means a stock is trading 3x its normal volume right now, not just for the full day.

Filter: Current RVOL > 2.0 catches stocks with genuine intraday interest.

2. Price Change from Previous Close

Simple percentage change. Filter for stocks up 2%+ or down 2%+ to find stocks in motion.

3. Range from Open

How far the stock has moved from its opening print. High range indicates volatility and momentum.

4. Distance from 52-Week High

Stocks within 2-5% of their 52-week high are in a different context than stocks sitting at 50% below their high. This filter separates them.

5. Average True Range (ATR)

ATR measures how much a stock typically moves in a day. A $50 stock with a $0.50 ATR behaves differently than one with a $3 ATR. Filter for ATR as a percentage of price to normalize across price ranges.

6. Float Size

Float is the number of shares available for trading. Low-float stocks (under 20M shares) can make explosive moves on news but are also more prone to erratic behavior. Filter by float to match your risk tolerance.

7. Pre-Market Volume

Pre-market activity often indicates news-driven momentum that will carry into the regular session. Filter for pre-market volume > 100,000 shares to find stocks that opened with a story.

8. News Catalyst (OTC_BulkNewsItems)

Trade Ideas can filter for stocks with recent news. Combine with volume filters to find stocks where volume is being driven by fundamental news, not random fluctuation.

9. Industry/Sector

When a sector is in play (e.g., biotech after a major trial result, energy after an OPEC decision), filtering by sector helps you focus on the strongest movers in that group.

10. Short Float Percentage

High short interest (>20%) combined with unusual volume can signal a short squeeze setup. Filter: Short Float % > 20 with RVOL > 2 as a combination.

Combining Filters: The Right Order

Build your scan in this order:

1. Universe constraints first (price, volume, exchange)
2. Primary signal (what's happening right now — gap, breakout, volume spike)
3. Confirmation filters (what makes this setup valid)
4. Cleanup filters (remove results you don't trade)

If your scan returns more than 20-30 results at any given time, add another confirmation filter. You want a focused list, not a firehose.

Reading Holly AI Alerts

Holly AI is included with the Premium plan (~$167/month). It generates daily buy and short-sell alerts based on a portfolio of backtested strategies.

What Holly Produces Each Day

Before market open, Holly runs its model against the current market environment and generates a list of trade candidates. Each alert includes:

• Ticker
• Direction (long or short)
• Entry price range
• Stop loss level
• Profit target
• Strategy name (tells you which of Holly's backtested strategies generated the alert)

Holly's Reported Performance

Trade Ideas reports Holly's historical win rate at 60-70% depending on the time period and market conditions. These numbers are backtested, not live-audited by a third party. Treat them as directional indicators, not guarantees.

In practice, Holly performs better in trending markets than in choppy, range-bound conditions. 2022 (high volatility, strong directional moves) was a strong period. 2023's low-volatility consolidation was weaker.

How to Use Holly Effectively

Don't execute Holly alerts blindly. Use them as a second opinion:

1. Run your own scanner in the morning to identify your candidates
2. Check if Holly is also flagging any of the same stocks
3. When your scan and Holly agree, that's a higher-conviction setup
4. Use Holly's stop and target levels as reference points for your own risk management

Holly is most useful as a sanity check, not as a standalone trading system.

Setting Up Alert Channels

Trade Ideas can route alerts to multiple channels. The most useful for active traders:

Audio Alerts

Configure different sounds for different alert types. A breakout scanner can play one chime, a volume spike scanner another. Lets you monitor multiple scans without staring at the screen.

Setup: Scanner Settings → Alert → Sound → select your audio file.

Email Alerts

Best for end-of-day or swing traders. Configure a scan to email you when stocks meet your criteria during the last hour of the trading day.

Brokerage Integration

Trade Ideas integrates directly with TD Ameritrade (now Schwab) and Interactive Brokers for one-click order entry from the scanner. This is an advanced feature — get comfortable with the scanner first before enabling direct execution.

Brokerage Automation (Brokerage+)

The top-tier plan includes automated execution: Trade Ideas sends orders directly to your broker when an alert fires. This requires significant testing in paper trading mode before going live. Recommended only after 3+ months of manual experience with the scanner.

Beginner Mistakes to Avoid

Mistake 1: Running Too Many Scans

Trade Ideas lets you run unlimited scans simultaneously. New users often run 8-10 at once and end up with hundreds of alerts they can't process. Start with 1-2 focused scans that match your exact trading style.

Mistake 2: Ignoring the Time Filter

Many scan criteria mean something different at 9:35 AM versus 2:30 PM. A high-volume breakout in the first 15 minutes of trading has different implications than the same pattern at 2:30 PM. Use the time-of-day filter to prevent your scan from firing at irrelevant times.

Mistake 3: Overrelying on Holly

Holly generates 15-25 alerts per day. Taking all of them means taking trades across every sector, in every market condition, with no coherent thesis. Pick Holly alerts only in sectors you understand and in conditions that match your preferred setup.

Mistake 4: Not Paper Trading First

Trade Ideas has a paper trading mode. Use it for at least 2-3 weeks before trading real money. You're testing your scan logic, not just the platform. A scan that looked good in backtesting can produce terrible results intraday if it's too sensitive or not sensitive enough.

Mistake 5: Not Using the Backtester

Every scan you build can be backtested against historical data. Before running any scan live, test it on the past 3-6 months. Look at the win rate, average gain vs. average loss, and max drawdown. If the numbers don't make sense in historical data, they won't make sense live either.