Get alerted on a ticker and screen its options

Put a price or swing alert on a stock and get the matching option contracts when it fires.

This guide sets up one alert from start to finish. When the stock reaches your level (or moves a set percentage in a day), MyTraderDash notifies you, runs your option screener templates on that stock, and sends you the contracts that match.

You need three things, in this order:

A screener template: the kind of option contract you are looking for.
A watchlist item for the stock, with an alert on it.
The template linked to that item.

Words used on this page

Term	Meaning
DTE	Days to expiration: how many days until the option expires.
Delta	How much the option moves for a $1 move in the stock: 0 to 1 for calls, 0 to −1 for puts.
Volume	Contracts traded today.
Open interest (OI)	Contracts open right now. More volume and OI usually means a tighter bid/ask.
IV	Implied volatility: the movement the option's price assumes. Shown, not filtered on.

Step 1: Create or pick a screener template

A new workspace comes with three templates: Wheel - Cash Secured Put, Wheel - Covered Call and LEAPS - Deep ITM. You can use one of these, change it, or make your own.

Open the Screener and click the Templates tab. You see Option Screener Templates with one card per template.
Click New Template (or the pencil icon on a card to edit one).

Fill in the fields:

Field	What it does
Name	Required, and unique: shown everywhere you pick the template.
Description	Optional note to yourself.
Option Type	Call or Put. A template looks at one type only.
Category	Wheel, LEAPS or Custom: a label only, results don't change.
Min DTE / Max DTE	Only expirations in this range. Empty Max DTE = no limit.
Min Delta / Max Delta	Only contracts whose delta is in this range.
Min Volume	Only contracts with at least this much volume today.
Min Open Interest	Only contracts with at least this much open interest.

Leave a field empty to not filter on it.

Click Create Template (or Save Changes). The card now shows your ranges, for example DTE: 30–45 and Delta: 0.2–0.3.

Put deltas are negative. For puts, type both delta values as negative numbers, the more negative one in Min Delta: for "0.20 to 0.35 delta" puts, enter Min Delta -0.35 and Max Delta -0.2. Positive numbers on a put template match nothing.

No premium filter. Templates filter on DTE, delta, volume and open interest only. The results show each contract's bid and ask so you can judge the premium yourself.

Try the template on a ticker first

On the Screener, click the Options tab.
Type a ticker (for example AAPL), pick the market (US or CA) and choose your template in the template menu.
Click Load Chain. A bar above the chain shows the template's rules and how many contracts match. Expiration tabs outside the DTE range are dimmed, and the chain shows only the matching contracts.
Click Show full chain to see every contract with the matches highlighted, or Matches only to go back.

If no contracts match, loosen the ranges in the template and try again. If a market shows soon, option chains for that market aren't available yet.

Step 2: Add the stock to a watchlist

Open Watchlists.
If you don't have a list yet, click New List, give it a Name and click Create Watchlist.
Click Add Item. The Add to Watchlist dialog opens.
Type the ticker in Ticker Symbols (several, separated by commas, all get the same settings). If the symbol trades in both the US and Canada, pick the Market; otherwise leave it on Auto.
Pick the Watchlist.
Leave Type on Stock (no option).

Keep the dialog open for the next step. If the stock is already on a list, open its row's ⋯ menu and choose Edit instead.

Alerts and screener runs work on stock items. Daily Swing % is not offered for option items, and alerts on option items are not checked today, so put the alert on the stock itself.

Step 3: Set the alert

Under Alerts, add one or more of these with the buttons:

Button	Fires when	How often
Price Above	The price reaches or goes above your price.	Once, until re-armed.
Price Below	The price reaches or drops below your price.	Once, until re-armed.
Yield Target	The dividend yield reaches your percentage.	Once, until re-armed.
Daily Swing %	Today's move from the previous close reaches it, up or down.	Once per trading day.

Click the button, for example Daily Swing %, and type the number (5 means 5%).
Next to Notify via, tick Email, Push or both.
Optionally tick Ex-dividend reminder or Earnings reminder for an email at 8 AM ET the trading day before. Reminders don't run the screener.

Step 4: Link screener templates to the alert

The Run Screener on Trigger section is below the alerts. It shows which state it's in:

Locked (dashed border, lock icon): a badge says what's missing. Needs an alert means the item has no Price Above, Price Below, Yield or Daily Swing alert with a value yet. Needs a template means you have no screener template (the section links to Screener → Templates). The switch can't be turned on.
Available (purple border, Available badge): the switch can be turned on.
On: the template list and the action appear.

Turn on Run Screener on Trigger.
Under Screener Templates, tick each template to run. You can tick several, for example a put template for buying the dip and a call template for selling into a rally.

Pick the Action:

Action	What you get
Email results	One message listing the matching contracts of every ticked template.
Add to watchlist	The matches go to a list named after ticker and template (below).
Both	Both of the above.

The Add to watchlist list is named like AAPL - Wheel - Cash Secured Put and is created the first time it's needed.

Click Add Item (or Save Changes). You see "Item added" and the item's alert levels appear in the Target column.

If the price is already past a Price Above, Price Below or Yield Target level when you save, that alert fires right away (without the screener run) and is shown crossed out.

What happens when the alert fires

Prices refresh about every 10 minutes on trading days. Price and yield alerts are checked after each refresh. Daily Swing % is checked only while the market is open, 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM ET.
You get the alert on the channels you ticked.
Each linked template then runs on the stock's option chain at that moment. The results message (subject "Screener Results: …") lists, per template, up to 20 contracts with strike, expiry, DTE, bid, ask, delta and IV, plus an Open Screener link. A template with no matches is left out; if none match, no results message is sent.
The results go to the same channels as the alert. On a phone push notification you see a short line like "AAPL: 2 templates matched (14 contracts)"; the full table is in the email.

One swing alert per ticker per day. If the ticker is also an open position, or on another list with its own Swing %, you still get one swing alert that day, from whichever rule is reached first. Tickers that cross in the same check arrive together in one message.

Re-arm, change or stop an alert

Price and yield alerts fire once. In the Target column a fired level is crossed out. To use it again:

Open the item's ⋯ menu and choose Re-arm Price Above (or Below, or Yield Target). Or
click Re-arm this alert in the alert email. You land on Watchlists with a message that the alert has been re-armed. Or
open the item's ⋯ menu, choose Edit, change the level and click Save Changes. A changed level is armed again (and fires at once if it's already met).

Daily Swing % needs no re-arming. One move sends one alert, and a bigger move sends another at each further step: 5%, then 10%, then 15% with a 5% rule. It starts fresh after each regular close.

To stop an alert, edit the item and remove the alert with its trash icon, or delete the item. To silence many items at once, tick them on Watchlists and click Mute alerts. A swing alert also has a link at the bottom to remove that ticker's Swing %. To stop only the screener runs, turn off Run Screener on Trigger.

Open positions you hold are watched for swings automatically. To mute one, open the Open tab on Watchlists, select it and click Mute alerts. Swing alerts for open positions also carry a mute link.

Turn whole kinds of notifications on or off with Notification Settings on the Watchlists page (the Notifications tab of Settings).

Test it with Simulate

You don't have to wait for the market. Simulate pretends the stock is at a price you choose.

On Watchlists, click Simulate.
Type the Ticker and a Simulated Price ($) that crosses your level. For a Daily Swing % test, pick a price that far from the previous close.
Click Simulate. A message tells you what fired, for example "Fired 1 watchlist alert, sent 1 email for AAPL" and a line about the swing check.

A simulation sends real notifications to your channels, but it doesn't mark anything as fired and doesn't use up today's swing alert.

Simulating any alert, swing included, also runs the linked templates and sends the screener results, so it tests the whole flow. An alert that is already crossed out doesn't fire in a simulation; re-arm it first.

How alerts work
Watchlists and Screener page reference

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