indicators to identify "ripping" stocks

[Hauser]

Like a lot of traders I spend a lot of time every day scanning charts, looking for trading opportunities. I'm interested in using NinjaTrader's Market Analyzer and alerts to help find opportunities for me.

A simple but effective pattern I look for are stocks that are "ripping" (moving very quickly in one direction or another, usually with a lot of volatility on the way), here are two charts from today that represent what I'm scanning for.

First, CNBC reports at 8:55am EST that the WSJ news on BAC's capital requirements might not be as bad as it appears, and the stock begins to rip:



Next, Garmin gets hammered at the bell after reporting larger than expected losses:




This is all new to me but I would think it wouldn't be difficult to create an indicator that shows which stocks on my watchlist have the highest percent gain/loss over a 2 minute/5 minute interval, and which have the highest percent gain/loss since the opening bell, but I don't really know where to start with Market Analyzer. Are there built-in indicators for this sort of thing already? If not, will I need to use fancy Ninjascript to create them, and if so does anyone have some examples they can share? Thanks much!

[NinjaTrader_RJ]

Hello Hauser,

Thank you for your note.

There is not a default indicator available to calculate the percent change of a certain time frame, and this would need to be created. Just as an idea, you can use the "Range" indicator to view the range of an instrument over the last bar. So you can set it to look at a 10 min, 5 min, ect bar to change time frames.

NinjaTrader advanced charting is extensible in that you can create custom indicators using NinjaScript which is based on the modern C# programming language.
Click here for information on programming in NinjaScript
There is a growing library of user submitted custom indicators (100+) that can be downloaded from our support form. Please look in the NinjaScript File Sharing section of our support forum as you may find what you are looking for there.
If you have limited time or programming capabilities, you can discuss your requirements with any of our NinjaScript consultants.
Click here for a list of certified NinjaScript Consultants

[Hauser]

Thanks for your quick response! I'll replay today's market using the Range indicator, is there some documentation that describes exactly how Range and the other indicators built into NinjaTrader work?

[NinjaTrader_RJ]

Unfortunately there is no documentation other than the "Label" box in the lowever left corner of the indicators menu. You can click and drag the top of this box to expand it.
The 'Range" indicator just states the range, in price, of the last bar.

This site is also helpful for other indicator information: http://www.tadoc.com/