What Does TradingBot Do?

TradingBot is like a research assistant that watches the stock market for you around the clock. It scans dozens of stocks using 11 different analysis methods, scores each opportunity, and tells you whether to consider buying or selling — along with exact price targets and where to cut your loss if it goes wrong.

It runs on three schedules:

• Pre-Market (8:00–9:30 AM EDT) — Scans stocks before the market opens. Every 10 minutes from 8 AM, then every 2 minutes in the final stretch before 9:30. Looks for stocks with big overnight gaps and high early volume.
• Market Hours (9:30 AM–4:00 PM EDT, Mon–Fri) — Full scan every 15 minutes. Runs all 11 strategies across a 28-symbol watchlist plus up to 15 extra stocks it discovers each scan.
• After Hours & Weekends — Crypto-only scan every hour, 24/7 (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, BONK, WIF).

The Status Bar (Top of Every Page)

The thin bar across the very top of the dashboard gives you real-time awareness at a glance:

• Green dot = LIVE / Red dot = OFFLINE — Green means the scanner ran recently and data is fresh. Red means no scan has completed in a while — something may be wrong on the server.
• Last Scan time — When the most recent scan finished. If this is more than 20 minutes old during market hours, something may need attention.
• Today P&L tracker — Shows your running gain or loss for today based on trades you've logged in the Journal. The bar fills up as you approach your daily loss limit. When it hits 100%, the dashboard locks with a stop signal.
• SAC2024 / Standard toggle — Switch between two modes: Standard (all signals) or SAC2024 (filtered for small accounts). See the SAC2024 section below.
• ⚙ Settings button — Set your account balance, daily loss limit, and consecutive loss limit. These numbers power the P&L tracker and position sizing calculations.
• 🔔 Notifications button — Enable browser push alerts. Once on, your browser will pop a notification when a high-confidence signal arrives — even if you're on another tab.

Market Pulse Strip

The row of tickers just below the navigation shows live prices for major market ETFs — SPY (S&P 500), QQQ (Nasdaq), IWM (small caps), and key sector funds. This strip is visible on every tab so you always know whether the overall market is up or down before acting on any signal.

Example: If the bot sends a BUY signal on a tech stock but QQQ is down 2% on the day, that's a headwind worth knowing about. The market pulse lets you make that call without switching screens.

🌅 Morning Briefing Tab

Your pre-market command center. Open this tab before 9:30 AM to prepare for the trading day.

• Pre-Market Checklist — 7 items to check off before placing any trade. It's not just decoration — trading without a plan is one of the fastest ways to blow up a small account. The checklist forces a pause. When all 7 are checked, it clears green.
• Top SAC2024 Candidates Today — Stocks the pre-market scanner has already flagged as meeting the small-account criteria (price, float, volume, gap). These are the setups worth watching closest to open.
• Today's Economic Events — Major news events scheduled for today (Fed announcements, jobs reports, CPI). These can cause wild swings that make normal signals unreliable. The bot notes them here as a reminder.
• Market Summary — A quick read on where major indices are sitting pre-market.
• Your Trading Status — Shows your account size, 2% max risk per trade, daily loss limit, and current mode — all pulled from your Settings. If "Account" shows "Not Set," go to ⚙ Settings first.

📡 Live Signals Tab

This is the main screen — every trade idea the bot has generated in the most recent scan, sorted from highest to lowest confidence.

How to read a signal card:

• BUY / SELL badge — BUY means the bot thinks the price is going up. SELL means it thinks the price is going down (this is a short-sell idea — only relevant if your broker supports shorting).
• Signal score (50–100) — How strongly the pattern registered, not a probability. This used to read "Confidence %", which invited exactly the weather-forecast reading — 90% meaning nine times out of ten. It does not mean that, and the bot's own history says so: signals scoring 80–90 have averaged slightly worse than signals scoring under 70. The scales are not even comparable between strategies (a typical Bollinger Bands reading scores 94, a typical SMA Crossover reading 55), so a higher number is not automatically the better trade. Treat it as "how loudly this pattern fired", and read the reward/risk line and the strategy's own record beside it.
• Reward / risk — The distance to the target divided by the distance to the stop. 1.33:1 means you are risking $1 to make $1.33, so you need to be right more than 43% of the time just to break even. Higher is not automatically better: the bot's best-performing pocket historically sits between 1.5:1 and 2:1, and setups above 3:1 did worse, because a target that far away is rarely reached.
• Entry — The price the stock was at when the signal was generated. This is your reference point, not a guaranteed fill price.
• Target — The price the bot expects the stock could reach. This is where you'd consider taking profit. Example: Entry $10.00 → Target $11.50 = a potential 15% gain.
• Stop Loss — The price at which you should exit if the trade goes against you to limit your loss. Example: Entry $10.00 → Stop $9.20 = you're risking $0.80 per share max. Never ignore the stop loss.
• Strategy — Which of the 11 analysis methods triggered this signal.
• Reasoning — A one-line explanation of why the bot flagged this. Example: "RSI at 24.3 — deeply oversold. Price 18% below 20-day average."

Plain English toggle — Switch on "Plain English" to replace the technical reasoning with a conversational explanation. Example: Instead of "RSI 24.3, -2σ Bollinger" it says "This stock has been sold off hard and is likely overdue for a bounce." Great for learning while you trade.

Filters — Narrow down signals by direction (BUY/SELL), specific ticker, or strategy. Useful when you only want to see, for example, all BUY signals on stocks you already own.

📈 SAC2024 Tab — Small Account Scanner

SAC2024 is a day trading strategy built specifically for small accounts — typically under $2,000. Most beginner traders blow up their accounts chasing expensive stocks with huge spreads. SAC2024 solves this by only showing stocks where a small account can actually participate.

Every signal shown here must pass all five criteria simultaneously:

• Price $1–$20 — Cheap enough that you can buy meaningful shares without needing thousands of dollars. A $5 stock at 100 shares = $500 at risk. A $300 stock at 100 shares = $30,000.
• Float under 20 million shares — "Float" is the number of shares available for public trading. A small float means there aren't many shares to go around — when buyers show up, the price can move fast. Example: Apple has 15 billion shares floating. SBET might have 8 million. Less supply + same demand = bigger price swings.
• Relative Volume ≥ 5x — The stock is trading at least 5 times its average daily volume. This means something unusual is happening today. Example: If SBET normally trades 200,000 shares a day and today it's already at 2 million by 10 AM — that's 10x relative volume. Big money is moving.
• News catalyst — There's a reason for the move — earnings, FDA approval, partnership announcement, short squeeze. A stock moving on no news is random noise. A stock moving on real news has a story behind it.
• Pre-market gap ≥ 10% — The stock opened at least 10% higher (or lower) than it closed yesterday. Gap-and-go is a well-known day trading pattern where gapping stocks often continue their move after open.

The SAC2024 tab shows you only the signals that meet all five. Each card also shows the gap %, float size, and relative volume so you can see exactly why it qualified.

The 11 Strategies

The bot runs every stock through 11 independent analysis methods each scan. Think of each strategy as a different expert giving their opinion on the same stock — when multiple experts agree, the bot combines them into a single higher-confidence signal.

How Signal Scoring Works

Every signal starts with a base score based on how strong the pattern is, then gets adjusted through 6 layers before you see it. Worth saying plainly before the list: this produces a score, not a probability. Nothing in the arithmetic below is calibrated against how often the signals actually work, which is why the field is no longer labelled with a percent sign.

• ① Base Score (50–95%) — How extreme the pattern is. A stock barely oversold (RSI 29) scores lower than one deeply oversold (RSI 15). Example: RSI at 29 might score 55%. RSI at 12 might score 80%.
• ② Confluence Boost (+5% per agreeing strategy, max +15%) — When multiple strategies agree on the same stock and direction, the bot merges them into one signal and boosts confidence. Example: RSI says oversold AND MACD confirms momentum AND Volume Spike confirms interest → one merged signal at much higher confidence than any alone.
• ③ Sector Check (±3%) — Is the overall sector moving in the same direction as the signal? A BUY on a tech stock is stronger when QQQ (Nasdaq) is also up. A BUY signal fighting a sector downturn gets penalized.
• ④ Adaptive Weight (×0.7 to ×1.3) — Strategies with strong recent win rates get a confidence multiplier boost. Strategies that have been wrong lately get penalized. See HOT & COLD below.
• ⑤ Earnings Penalty (−5%) — If a company reports earnings within 2 days, the score drops. Earnings create unpredictable volatility that can override any technical pattern. Note this adjustment is scoped to the stock. For options there is a separate and much harder rule: if an earnings date falls anywhere inside the contract's life, no contract is suggested at all. Buying a call or put across an earnings print means paying inflated pre-event premium and handing it back the moment the result is known — you can be right about the direction and still lose.
• ⑥ Time of Day (−5% at open, +3% at close) — The first 30 minutes of trading are the most chaotic. Signals generated right at 9:30 AM get penalized for the extra noise. Signals in the final 30 minutes (power hour, 3:30–4 PM) get a boost — this is when institutional trading pushes volume and trends.

Only signals that score 50%+ after all adjustments are shown on the dashboard. The rest are filtered out as noise.

Strategy Leaderboard — 🔥 HOT & ❄️ COLD

On the Performance tab, every strategy gets a badge based on its win rate over the last 30 days:

• 🔥 HOT — Win rate ≥60%. The bot automatically boosts signals from this strategy by up to 1.3×. Example: Options Flow is 🔥 HOT this month. Its signals get scored 30% higher than normal because they've been right more often than not lately.
• ❄️ COLD — Win rate <40%. Signals from this strategy are penalized down to 0.7× confidence. Example: Social Sentiment is ❄️ COLD — maybe the meme stock craze has died down. Its signals score 30% lower until it proves itself again.
• NEUTRAL — Fewer than 10 graded signals. Not enough data yet — treated as unweighted (1.0×). New strategies start here.

The scoring formula is: 60% win rate + 40% average return. You don't have to do anything — the bot self-adjusts every scan based on what's actually been working in the market right now.

How Signals Are Graded (WIN / LOSS / STOPPED)

Every signal is automatically tracked after it's generated. The bot checks back after a set time window to see what happened:

• WIN — Price reached the target before hitting the stop loss.
• LOSS — Price hit the stop loss, or the window expired and the stock never moved enough to win.
• STOPPED OUT — Price moved in the right direction (50%+ toward the target), then reversed. The trailing stop kicked in and exited at breakeven — protecting you from giving back the gain.
• PENDING — The window hasn't expired yet. The signal is still playing out.

Evaluation windows by strategy type:

• 3-day window — Momentum, Volume Spike, Sentiment. Short-term moves — if it doesn't work in 3 days, it's stale.
• 5-day window — Technical signals (SMA, RSI, MACD, Bollinger, Options). One trading week to play out.
• 10-day window — Fundamental & Alternative (Earnings, Congressional, Insider). Big-picture moves take longer.

Trailing stop: Once price gets halfway to the target, the stop loss moves to your entry price (breakeven). You can no longer lose money on that trade — the worst case becomes a scratch. Example: Entry $10 → Target $12 → Stop $9. Price reaches $11 (halfway). Stop automatically moves to $10. Now you can't lose.

MFE (Max Favorable Excursion): Even on losing signals, the bot tracks how close the price got to the target. Example: A signal had a $12 target. Price hit $11.80 then reversed and stopped out at $10. MFE = 90%. The idea was almost right — useful data for improving the system.

📊 Performance Tab

The report card for the bot. This tab shows you how well each strategy has been performing over a selected time period (7, 14, 30, or 90 days).

• Evaluated — Total number of signals that have been graded (not PENDING).
• Win Rate — The percentage of evaluated signals that were WINs. Example: 65% win rate means 65 out of every 100 signals hit their target. A win rate above 50% is generally good; above 60% is strong.
• Avg Return — The average percentage gain on winning trades. Example: +8.2% avg return means winning trades gained 8.2% on average.
• Best Strategy — The single strategy with the highest win rate in the selected period.
• Strategy Leaderboard — All 11 strategies ranked by win rate, with their HOT/COLD badge, total signals, and average return. Use this to decide which signals deserve more attention today.
• Recent Signal Outcomes — A filterable table of all evaluated signals. Search by symbol, action (BUY/SELL), strategy, or result (WIN/LOSS/STOPPED/PENDING). Signals showing as PENDING here are still waiting on their evaluation window.

The SAC2024 Loss Rule — $100 Daily Limit

The single most important rule in SAC2024 trading: stop trading the moment you lose $100 in a day.

Why $100? On a small account (under $2,000), losing $100 is already 5–10% of your capital in a single day. The goal with a small account is to survive long enough to grow. You cannot grow if you blow up.

The dashboard enforces this automatically:

• As you log losses in the Trade Journal, the P&L bar at the top fills up.
• When your losses hit the limit you set in Settings, a red "STOP Trading" overlay locks the entire dashboard.
• You must click "I acknowledge — Done for today" to dismiss it. This is intentional friction — it forces you to consciously decide to stop, not just close a pop-up.

The 2% Rule — Position Sizing

Never risk more than 2% of your account on a single trade. This is a universal risk management rule used by professional traders.

How it works in practice:

• Set your account balance in ⚙ Settings. Example: $949
• 2% of $949 = $18.98 max risk per trade
• The signal shows Entry $5.00, Stop Loss $4.50 → that's a $0.50 risk per share
• $18.98 ÷ $0.50 = 37 shares max

When SAC2024 mode is ON, each signal card shows this calculation automatically based on your account size and the signal's entry/stop spread. You never have to do the math manually.

📓 Trade Journal Tab

A personal trade log saved in your browser — no account needed, no data sent anywhere. Every trade you take should be logged here, win or lose.

• Log a Trade — Fill in the ticker, entry price, exit price, number of shares, and result. Your P&L is calculated automatically.
• Emotion tag — Rate how you felt during the trade: Calm, Confident, Anxious, FOMO, Revenge Trading, or Bored. This isn't optional fluff. Studies consistently show that emotional trades underperform disciplined ones. Logging your emotion lets you spot patterns — like "every time I'm in FOMO mode, I lose."
• Signal Followed? — Did you take this trade because the bot recommended it, or did you go off-script? Tracking this helps you compare your gut-feel trades vs. bot-recommended trades over time.
• Notes — Post-trade analysis. What went right? What would you do differently? Even one sentence builds valuable self-knowledge over time.
• Journal Analytics — Automatically calculates your total trades, win rate, total P&L, and risk-to-reward ratio across all logged trades.
• Export CSV — Download everything to a spreadsheet for deeper analysis or tax records.

👁 Watchlist Tab

Shows every symbol the bot is currently scanning, split into two groups:

• Fixed Watchlist (28 symbols) — The permanent list scanned every single run: major stocks, ETFs, and crypto. These never change unless the settings are updated. Includes equities (TSLA, AAPL, NVDA, etc.), sector ETFs (SPY, QQQ, IWM), and crypto (BTC via IBIT, ETH via ETHA, LTC, BONK, WIF).
• Discovered This Scan — Up to 15 extra stocks the dynamic screener found this run. These change every 15 minutes based on three methods: unusual volume (stocks trading 2x+ normal), social trending (top tickers on Stocktwits right now), and sector rotation (stocks in the hottest or coldest sector today). A stock might appear here today and be gone next scan.

Each card shows the current price and how many active signals exist for that ticker. Multiple signals on the same stock means several strategies are agreeing — that's worth paying closer attention to.

⚙ Settings

Open Settings by clicking the gear icon in the top-right corner. Three fields to configure:

• Trading Account Balance — Your actual current account value. Used to calculate the 2% rule on every signal card and to set your daily loss limit as a dollar amount. Update this as your balance changes.
• Daily Loss Limit — The maximum dollar amount you allow yourself to lose in one trading day. SAC2024 default is $100. When your logged losses hit this, the stop overlay fires. Set it to an amount that would genuinely hurt — not so low it's annoying, not so high it doesn't protect you.
• Consecutive Loss Limit — How many losses in a row before the overlay fires regardless of dollar amount. Default is 3. Three losses in a row often signals something is wrong — market conditions shifted, you're in a bad mental state, or the bot's signals aren't working in current conditions. Stop and reassess.

📋 Options — What the Contract Box Means

Some signal cards now carry an extra box suggesting an options contract. Options are substantially riskier than stock, and you can lose 100% of what you put in — something that essentially never happens holding a large-cap stock. Read this whole section before acting on one.

The two words you need

• Call — the right to buy 100 shares at a set price before a set date. You buy calls when you expect the stock to go up. The bot suggests a call on a BUY signal.
• Put — the right to sell 100 shares at a set price before a set date. You buy puts when you expect the stock to go down. The bot suggests a put on a SELL signal.

One contract always controls 100 shares. That's why a contract quoted at $9.72 actually costs $972.

Reading the box, line by line

• Strike — the price you'd be buying or selling at. $207.50 on a call means you can buy at $207.50 no matter how high the stock actually goes.
• Expiration / DTE — the deadline, and days remaining. After it, the contract is worthless. This is the hard part: you can be right about direction and still lose everything if the move arrives too late.
• Cost / Max Loss — identical numbers, and that's the point. When you buy an option, the most you can lose is exactly what you paid. There's no stop-loss protecting you below that — the loss is capped at 100%, and 100% is a real, routine outcome.
• Breakeven — where the stock must get to before you make a cent, because you paid premium up front. A call with a $217.22 breakeven on a $211.94 stock needs a +2.5% move just to get even. Always compare this to how far the signal's target actually is.
• Delta — roughly how much the option moves per $1 of stock move, and a decent proxy for the market's odds of it finishing profitable. 0.62 delta ≈ a 62% chance of expiring in the money. The bot targets ~0.60 as a balance between cost and probability.
• IV (implied volatility) — how much movement the market has already priced in. High IV means you're paying up. Above ~80% the bot flags it, because a stock can rise and your call can still lose value when IV drops afterward.
• Bid/Ask + spread % — what buyers offer versus what sellers want. A wide spread is a hidden cost you pay twice, entering and exiting. Always use a limit order near the mid, never a market order.
• Open Interest — how many contracts exist. Low numbers mean few buyers when you want out. The bot rejects anything under 50 and warns under 200.
• Affordable — how many you could buy within your options budget from Settings. Zero is a real answer, and usually the correct one.

Why it usually says you can't afford it

On a stock, a stop-loss caps your risk well below what you spend — buy $500 of stock with a stop 4% down and you're risking about $20. On a bought option there is no such stop: the entire premium is at risk. So the 2% rule translates directly into "2% of the account is the most premium I'll spend."

On a $949 account that's about $19 — and $19 doesn't buy a contract on a $200 stock. This is arithmetic, not a limitation of the bot. When it flags something as unaffordable it sometimes offers a cheaper strike instead, and labels it honestly: a 0.02-delta contract needing a +22.8% move is a lottery ticket, not a trade.

Before you place one on Fidelity

• You need options approval first — Fidelity requires an application, and buying calls and puts sits at the tier above covered calls. Apply before you need it, not during. Confirm the current tier structure on the application itself; Fidelity's own summary pages don't all use the same naming.
• Budget for commissions — Fidelity charges a per-contract fee (about $0.65) on each leg, each way. None of the breakeven or profit numbers on the signal card include it. On a small position that's a real percentage — check the total on the order preview.
• Verify the chain yourself. These quotes are delayed and can be stale, especially on thin strikes. Confirm the real bid/ask on Fidelity before entering — treat the bot as a screener, not a quote feed.
• Limit orders only, at or near the mid.
• Have an exit before you enter — a profit target and a time-based bail-out. "It still might come back" is how the whole premium goes to zero.
• Close before expiration week when you can. Time decay accelerates sharply at the end, and in-the-money contracts can be auto-exercised into a share position you didn't intend and may not be able to fund.