Frequently asked questions

Alertfolio watches the US stock market all day and keeps four boards: the best buy and exit setups right now, dated events and news catalysts such as FDA decisions and earnings, stocks trading on unusual volume, and heavily shorted names starting to squeeze.

Every name on a board carries the reason it made the list and the prices that matter, so you can judge the setup rather than take it on trust.

Swing traders holding positions for days to weeks who want a ranked shortlist with the levels and the reasoning stated on the page. It also suits longer-term investors who want early warning when a name they follow starts moving.

It is not built for high-frequency or sub-minute day trading: the scans refresh on a minutes-scale cadence, not tick by tick.

No on both counts. Alertfolio is research and information software. It never places, routes or manages a trade, it holds no client money, and nothing on the site is a personal recommendation.

Every decision, position size and risk choice is yours. See the disclaimer for the full statement.

No. The market read, guides, ticker analysis pages, the catalyst and runner boards and all tracked results are open to anyone. An account is only needed for alert delivery and saved watchlists.

The site is built mobile-first and can be installed to your home screen from the browser share menu, where it opens full-screen like an app. Alerts arrive on Telegram, Discord or email, so you get pushed the moment something triggers without keeping the site open.

The strongest buy and exit setups the scanners can find on the day, ranked by score. Each pick shows the drivers behind it — trend, momentum, volume, short pressure, catalyst proximity — plus the three prices that define the trade.

Dated and breaking events that move stocks: FDA decision dates (PDUFA), earnings, economic releases, analyst actions, deal chatter and hard SEC filings. Items are scored on likely impact and how soon they land, and you can stack sorts to focus on, say, bullish analyst upgrades landing this week.

Stocks trading far above their normal volume for the time of day. Unusual volume is often the first visible sign that something has changed before the reason is public, so the board surfaces the move and, where we can identify it, the news behind it.

Heavily shorted names showing the conditions that precede a short squeeze: high short interest, high days-to-cover, tightening float and price pressing on resistance. Each name gets a squeeze score so you can see how much of the setup is actually present.

Scores combine measurable inputs — trend and momentum indicators, relative volume, short interest and days to cover, distance from key levels, and catalyst timing — into a single 0-100 number. Higher means more of the setup's conditions are met at once.

A score is a ranking aid, not a probability of profit. Two names with the same score can behave very differently.

The trigger is the level that says the setup is on. The invalidation is the level that says it is over. The target is what the setup is aiming for. Cross any of them and, if you have alerts on, we tell you immediately.

US-listed common stocks and ETFs on NYSE, Nasdaq and AMEX with enough liquidity to be tradable, including small caps above a minimum price. Illiquid sub-penny names, most OTC tickers and very thin listings are excluded because their prices are too unreliable to alert on.

No. Alertfolio covers US equities and ETFs only. Where options activity informs an equity setup it may appear as a driver, but options themselves are not scanned or alerted on.

Prices update through pre-market, regular and after-hours sessions. Squeeze and runner scans run every five minutes; catalysts and dated events refresh several times a day; the FDA calendar refreshes twice daily.

Scanners stand down on weekends and US market holidays, so boards will hold their last trading-day state rather than showing a fake refresh.

Prices are live market data on a short delay, not exchange-direct real-time ticks. They are accurate enough to judge and monitor a swing setup, but you should always confirm the current price with your broker before acting.

Prices and fundamentals come from public market data feeds; short interest and days-to-cover from exchange and FINRA reporting; filings from SEC EDGAR; FDA decision dates from published regulatory calendars; economic dates from official calendars.

Short interest is reported on a lag by the exchanges themselves — typically twice a month — so it is the freshest figure that exists, not a live number.

Either the market is closed, or nothing cleared the bar. We would rather show an honest empty board than pad it with weak names. On weekends and holidays the scanners stand down by design.

Treat your broker as the source of truth for anything you act on. Differences usually come from feed timing, extended-hours handling, or a metric like short interest being reported on a lag. If something looks plainly wrong rather than slightly different, send it through the feedback form and we will check the pipeline.

Yes. The written explanations next to each pick are generated from the measured data behind that pick, so the narrative follows the numbers rather than inventing them. The numbers, levels and scores themselves are computed, not written by a model.

Language models can still phrase things imprecisely. Where the wording and the data disagree, the data is what counts.

Telegram, Discord, email and in-app. You can run several at once and choose which alert types go to each.

A setup crossing one of its three prices — trigger, invalidation or target — plus new picks, volume runners breaking out, and scored catalyst events. Higher-scoring catalysts are pushed to your channels; mid-scoring ones stay quiet in the app so the loud channel stays meaningful.

The dispatcher runs every five minutes, so an alert typically reaches you within a few minutes of the level being crossed. It is not a millisecond trigger and should not be used as one.

No. Alerts are deduplicated per name and per episode, quiet-tiered by score, and capped per run, so a single stock cannot spam you as it oscillates around a level. You can also switch individual alert types off on the alerts page.

Open the alerts page, pick your channel and follow the short connect flow — Telegram links through a bot, Discord through a channel invite. Email needs only a confirmed address.

Yes. Pre-market and after-hours moves are covered, and hard filings and major news can trigger overnight. Scanners stand down on weekends and US market holidays.

Turn off individual types on the alerts page, or unsubscribe entirely from any email footer or by disconnecting the channel. There is no retention flow — off means off, immediately.

Yes. Every pick is followed to a conclusion and published on the results page, including the ones that failed. Outcomes are recorded from the levels stated at the time, not adjusted afterwards.

A pick resolves when it hits its target, hits its invalidation, or runs past its follow-up window without doing either. Target hits take priority over stops when both are touched in the same window, and the recorded exit is the level, not the extreme of the move.

No. Published outcomes describe what happened on those names in those conditions. They are there for transparency and to let you judge the scanner's behaviour, not as an expected return.

Only for alert delivery, saved preferences and your watchlist. Browsing the boards, the analysis pages and the tracked results needs nothing at all.

By email — we send a one-time link, so there is no password to remember or lose.

Turn off any alert type on the alerts page, send /stop to the Telegram bot, or use the unsubscribe link at the foot of any email.

Ask through the feedback page and your account, alert subscriptions and stored preferences are removed. The privacy page sets out what is stored and for how long.

Read the reasoning first, then decide whether the trigger level makes sense for you. Confirm the live price with your broker, size the position against the distance to invalidation rather than the target, and let the alerts do the watching.

Because that is a normal outcome. A trigger says the conditions for a setup are present, not that the move will follow through. The invalidation level exists precisely for this case, and failures are published alongside the wins.

Yes — use the feedback button on any page. Coverage requests for tickers inside the liquidity rules are usually straightforward; feature requests get read and prioritised.

Send it through the feedback form with the page and the ticker if there is one. Data pipeline issues are monitored continuously, but a specific example is the fastest route to a fix.