Hi Bruce,

The charts that I use for trading are quite short term, three minute bars.  The scans that I use work very well, no complaints whether they are created from the charts or from PCFs. 

But ...  The maximum time the alert will remain in view is three minutes and the minimum time can be as little as a few seconds if the alert pops up just before the bar expires.  And sometimes, with buying and selling, etc, the alerts disappear without having been seen or acted on.

Some questions:

1. How can I create a log of scan alerts in chronological order, either in a flat file or a watchlist?

2. How can I use a scan to detect, as a simple example, a macd crossing an ema signal line in the prior three minute bar (my main scan alert) and still remaining above it in this three minute bar?

I think I can do item 2. above in a PCF if all else fails:

XAVGC18 - XAVGC40 > XAVG(XAVGC18,4) - XAVG(XAVGC40,4)
AND
XAVGC18.1 - XAVGC40.1 > XAVG(XAVGC18.1,4) - XAVG(XAVGC40.1,4)
AND
XAVGC18.2 - XAVGC40.2 < XAVG(XAVGC18.2,4) - XAVG(XAVGC40.2,4)

This seems to give me what I want in the sense that it will keep the alert on the screen a little longer when I use this script together with my chart scan which looks at the current period only.  I know just a scan is preferable, but I don't know how to reference the current period AND the prior period in a scan where the trigger is the crossing of an ema.

My PCF above seems to be doing what I want, but I would appreciate your comment on whether it is the best way to hold the alert.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer with these questions and in prolonging scan alert visibility in general.

Selecting Alert Log in the Alert Console should bring up a list of the most recent alerts.

Setting & Managing Alerts (11:53)

Assuming you are interested in an exponential MACD 18,40,4 and that the time frame of the Condition Formula is set to 3-minutes in an EasyScan, the EasyScan should return symbols in the List to Scan of the EasyScan for which the crossover happened in the previous bar with the MACD still above the moving average during the current bar.

If you wanted to also check for symbols where the crossover happened during the current bar, you may want to try altering the Condition Formula to the following instead.

XAVGC18 - XAVGC40 > XAVG(XAVGC18,4) - XAVG(XAVGC40,4) AND (XAVGC18.1 - XAVGC40.1 < XAVG(XAVGC18.1,4) - XAVG(XAVGC40.1,4) OR XAVGC18.2 - XAVGC40.2 < XAVG(XAVGC18.2,4) - XAVG(XAVGC40.2,4))