Technical scans search our entire database of tens of thousands of ticker symbols, returning only those that meet your exact technical criteria. Using our Scan Engine, your scan can quickly filter out irrelevant stocks and uncover those gems that meet your investment requirements.

A Technical Scan consists of one or more technical criteria, which can include everything from the exchange a stock trades on to whether it has just had a MACD crossover. The criteria can be joined together with logical “ANDs” and/or “ORs” to form more complex scans. Ultimately, these criteria are checked against every single ticker symbol in our database automatically to find ticker symbols that meet the criteria.

Once all of the symbols in our database have been checked, a list of those that meet your requirements are returned. You can then review these Scan Results, as well as save or download them for later analysis.

StockCharts members can create and run their own custom technical scans with whatever technical criteria they want. We provide two different workbenches for creating custom technical scans, those being our Standard Scan Workbench and our Advanced Scan Workbench.

Check out our detailed scanning documentation below to learn more about all aspects of scanning.

• Introduction to Scanning - The basics of scanning in one quick article. What is scanning? How does the Scan Engine work? What different ways can you scan?
• Planning Scans - Best practices for deciding what to include in your scan.

• Advanced Scan Workbench - Learn how to use our recommended tool for creating, running and managing technical scans.
• Standard Scan Workbench - Although we strongly recommend the Advanced Scan Workbench instead, the Standard Scan Workbench can still be a good educational resource for users learning how to write scans.
• Working with Scan Results - Learn the best ways to manage the results that are returned by your scan.

• Writing Scans - The nuts and bolts of building scans. This guide will give you all the basic skills you need to begin writing your own scans.
• Troubleshooting Scans - When your scans are not giving you the results you want, check out our Troubleshooting Scans article for tips on resolving scan issues.
• Getting Help with Scans - Still struggling with scans? This article can point you in the right direction, with links to several scanning help resources available on our website.

• Scan Syntax Reference - Our comprehensive reference guide covering the scan syntax for all types of scan clauses, including technical indicators, candlestick patterns, ticker properties, groups, functions and more.
• Advanced Scan Example Library - A collection of sample scans for members to study.

• Scanning Tutorials

• Scanning Videos

Next Up » Introduction to Scanning