SwingTradeBot Review – Is This Platform Effective for Swing Traders?

What Is SwingTradeBot?

SwingTradeBot is a helpful stock screener and market overview platform that cues traders in on potential trades. Nothing about the software is particularly groundbreaking or unique. But its assembly of stock grades, trading routines, and technical signal scanners work together to dramatically reduce the time it takes to research stocks. Given its modest price, SwingTradeBot can be a good option for time-crunched traders who want to stay on top of significant technical developments in stocks on their watchlists.

There are other platforms targeted at swing traders, such as Stockinvest.us, so what sets SwingTradeBot apart? We’ll explain in our SwingTradeBot review.

SwingTradeBot Pricing

SwingTradeBot offers four pricing tiers: Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Multi-market.

The Silver tier is free, but doesn’t give you access to the platform’s premium screeners – which are arguably the reason to use SwingTradeBot in the first place. On top of that, you’ll be limited to one watchlist and one portfolio, you get weekly rather than daily emails, and your scan results are pretty constrained.

The Gold plan costs $19.99 per month or $189.99 per year. This plan unlocks most of the functionality of SwingTradeBot. Key features include access to premium screens, the ability to view scan results as a list of charts, and the option to export scan results. You also get unlimited routines, nightly emails about your watchlists and portfolios, and two each of watchlists and portfolios.

The Platinum plan costs $24.99 per month or $239.99 per year. You get more watchlists and portfolios – five and three, respectively – and 40 stocks per list instead of 20. The modest price jump from the Gold plan reflects these relatively minimal upgrades.

The Multi-market plan costs $29.99 per month or $279.99 per year. It’s the same as the Platinum plan, but you also get access to stocks on the OTCBB and global exchanges in Australia, the UK, and Canada.

Note that you can trial SwingTradeBot Gold for 14 days, after which time you’ll be switched onto the free Silver plan.

SwingTradeBot Features

Stock Screeners

SwingTradeBot’s custom stock screens are at the heart of this platform. There are more than 100 screens in all, each designed to look for a specific technical pattern that’s developed over the course of a day or multiple recent days. Helpfully, the screeners are categorized according to whether they look for bearish, bullish, bearish swing, or bullish swing signals, as well as other categories like range expansion or contraction and strength or weakness.

What differentiates SwingTradeBot from a lot of other trading software platforms is that you don’t have to design screens yourself. In fact, you can’t. There isn’t an option to design a custom screen with SwingTradeBot, although you can combine up to three individual filters together to create more complex scans. Additionally, paid users can put some extra constraints on screener results, such as filtering by market cap, ADX direction, and SwingTradeBot’s assigned stock grades.

That said, the included screens cover a lot of ground. There’s a screen to look for almost any individual technical pattern, as well as a variety of premium screens that identify combinations of signals that may represent important technical developments. Keep in mind that all of the screens are based on short-term signals – this is a platform for swing traders, not fundamental investors. In addition, all of the scans are end-of-day scans, not real-time scans.

What’s nice about the screener results (for paid users) is that you can view them in a few different ways. The default is a sortable list, which allows you to order stocks according to price change or SwingTradeBot’s A-F stock grading system.

Alternatively, you can view results as charts, although for scans that have dozens of prospective stocks on a given day this can be somewhat prohibitive (there’s no way to order results when viewing as charts). Finally, you can export list data to a CSV for further analysis.

What’s nice about the screener results (for paid users) is that you can view them in a few different ways. The default is a sortable list, which allows you to order stocks according to price change or SwingTradeBot’s A-F grading system. Alternatively, you can view results as charts, although for scans that have dozens of prospective stocks on a given day this can be somewhat prohibitive (there’s no way to order results when viewing as charts). Finally, you can export list data to a CSV for further analysis.

Intraday Alerts

One of the other beneficial features that SwingTradeBot provides is intraday alerts. These allow you to get notifications by email or to your smartphone (with the SwingTradeBot mobile app) when stocks fall or gain a certain percentage, when a moving average is crossed, or upon other technical events. Thankfully, you can filter these alerts according to the same extra parameters you have for screen results, so that you’re not constantly bombarded by incoming messages. The alerts can be really useful for day trading, but keep in mind that none of SwingTradeBot’s other features (like the scans) offer real-time data.

Broad Market Overview

The broad market overview that SwingTradeBot provides is a useful tool for gauging the overall direction of the stock market. The tool highlights whether the major US indices are gaining, retreating, or flat, as well as whether they have had any important technical signals in the last few days. The overview also highlights which technical signals are most common across the market.

The overview includes a few different stock lists. You can view unusually active stocks and stocks with the most bullish and bearish signals. These lists are nice because they’re much more actionable than the typical largest gainers and losers lists that most platforms provide.

Routines

SwingTradeBot encourages traders to take emotion out of swing trading, and it gives them routines to do so. These are basically checklists for how to go about technical analysis and trading – what scans to check, what stop losses to update, and so on. Despite the name of this platform, routines aren’t trading bots and cannot be automated.

This feature is nice to have, but it’s hardly worth paying for. Essentially, it’s a digital version of a written checklist, with the main advantage being that you can include links to the scans you want to run.

Research Notes

The last notable feature that SwingTradeBot offers is research notes, called “Trader Mike’s Notes” after software developer Michael Seneadza, SwingTradeBot’s creator. These are short notes, usually just a few sentences long, that focus on sentiment or action around a particular stock. This could be a great feature, but research notes are surprisingly rare – there may be a couple within a single week, but then nothing for a month or more. Unless these notes become more frequent, most traders won’t get much use out of this feature.

Customization And Layout

While SwingTradeBot doesn’t let you build your own swing trading scans, it does allow a small amount of customization. The most important thing you can change is your default settings for the additional filters you apply to stock screens, such as market cap or stock grade. These are especially relevant because your default settings also drive filters for which intraday alerts you’ll receive.

Helpfully, SwingTradeBot includes a mobile app that allows you to check end-of-day screens on the go. You can also opt to get intraday alerts as push notifications to your phone with the app.

Finally, SwingTradeBot does offer basic portfolios and watchlists. The main use of these lists is to help you filter your alerts or screens. However, they can also give you quick access to view recent technical signals around your watched stocks. The platform makes it relatively easy to import your portfolio from your brokerage as a CSV.

Finally, SwingTradeBot does offer basic portfolios and watchlists. The main use of these lists is to help you filter your alerts or screens. However, they can also give you quick access to view recent technical signals around your watched stocks. The platform makes it relatively easy to import your portfolio from your brokerage as a CSV.

SwingTradeBot Platform Differentiators

The thing that really sets SwingTradeBot apart is the platform’s multitude of technical stock screens. These end-of-day scanners cover a huge variety of technical patterns and signal combinations, and the fact that you can combine multiple screens together and add a few extra custom filters makes them useful for a wide variety of trading strategies.

The main benefit of these screens is to dramatically speed up the stock research process for technical trading. However, since you can’t create your own custom screen, SwingTradeBot isn’t necessarily ideal for advanced traders with custom strategies. 

What Type Of Trader Is SwingTradeBot Best For?

SwingTradeBot is best for active technical traders who need a hand with scanning for potential trades. The platform’s screeners aren’t groundbreaking, and many could be easily recreated in another charting software like ThinkorSwim. So, the main advantage is ease of use and the software is best suited for entry- and intermediate-level technical traders. Advanced traders could use SwingTradeBot, but chances are anyone with a custom trading strategy won’t love the fact that you can’t create your own custom screens using this platform.

Pros

• More than 100 premade technical stock screens
• Highlights recent technical signals
• Up to three technical screens can be combined at a time
• Intraday alerts via email or push with the mobile app
• Broad market overview highlights stocks with the most technical signals
• Relatively modest pricing

Cons

• Most of the screens could be recreated using a free charting and screener software
• No custom screens – screens can only be slightly filtered based on a few parameters
• Research notes are infrequent