The Premium Scanner
Three ways to narrow the market: dynamic filters you build, preset filters we maintain, and MAD Setups. A scan produces a shortlist, never a conclusion.
MadStockAlerts Research · Updated August 28, 2026
What to take away
- Dynamic Filters build a query; Preset Scanning Filters are maintained sets; MAD Setups is detection.
- Saved scans, the column picker and CSV export need Premium Stock Analysis Tools.
- MAD Setups needs Premium Stock Alerts.
- Every scan needs a liquidity constraint or the results are untradeable.
- Over-filtering feels like precision and is usually curve fitting.
MAD Academy Training Video · 0:45
A Filter, Not an Answer
The Scanner narrows thousands of securities to a readable list, and everything after that is research you still have to do.
This lesson is part of a Stock Alerts + Tools plan.
The three modes
| Mode | What it does | What it needs |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamic Filters | Build your own query across fundamentals, technicals and price action | Tools for saved scans and export |
| Preset Scanning Filters | Maintained filter sets for common questions | Available to members |
| MAD Setups | Nightly setup detection across the whole market | Premium Stock Alerts |
The scanner page serves more than one tier and adjusts what it offers rather than blocking the surface. A session with Alerts but not Tools reaches MAD Setups and not saved scans; the reverse holds for a Tools session.
Building a scan that returns something usable
- 1Start with the universeMarket capitalization and average volume floors first. This is the constraint that decides whether results are tradeable at all.
- 2Add the condition you actually care aboutOne or two criteria that express the idea, not eight that express nothing.
- 3Read the countFour hundred results means the filter did not filter. Two means it was fitted to a foregone conclusion.
- 4Sort, then readA scan produces a list to examine, not a list to act on.
A scan with no liquidity floor returns thinly traded securities, because extreme readings are far more common where the price series is formed by very few trades. That is a property of thin data rather than a discovery.
Over-filtering
Adding criteria until the result set is small feels like precision and is usually curve fitting. Each additional condition is a further assumption, and a scan that returns two names has typically been shaped until it returned the names expected.
A useful discipline is to write the idea in a sentence first and then translate it into the fewest filters that express it. If the sentence needs eight clauses it is probably several ideas rather than one.
Scroll the chart sideways to see all of it.
What a scan is and is not
A scan narrows thousands of securities to a readable shortlist. Everything after that, reading the company, the filings, the liquidity and the structure, is work the scan has not done.
The scanner surfaces candidates; it does not evaluate them. Treating the output as an answer rather than a question is the most common way the surface is misused.
Reading the count as a diagnostic
Before any result is examined, the number of results says something about the scan itself. Treating that number as a diagnostic rather than as an outcome catches most badly specified scans immediately.
| Count | What it usually means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Several hundred | The conditions describe an ordinary state of affairs | Tighten the condition that expresses the idea, not the universe |
| 20 to 60 | A workable shortlist | Read it |
| Under 5 | Over-filtered, or a condition that is rarely satisfied | Remove the most recently added criterion and look again |
| Zero | Either genuinely nothing qualifies, or a criterion is malformed | Relax one condition at a time to find which one binds |
The fourth row is worth taking seriously rather than fixing. A scan that returns nothing has answered the question it was asked, and no securities currently satisfying a set of conditions is a legitimate finding about the market.
Loosening conditions until something appears is the most common way a scan is turned into a foregone conclusion. The conditions were the idea, and changing them until the answer is non-empty replaces the idea with the wish for a result.
What happens after the list
A scan is a hypothesis generator. It produces a set of securities that satisfy conditions, and every one of them still has to be examined for the things the conditions could not see.
- 1Check the calendarA scheduled event inside the expected window changes the risk of anything held through it, and no scan condition covers it.
- 2Look at the chartConditions describe values; the chart shows structure, and two securities with identical readings can look nothing alike.
- 3Check liquidity properlyAverage volume is a rough proxy. What matters is whether a position could be exited on a bad day.
- 4Find out whyA security satisfying a set of conditions did so for a reason, and the reason is in the filings or the news rather than in the scan.
- 5Discard most of itA shortlist that survives this intact was not a shortlist, it was a conclusion reached before the examination.
The step most often skipped is the last one. A scan that produces thirty names and a process that acts on thirty names has used the scanner as a decision procedure rather than as a filter.