Thanks Carmen, happy to help, have had lots of assistance along the way from many generous ppl (yes, agree, there are lots on this thread atm)
re scans:
I use Metastock with data from Premium Data (get intraday data every 20mins) an use Iress for live intraday. There's prob better packages now that are live, but have been on my system for years and it ain't broke so....
Try to keep it simple these days - have tried just about every scan under the sun. Some work at different stages of the market cycle, "breakout from long term base" was good a few months back.
Now am just looking at the generic "Equis - price and volume breakout" (price increased 5% and vol is 50% above 50 day MA) in the MS Explorer, I guess everybody uses it, so am just going with the momentum as well atm.
Another one I look at is similar, but not so tight in its requirements, but needs stock to close in the top half of its trading range for the day.
Also on will use the "MACD buy signal" in the MS Expl., at times and have one called "Hagars Pullback" that picks up some of the retracement/pullback trades. The non-proprietary ones were begged, borrowed or stolen from ppl over the years. Can't do formula language, but am sure there is still some site where you can copy the scans. Think Darryl Guppy had one, or there may be a MS scan site.
As I already said best policy is KISS, just following the good stocks in play, checking their patterns and cycles (breakout, pullback or testing s/r levels) doesn't really require dozens of scans - learnt that the hard way.
Following the lead from good posters is also another strategy/skill that can be successful as long as you are manage your risk levels carefully. Don't buy on spikes, there's always another stock, day or opportunity, someone's always ready to take profits in an overextended stock.
Buy where there is an easy out or support level not too far away from your entry price, so you can get out if you're wrong - now that's a low risk trade.
