We all have developed our favorit strategy over time. It's what you love to find and are the most comfortable trading. If you are a short term trader then you start your research by looking for just this setup or stock that fits that criteria that you worked so hard on.

While this is your "bread and butter" that you long for everytime you scan for a stock, there is still many other opportunities out there and you hate the thought of missing even one. But, everytime you take away focus from your primary strategy you find that you are not as optimized as you should be. Looking for many setups is more complicated and time consuming.

Today I suggest you finally take a look at a scanner to take some of the workload off. If your primary strategy is playing breakouts, but you still love the idea of finding momentum stocks then consider spending some time with a scanner. It doesn't have to consumer your whole weekend or late nights, there may be better options.

In our example we used momentum stocks as your secondary strategy. If you were to setup a simple scan that looks for stocks that are up over 5% in 3 days that is one idea. You could also set alerts for new 52 week highs, new 30 day highs, or new six month highs. All of these are very quick ways to let a computer send you alerts on your secondary strategy.

Remember that you still want to focus your alerts to the stocks that fit your criteria. You want the scanner to deliver only the qualified opportunities so take a second and set the parameters of the stock. Price, average volume, index, exchange that it's traded on, bid and ask spread. These are all great ways to fine tune your new scanning buddy.