Well-configured alerts can be a powerful tool to keep you in the loop about any changes in your portfolio scoring, company scoring, or specific financial metrics of a company. In this article, we're going to cover alerts for different metrics of a company.
Why do you need an alert?
But first, why use an alert system? Well, everything changes. Companies that were good a few years ago may not be good today. Stocks that were expensive a few weeks ago could be a bargain now. The price target that was revised up for months may have collapsed yesterday. To be a successful investor, it's necessary to keep tabs on all of these developments and react accordingly.
Unfortunately, trying to keep track of changes in dozens of financial indicators for hundreds (if not thousands) of different stocks can be overwhelming, to say the least. This is where our algorithms come in. They monitor the market daily and will alert you in case something bad (or good) happens to your company.
Now, let's see how to set up these alerts.
Creating the first alert for a company
From the Monitoring top menu, select Alerts and click the New Alert button. Then switch the alert type to Company Metric. You'll see this screen:
These are the key pieces of information you'll need to set up an alert for a company's metric:
- Type of the metric you want to monitor
- Ticker or name of the company you want to set an alert for
- The specific financial metric you want to monitor
- The type of logical operator you want to use (e.g., value of the metric higher/equal to or lower/equal to)
- The value (threshold) that the metric should cross to trigger the alert.
The filled form may look like this:
Now, simply click the Add New Alert button to save the alert. From now on, we'll send you an email notification when Apple's upside crosses the 25% threshold, so you'll never miss a buying opportunity.
Alternatively, if you already have the stock, you can set up a similar alert like this:
This alert will let you know when the upside for Apple drops below the 5% threshold, which could be a sign that it's time to sell the stock.
How to know what to type in the Value field?
So far, so good! But how do you know what value to set in the "Value" field when creating an alert? That's a great question. Check out the video below for a practical answer.
In summary, you should always check the specific readings for a particular company. For example, what does a high or low upside mean for Apple? In that case, a 5-25% threshold may make sense. However, for Tesla, that threshold may not be appropriate since its upside often oscillates in the -20% to +40% range.
Watch this short video to understand better not only how to set up alerts for a specific company's metric but also how to choose the right values for each important indicator.