We just added the ability to filter by options availability, so here is a recap of the filter features in SlopeCharts.
If you want to limit the symbols displayed in your watch lists or your sectors list, you can do so easily with the Filters menu items. The data panel, on the left side of SlopeCharts, can show many kinds of information, but the two panels in which Apply Filters is present are Watch Lists and Sectors.
Click on the panel title at the top to invoke the menu. You have a choice of Filter by Labels (which is related to the Labeling feature), by Sector (related to the Sector feature), or by Properties. You can also wipe out every single filter being used by choosing the Clear All Filters menu item.
When filtering by properties, You can set a minimum price, maximum price, minimum volume, and maximum volume, in order to restrict the symbols displayed. At first, the ranges are set so wide that everything will “qualify” to be shown.
But, for instance, let’s say you wanted to see if you had any really low-volume stocks in your watch lists that you wanted to strip out. You might set the Max Volume to be 100,000 and see what symbols are left. Or perhaps you never trade anything over $100 per share.
Therefore, you’d set the Max Price to 100. The applications are really up to you, since the filter is just as useful for finding desirable symbols as it is for finding undesirable ones.
After you click the Apply button, the watch lists will be displayed with the new, almost certainly smaller, collection of symbols. One helpful feature is that watch lists which are affected by your filters are shown in a lighter color, whereas lists that still have all of their symbols intact are shown in the regular blue color.
There is also a checkbox labeled Options available for trading. Checking this will result in symbols being displayed which are underlying instruments for put and call options. This is a quick way to focus on just those symbols which have options-based trading opportunities. Of course, you can use a combination of price, volume, and this checkbox in order to focus only on options ideas for heavily-traded underlying instruments.
You can likewise filter out the symbols in the Sectors menu, which is quite useful since there are probably plenty of ticker symbols among the thousands whose volume is too low or price is too low to be of interest to you.
