Top Gainers from the Past

[Diego443]

Hello Elite Traders,

I am looking for a scanner that shows me the top gainers from the past. Lets say 4/15/2015. Now I want to know which stocks really spiked that day.

I am using think or swim and using the on demand function to practice a bit to increase my size but I want to know which stocks really went crazy that that as I am focusing on shorting those.

Anyone any idea?

Thank you in advance,

Diego

 

[Max E.]

There is lots of places for historical prices, but it might be hard to find historical gainers and losers, thats kind of a list you got to make on your own, I could be wrong, but for me, its just years of trading stocks knowing this stock has put in a run in the past. Anyways probably not much help but i dont think you can find what your looking for, unless you were to scan for stocks up "X" percent on one day.

 

[MoneyMatthew]

Hello Elite Traders,

I am looking for a scanner that shows me the top gainers from the past. Lets say 4/15/2015. Now I want to know which stocks really spiked that day.

I am using think or swim and using the on demand function to practice a bit to increase my size but I want to know which stocks really went crazy that that as I am focusing on shorting those.

Anyone any idea?

Thank you in advance,

Diego

I wrote my own custom screener from scratch to do exactly this in the past. You could probably do the same thing in Excel with free EOD from yahoo finance. The problem is if you go back far enough then you have to deal with survivorship bias.

An easy way for you to avoid the survivorship bias and to avoid building your own solution is to pay for an account at tradingsim.com. They have a built in intraday screener that shows top % gainers and losers as well as top $ gainers and losers by date for the last few years. Simply select the day you want to check for. To confirm getting around the bias go find a symbol that was recently delisted and select a trading day in the past to confirm that they show old symbols. Fast forward on the simulator to the end of the day to get your picks.

There are a number of problems with this strategy that I won't get into. One problem that you will find is that certain low dollar stocks post insane % gains and losses on a regular basis. What you should scan for is relative spikes and not market wide. Just my opinion.

I have my own custom software but again I never solved the survivorship bias issue.

 

[Max E.]

Great post matthew, thats kind of what i was thinking, take all the historical prices off yahoo then screen yourself but thats got to be a huge task, wish i was better with comps, good advice man.

I wrote my own custom scanner from scratch to do exactly this in the past. You could probably do the same thing in Excel with free EOD from yahoo finance. The problem is if you go back far enough then you have to deal with survivorship bias.

An easy way for you to avoid the survivorship bias and to avoid building your own solution is to pay for an account at tradingsim.com. They have a built in intraday screener that shows top % gainers and losers as well as top $ gainers and losers by date for the last few years. Simply select the day you want to check for. To confirm getting around the bias go find a symbol that was recently delisted and select a trading day in the past to confirm that they show old symbols. Fast forward on the simulator to the end of the day to get your picks.

There are a number of problems with this strategy that I won't get into. One problem that you will find is that certain low dollar stocks post insane % gains and losses on a regular basis. What you should scan for is relative spikes and not market wide. Just my opinion.

I have my own custom software but again I never solved the survivorship bias issue.

 

[MoneyMatthew]

Great post matthew, thats kind of what i was thinking, take all the historical prices off yahoo then screen yourself but thats got to be a huge task, wish i was better with comps, good advice man.

No problem, even if he had the skills to grab and sort everything off of yahoo finance then he would still face the survivorship bias issue.

 

[Max E.]

yeah exactly.

 

[MoneyMatthew]

OK, I just checked on tradingsim.com for you on my account. I tested the symbol VMEM which was delisted last year. It still shows up. I tested it for Sept. 7th 2016. As you can see from the screen shot. The top gainers and losers are on the left side of the screen. What you could do is fast forward/skip to the end of the day to see who were to top gainers/losers for that day in the past. This also will safeguard you from the survivorship bias that I spoke about. While an automated solution would be ideal, this is the cheapest in terms of money and time investment to solve your problem.

 

[Max E.]

Wow nice find man didnt think you would be able to do that.

OK, I just checked on tradingsim.com for you on my account. I tested the symbol VMEM which was delisted last year. It still shows up. I tested it for Sept. 7th 2016. As you can see from the screen shot. The top gainers and losers are on the left side of the screen. What you could do is fast forward/skip to the end of the day to see who were to top gainers/losers for that day in the past. This also will safeguard you from the survivorship bias that I spoke about. While an automated solution would be ideal, this is the cheapest in terms of money and time investment to solve your problem.

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