Hello

I am a long time TC2007 user, experiencing an error that has made most of my scans useless.

For years I have been able to invoke a relative strength window within a PCF by the simple formula x/y -1 * 100.  A window will pop up with a vertical bar.  There are three buttons within the window allowing you to define the bar as actual value, or as a percentage of the whole.  For example, I can set the bar within the relative strength window for 90 day volume, then I could set it for just the top say 50%.   When I incorporate that PCF into a scan, it will only pick up the stocks or ETFs that have the top 50% of volume.

For some reason that function does not work.  Also, I seem to be missing some PCFs, particullarly around volume.  This means my scans which use a relative strength PCF do not work.  Most of my scans now have 0 population.

Would you have any idea what is happening?

x/y - 1 * 100 is not valid syntax in the Personal Criteria Formula Language if used exactly as presented and never has been.

Even if you substitute something such as the current price for x (C ) and the price of 21-bars ago for y (C21), the resulting formula:

C / C21 - 1 * 100

Would be the same as:

C / C21 - 100

If you wanted this to be a 21-Period Percent Change for example, you would need to force the order of operations with parentheses:

(C / C21 - 1) * 100

How to create a Personal Criteria Forumula (PCF)

You are describing what happens when you add a Personal Criteria Formula to an EasyScan as an EasyScan Condition:

Using EasyScan to find stocks that meet your own criteria

If the behavior of TC2000 has suddenly changed and you are missing PCFs, your best option would be to contact technical support so they can troubleshoot the issue before any additional issues develop in the program.

Thanks for your fast response.

You are right about the paranthesis in the formula.  I dd not specifiy the parens in my example, but I do use them in the actual formula.  For example, my "50MA > 200MA As a Comparison" PCF actually looks like:

( ( AVGC50 / AVGC200 ) - 1 ) * 100

I am thinking you are also right in that I get the box popping up not when I do the PCF, but when I incorporate the PCF into a scan.  Not sure how I missed that; I have not been playing with limiting PCFs in a while.

Inexplicably, it now appears that my problem is that I am missing certain PCFs, specifically around volume.  Unfortunately, most of my scans have a volume component, usually to eliminate the stock or PCFs with the smallest volume.  Most of my scans now show 0 results because of the missing PCF.  The line is still in there when I look at the scan formula, just pointing to nothing. 

I am going to go to old backups, and see if I can find and restore the PCFs.

Restoring your PCFs from an old backup will probably work. That said, I would generally suggest contacting technical support before you attempt any fixes on your own.

While unlikely, it is possible that technical support would be able to restore your settings from your current configuration but that an attempted fix could make things worse to the point where it is no longer possible.