What should I look for during the premarket for these explosive plays and during normal trading hours? What screener tool should I use to find them?
Converging triangle - neither up nor down diverging triangle - could be up or / and down ascending triangle - higher probability of going up descending triangle - higher probability of going down crooked triangle - neither up nor down / could be up or / and down Just use your eyes to analyze the charts. Is Futures premarket analysis necessary ? It depends / Yes and No.
It's more about pattern recognition than numbers or statistics so I guess there is no screener for that purpose, you should browse charts and look for patterns on your own.
%% FLAGS+ flagpoles are much more common; mainly because every candle or bar has a pole and or tail .Here is a pole pattern with a PSAR dot under it Most use eyes, lots of work , without sun glasses . Some flags have triangles,[or rectangles, more common] i use moving averages + grids+ discretion more myself. I usually get a telephone quote on bid\ ask premarket ; but i have3:00 CST closing price -chart., trading notebook.... barchart.com has some good delayed data; like Premarket closed now but SPY premarket down-{-.49%]+ ''prev'' is yesterdays 3:00 CST close,SPY. SPXS premarket up + 1.5%, so that tells me thieir data is about right. I almost never trade premarket, but good hints, volume leaders sometimes-[3;25 post market, now,CST]
%% Av vol on SPY is about 70,000,000per day; premarket SPY volume today about1,200,000 Personally I would not want to be drawing triangles today or on any day, but that's me
Simple in retrospect and basic scientific method. 1) Find an instance that you deem "explosive" 2) Note all factors in the patterns or triangles, or whatever. 3) Find another instance and compare the notable factors-patterns. 4) Eliminate, refine, weight your factors. 5) Repeat until you have a usable set you can rely upon. Then try to code that into a screener script. You just have to look at a few dozen to get a feel for them. N.B. Often the reason of the "explosion" has nothing to do with technical patterns. In fact they are often the "tail of the dog". Often macro factors, news, or events are the reason. Any large trader uses dark pools, algos etc. to hide accumulation-distribution, from creating a technical pattern as long a possible.
%% Good . And keep in mind a bear, a bison, a turtle will not really pay much attention to a dog. Of course a big pack of dogs can trail + tree a bear ; and within 50 feet know which way the bear is running, The bear dog nose nose is that good 77,000,000 average SPY volume in FEB; or 70,000,000 50dma SEPT volume can be a clue sometimes Premarket SPY 1,000,000 volume maybe not a clue @ all. Not sure why this symbol has triangle pattern around it??