Monitoring (Alerts)

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Monitoring (Alerts)

Alerts let Option Samurai work for you while you are away from the screen. Instead of opening a scan and re-running it yourself, you can ask the platform to watch it and email you - either the moment something new shows up, or on a schedule you choose.

There are two kinds of alert, and you can use both on the same scan:

Monitor Alert: emails you whenever a new ticker enters the results of a scan you are watching. Best for catching opportunities as they appear, without checking the scan yourself.
Scheduled Report: emails you the full results of a scan at the days and times you choose. Best for routines: a morning watchlist, a pre-close check, a Friday wrap-up.

Before you start

Your scan must be saved (or you can use a predefined scan). Alerts are attached to a saved scan, so save it first and give it a name you will recognize in an email subject line. Alternatively, you can activate alerts on one of our predefined scans, which therefore requires no saving actions on your side.
Alerts are an Advanced plan feature (monthly and yearly). They are also available during your trial; when the trial ends without an Advanced plan, your alerts are paused rather than deleted.
Alerts are sent to your login email address - the address you use to sign in to Option Samurai.
All times are US Eastern Time (ET), matching the market hours shown everywhere else in the platform.

Creating an alert

Open a scan and select Alerts. Creating an alert takes two steps:

Choose the alert type - Monitor Alert or Scheduled Report.
Set the options for that type. Only the options that matter for your choice are shown, so there is nothing extra to read past.

Option 1 - Monitor Alert

Pick Monitor Alert and confirm. That is the whole setup: there is nothing else to configure. From that point on, Option Samurai keeps a picture of your scan's current results and emails you whenever a ticker that was not there before enters them.

Monitor alerts cover both trading hours and overnight updates

Your scan is checked during market hours and again after the market closes, once the day's end-of-day data has been refreshed. You do not choose between the two - every monitor alert covers both. This matters because some of the fields you can scan on are only updated overnight - stock score, analyst recommendations and earnings-related fields among them. Previously a ticker that qualified because of an overnight update could slip in unannounced:

Your scan finishes Friday with AAPL, NVDA and TSLA in the results. You open it again on Monday morning and GOOG is there too - but no email ever told you it had arrived.

With overnight checking, GOOG now triggers an alert like any other new ticker.

How often you will hear from a monitor alert

During the trading day you may receive more than one email from the same scan - each one covers only the tickers that appeared since the previous email.
A ticker is only alerted once per day per scan. If it was already in one of the day's emails, the end-of-day check will not send it to you again.
If nothing new appears, you get nothing. Silence from a monitor alert means the results have not changed.

Option 2 - Scheduled Report

Pick Scheduled Report and you will be asked for:

Format: HTML or CSV. HTML is a readable table inside the email; CSV is a spreadsheet file attached to it.
Recurrence: daily, weekly or monthly. Weekly lets you pick which days.
Day and time: your choice, in ET. For example 09:30 ET for a market-open report, or 15:30 ET for a pre-close check.

Unlike a monitor alert, a scheduled report always contains the complete current results of the scan - not just what changed.

Ideas for scheduled reports

Your main scan every weekday at 09:30 ET, so the day starts with a shortlist.
A pre-close scan at 15:30 ET to catch setups before the bell.
A Monday-morning or Friday-close report on the tickers you follow.
A weekly report of stocks with earnings coming up.

Managing your alerts

Everything you have set up lives on the My Alerts page, reachable from your account menu. This is where you check what is running, pause things for a while, and remove what you no longer need.

Scan: the scan the alert belongs to. Select it to open the scan.
Status: Active or Paused.
Last fired: when the alert last ran successfully, a quick way to confirm it is working.
Actions: Pause, Reactivate or Delete.

Pause an alert

Select Pause on any active alert. The alert stops sending emails but keeps all of its settings. Use it when you are travelling, when a strategy is on hold, or when a scan is producing more noise than you want for a while.

Reactivate a paused alert

Select Reactivate on any paused alert and it picks up exactly where it left off, with the same schedule and settings. There is no need to rebuild it.

Delete an alert

Select Delete to remove the alert entirely. The scan itself is not affected - only the alert is removed. If you think you may want it back later, pause it instead.

Unsubscribe straight from an email

Every alert email has an unsubscribe link in the footer. One click cancels the specific alert that sent that email - you do not need to log in or find the scan first. Other alerts keep running.

What happens when your trial or plan ends

Alerts are part of the Advanced plan. During a trial you can create them freely. If the trial ends - or an Advanced subscription lapses - your alerts are paused, not deleted: they stop sending emails, but everything you configured is kept.
Upgrade or renew, open My Alerts, and select Reactivate on the ones you still want. Nothing has to be set up again.

On mobile

Alerts work on phones and tablets: you can create either alert type from a scan, and the My Alerts page lets you pause, reactivate and delete on the go.

Troubleshooting

I got an alert, but the ticker is not in my scan results

This is normal and does not mean the alert was wrong. It usually means the ticker was very close to your scan criteria when the alert was generated, and the market moved it back out again shortly after. Option Samurai's scans reflect live market conditions, so a stock can qualify and stop qualifying within minutes.

What helps:

Loosen the relevant filter slightly, so borderline matches stay in range.
Re-run the scan a few minutes later - conditions change constantly.
Remember that the alert email shows the price at the time it was sent, which is your reference point for what changed.

I have not received any monitor alerts

Check My Alerts: the alert may be paused, or your plan may have lapsed.
Look at Last fired - if the alert has run recently, it is working; there simply have not been new tickers.
Check your spam folder, and add our sending address to your contacts.
A monitor alert only emails you about new tickers. If you want the full list on a regular basis, add a scheduled report instead.

My scheduled report did not arrive at the time I chose

Times are in ET - check the difference against your own time zone.
Confirm the alert is Active and not Paused on My Alerts.
Use Preview to send yourself a copy immediately and confirm delivery is working.

I was told I have reached my alert limit

Each plan allows a set number of alerts. Delete or pause an alert you no longer need, or contact support about your plan.

All unique features KB Article
How to create a watchlist (universe)- KB Article
See a use-case using the monitoring system here - KB Article

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