Understanding Argus Alerts: How to Read the Momentum Scanner
Argus is StockTitan’s momentum scanner for finding stocks making significant price moves or trading on unusual volume. This guide explains the strategy badges, alert counts, colors and volume columns. Scanner delivery is real time for Gold and Platinum, delayed by 1 minute for Silver and 15 minutes for free users. These alerts report market activity and do not provide trading advice.
Table of Contents
- Start With One Stock's Day
- Why an Alert Fires
- Reading a Row: Three Separate Signals
- Sessions and How They Reset
- Today Alerts vs Session Alerts
- Rel.Vol M vs 5-Minute RVOL
- How Rows Are Ordered
- Using Filters to Read Where a Stock Is in Its Move
- A Few Things This Does Not Mean
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Sources and Related Pages
Start With One Stock's Day
This hypothetical example follows a stock producing New High alerts in premarket and regular hours. It illustrates the counters and colors; other stocks can alert through Rapid Move or Volume Spike without meeting the 4% New High / New Low threshold.
| When | What the row shows | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Premarket, around 5:00 a.m. ET (first alert) | new (blue) | The stock just cleared 4% and made its first alert of the day. "new" means the counter is at 1, and the symbol is blue because every alert so far is in the current (premarket) session. |
| Premarket, by about 5:55 a.m. | x14 (blue) | It has produced 14 New High alerts, all in premarket, so it stays blue. The latest alerted price becomes the level a further New High alert must exceed. |
| Regular open, 9:30 a.m. | No new alert just because the clock changed | The session counter resets behind the scenes. The day’s total and the earlier alerted high do not reset. |
| Regular hours, first qualifying move above the earlier alerted high | new (x25) (white) | "new" is the session counter (first alert of the regular session). "(x25)" is the day counter (25th alert today). The symbol is now white because the stock already alerted in an earlier session. |
| Later in regular hours | x3 (x27) (white) | More new highs. The session counter climbs from its reset while the day counter keeps going up. |
The same row passed through three states, blue "new", blue "x14", and white "new (x25)", with nothing going wrong at any point. The rest of this guide explains why.
Why an Alert Fires
New High / New Low uses a move of at least 4% from the active reference close and progress beyond earlier alerted prices. Rapid Move looks for at least 5% within roughly five minutes. Volume Spike compares trading activity with the stock’s own history. The strategies run independently, with their own liquidity and repeat-alert checks.
New High / New Low uses the previous trading day’s close during premarket and regular hours, then today’s regular-session close during after-hours. Earlier alerted prices carry across session boundaries until the new trading day. The label tracks progress beyond those alerted prices and does not certify the highest or lowest trade of the entire day.
For Rapid Move, an ordinary window between observed prices needs at least $5,000 of estimated traded value. An eligible window starting from a close reference instead needs at least 50,000 shares traded that day. Volume Spike normally compares an aligned five-minute window with historical windows at the same time of day using a z-score. If that comparison lacks enough history, its fallback checks cumulative volume against the 20-day average full-day volume, starting at 3 times that average. Other liquidity and repeat-alert checks still apply.
Reading a Row: Three Separate Signals
Three parts of a row answer three different questions. They are independent, which is exactly what trips people up.
The counts (session count and day count)
Argus can show two counts. The current-session count comes first. When a second number appears in parentheses, that is the total for the whole day. So a blue x14 means the session count and the day count are the same, because all 14 alerts happened in the current session. A white x3 (x27) means 3 alerts in the current session and 27 for the day. The day total keeps climbing all day, while the session count resets at each boundary.
The word "new"
"new" appears in place of a number whenever a counter is sitting at one. On the day counter it means the first alert of the day. On the session counter it means the first alert of the current session. That is why you can see "new" next to a high day number, like "new (x25)", right after a session resets.
The color (blue or white)
Blue means every alert the stock has had today happened inside the current session. White means it also alerted in an earlier session today. Blue is not "first alert": a blue "x14" is fourteen alerts that all happened in the current session.
Sessions and How They Reset
Argus runs across three sessions: premarket (4:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. ET), regular hours (9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET), and after-hours (4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET). At each boundary the session counter resets, while the day count and earlier alerted prices carry through to the new trading day. Our guide to pre-market and after-hours trading explains the early and late sessions.
Today Alerts vs Session Alerts
Both filters count alerts, over different windows. Today Alerts is the running total for the whole day. Session Alerts is the count within the current session only, which resets at each boundary. The same stock can show a high Today number and a low Session number at the same moment, right after a reset. A low Session Alerts range focuses on what is fresh in the session you are watching, while Today Alerts shows how active a stock has been across the whole day.
Rel.Vol M vs 5-Minute RVOL
The volume columns use different baselines, so their ratios can move in different directions.
- Rel.Vol M divides today’s cumulative shares by the median cumulative volume at the same Eastern Time minute over the 20-session profile. When that baseline is unavailable, it uses the 20-day average full-day volume.
- RVol (W) uses the corresponding 5-session profile, with the 5-day average full-day volume as its fallback.
- 5-minute RVOL normally divides the measured window’s shares by the 20-day average daily volume divided by 78. This represents an average five minutes of a 390-minute regular session, without a time-of-day adjustment.
- Volume Spike rows from the time-of-day test replace that five-minute cell with the alert window’s volume divided by its historical same-time median. Its tooltip also gives the z-score used by the test. A displayed ratio alone does not determine whether an alert fires.
Volume counts shares traded; it does not count distinct traders. Price-range measures such as Average True Range (ATR) answer a different question about how far prices move.
How Rows Are Ordered
The Top Gainers and Top Losers lists are ordered purely by the size of the percentage move. The live alert feed is ordered by time, newest at the top. Filters decide which stocks qualify to appear, but they don't re-rank the list.
Using Filters to Read Where a Stock Is in Its Move
This section describes what each filter includes or excludes. It is not a recommendation to trade or a suggested combination of settings.
- Price limits the view to a price band.
- Float, with a ceiling, keeps the view to smaller-float names.
- Relative volume shows when volume is unusual for that stock.
- A low Today Alerts range shows names that have alerted only a few times so far.
The first alert of the day can happen before the regular open. How quickly you see it depends on your data speed, but that doesn't make the alert predictive.
A Few Things This Does Not Mean
- "new" does not mean first alert today when there is a second number in parentheses beside it. It means first alert of the current session.
- White does not mean stale or low quality. It just means the stock already alerted in an earlier session today.
- A later alert needs its own context. Check the strategy, data delay and earlier alerts. A price move on a chart can fail the strategy’s liquidity or repeat-alert checks.
If a row ever looks confusing, come back to the three signals: the count is how many, "new" is whichever counter is at one, and the color is whether the whole day's run has stayed in a single session. Together they tell the full story of where a stock is in its move.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "new" mean on an Argus alert?
"new" means a counter is sitting at one. On the day counter it is the first alert of the day; on the session counter it is the first alert of the current session. That is why "new (x25)" can appear right after a session resets: first alert of the new session, 25th alert of the day.
Why is a symbol blue on one alert and white on another?
Blue means every alert the stock has had today happened inside the current session. White means it also alerted in an earlier session today. Blue is not "first alert", and white does not mean stale.
Why did an alert seem to fire late?
Check the Strategy badge and your data delay first. New High / New Low requires progress beyond an earlier alerted price, including prices alerted in an earlier session. Rapid Move and Volume Spike use their own window and history checks. Liquidity requirements and repeat-alert controls can also prevent a new row while the same move continues.
What is the difference between Today Alerts and Session Alerts?
Today Alerts is the running total for the whole day. Session Alerts counts only the current session and resets at each boundary. Right after a reset, the same stock can show a high Today number and a low Session number at once.
What is the difference between Rel.Vol M and 5-minute RVOL?
Rel.Vol M uses cumulative volume against a same-time median from the 20-session profile, with a 20-day full-day-average fallback. The ordinary five-minute ratio uses the 20-day average daily volume divided by 78. On time-of-day Volume Spike rows, the five-minute cell instead shows the alert window against its historical same-time median; check its tooltip for the trigger z-score.
Does an Argus alert predict that a stock will keep moving?
No. An alert reports that a stock met the conditions of its named strategy. Argus does not predict prices or recommend trades, and nothing in this guide is financial advice.
Sources and Related Pages
This guide documents the live behavior of StockTitan's Argus momentum scanner: the alert thresholds, counters, colors, session boundaries (all times U.S. Eastern), and filters as they appear in the product.
- StockTitan Momentum Scanner (Argus): the live alert feed described in this guide.
- Pre-Market and After-Hours Trading: how the early and late sessions behave.
- Average True Range (ATR): reading volatility, which relates to how far a stock moves between alerts.
Disclaimer: This guide is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial or investment advice. Argus shows current and historical market data to help you spot activity; it does not predict prices or recommend trades. Always conduct your own research before making trading decisions.
The information provided in this article is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice, investment recommendation, or an endorsement of any particular investment strategy. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Investors should conduct their own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.