How to speed up watchlist and screener plug-ins when working with intraday data

When the watchlist or screen tool analyzes your stocks or securities, most of the time is spent in calculating the formula and indicators. The higher the number of quotes/bars, the longer the analysis will take. The idea is to decrease the number of bars to load for each stock or security.

Steps:

- Select "Accounts" then "Intraday Settings".
- In the "Watchlist/Screener" panel, decrease the number of days worth of data to load.

Usually, it is not necessary to set a high number of days. It all depends on the time frames and the formulas you are using.

Example:
Using 1 hour timeframe and the following formula: filter = close > sma(30);

The simple moving average of the above formula requires 31 bars; this means that it needs data for at least the last 31 hours. In this case, a value of two in day’s field seems to be the right choice. However, because you are probably using several different formulas, a higher value is preferable (default value is 20).

If you are only using periods lower than one hour then it is safe to decrease this value a little bit (maybe to 15 or 10).