Agents and their triggers
An agent is a standing job: one rule, checked for you on a schedule, an event or a price. The ten templates and exactly when each one reports.
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An agent is a rule you set up once. It is checked at most once per market day and the result is written down. It has one mode: tell me. An agent never places a trade and cannot be given permission to.
What an agent is made of
- A trigger: what wakes it. A schedule, an event or a price rule.
- A scope: which names it looks at. Everything you track when it runs, a fixed list of up to 25 tickers, or any name at all for filings and disclosures.
- A name, so you can tell them apart in the run log.
Schedule triggers
| Template | Reports |
|---|---|
| Morning check | Every market day: which of your names moved 3% or more, which report earnings soon and who disclosed a trade in them. |
| Weekly review | Once a week on a weekday you choose: the same for the week, with a 5% threshold for moves. |
Event triggers
| Template | Reports when |
|---|---|
| A fund files a 13F | A fund we follow files, and whether the filing touched your names. |
| Congress discloses a trade | A House member discloses a trade in one of your names. Dated by the disclosure, which is when anyone could have known. |
| An insider trades | An officer or director reports an open-market buy or sale in one of your names. |
| Earnings are coming | One of your names reports within the number of days you set. |
| One of my names is a mover | One of your names is on the day's list of unusual movers, with the reason if we found one. |
Price triggers
| Template | Reports when |
|---|---|
| Crosses a level | A stock closes above or below a price you choose, having been on the other side at the previous close. |
| Moves a lot in a day | One of your names closes up or down more than a percent you set. |
| Drops into its add zone | One of your names closes at or below the add level from its current call. |
How a check works
- Each agent is evaluated once per market day. Running it twice in a day changes nothing.
- Checks do not run at a fixed clock time yet. Each line in the run log shows when it ran.
- A check only reads facts dated on or before the day it is checking.
- Price rules use daily closes. A level touched during the day and lost by the close does not count.
- Event rules look at everything since the agent's last check, so a filing made over a weekend is picked up on Monday.
- A run reports at most eight findings, the most relevant first.
The four-week replay
Before you start an agent we run it over the last four weeks of sessions and show you what it would have reported each day. Each replayed day sees only what was dated on or before it. The replay tells you whether the rule is too noisy or too quiet before you live with it.
- It is a replay, not a record. Nothing was sent.
- It uses the names you track today, not your list as it was four weeks ago.
- The add-zone rule is replayed against today's add level, because we do not keep past levels.
- Earnings dates are the ones on the calendar today. A date that moved shows where it ended up.
Read next
- The run logEvery check an agent makes is written down with its decision, what it looked at and where each finding came from.
- Why "did nothing" is a resultAn agent that only speaks when something happens cannot be told apart from one that is broken. So every check is recorded, and not knowing is kept separate from nothing happening.
- AlertsAlerts arrive by email. The kinds of alert, when each one fires, and what Free includes.
Something here wrong or unclear? Tell us. Informational only, not investment advice.