Staged stops as one mechanical entry and exit procedure

What the workflow emits

A single price-only algorithm can emit buy and sell signals for stocks, exchange-traded funds, futures, and currency pairs. Short-horizon setups are taken from intraday or daily data, while long-horizon setups are taken from weekly data. Intraday signals are defined on five fixed bars of 15, 30, 60, 120, and 240 minutes.

The system's output is a signal: an instruction to enter, exit, or stay out. In the terms used here, that makes the workflow a mechanical-trading-system, a complete and repeatable set of entry, exit, and abstention rules applied the same way each time the inputs appear. A rule-based-entry is the predefined condition that issues the buy, sell, or stand-aside instruction from market state and execution constraints rather than from discretionary judgment.

What is chosen before a scan runs

Before a scan runs, the user chooses market, time frame, bullish or bearish bias, and whether the desired signal is a prebuy or a presell. The tradable universe can be narrowed by subcategory, price limits, and a minimum-volume filter.

Staged stops arrive with exits already written

A prebuy is a staged long entry price that has not yet traded and is placed in advance as a buy-stop. A presell is a staged short entry price that has not yet traded and is placed in advance as a sell-stop. In this workflow, a prebuy or presell is a staged stop price that has not yet been reached at the last scan update.

Each staged signal is packaged with a protective stop and more than one profit-taking level so exit is specified with the entry. The holding-period is the time a position remains open once the system's entry rule has fired. Editorial reading: the package is written for that holding-period, so the trader is not asked to invent an exit after the signal appears.

Time-frame alignment on a short search

A top-down short search ranks weak sectors, then industries inside those sectors, then the weakest names for presell signals. A name can be treated as a stronger short candidate when a daily presell coincides with bearish readings on shorter bars and on the weekly frame. Time-frame-alignment is that check: whether shorter and longer bars agree before the signal is treated as confirmed.

Editorial framing: the procedure follows the prevailing trend across the holding-period instead of forecasting a reversal, which is the sense of a momentum-strategy used here.

A calendar of past marks

Past buy and sell marks can be reviewed on a calendar of daily and weekly history for the market or for a single security. Editorial reading: the calendar is for reviewing how the mechanical-trading-system already marked the tape. It is not a substitute for a blank scan, and it is not a reason to write a new rule on the spot.