year-to-year performanceTradeSmith offers various alerts for your equity and options positions. These alerts can be grouped into the following categories:

• Trailing stops
• Price alerts
• Time-based alerts
• Volume and moving average alerts
• Fundamental alerts
• Options alerts

Note: You must have a TradeStops by TradeSmith subscription to track and manage your positions with alerts in TradeSmith Finance. Available alerts may vary based on subscription level.

Let’s look at each category for alerts on equity positions. We will cover Option alerts in the article titled TradeSmith Option Alerts.

Trailing Stops

A trailing stop loss is an alert that triggers when the price of a security moves by a specified percentage in a specified direction. Investors use trailing stops to protect their gains.

Let’s review TradeSmith’s available percentage trailing stops: VQ and Custom %.

The Volatility Quotient (VQ) is our proprietary risk metric for any index or security we track. Based on historical price data, we can determine an asset's expected move so you can give it an appropriate amount of wiggle room. We use three years of price data, with the past year more heavily weighted. 

The VQ is dynamic and updated weekly to ensure you take the right risk in any trade.   

The custom percentage feature allows you to enter your preferred trailing stop percentage. If your newsletter recommends a specific trailing stop percentage, you can utilize this feature instead of the VQ% trailing stop.

The VQ and custom percentage trailing stops will be created from your position’s start date or entry date. If no entry date is available, the alert will start on the date you added the alert.

Please note that TradeSmith caps the VQ% trailing stop loss at 55% to help protect against extreme price declines. For example, as of Dec. 16, 2025, Carvana (CVNA) had a Volatility Quotient of approximately 79%. Without this cap, following the full VQ% would allow the stock to decline by about 79% before triggering a stop. The cap limits that downside exposure, helping to manage risk more effectively.

Price

Price alerts help you track price movement for securities you hold or want to watch.

Let’s review TradeSmith’s available price alerts: 2VQ Alert, Breakout Alert, Percentage Gain/Loss, Fixed price Equal or Above/Below, and Dollar Gain/Loss alerts.

• 2 VQ Alert: notifies you when your security rises twice its Volatility Quotient since the entry date or start date, with the idea of adding to a winning trade.

Should I implement the 2 VQ approach if the security has already risen by multiple 2 VQs? 

No. A trend reversal can occur if the price rises by 5 VQs or more. As a general guideline, adding to a position that has already increased by 5 VQs or more becomes riskier.

You want to give yourself the best opportunity to make money. Our premise is that winning trades in TradeSmith increase by 5 VQ on average.

If you have held a position for some time, the security may no longer be a prime candidate for the 2 VQ approach.

• Breakout Alert: notifies you when the position has reached a new high or low for the day, week, or month since the alert’s entry date or start date.

You can use breakout alerts to buy stocks that are breaking out or to sell stocks that are breaking down. They can also help you keep tabs on stocks that you’re invested in.

• Percentage Gain/Loss: notifies you when the position has moved a certain percentage above or below your entry price.

Percent change alerts allow you to set price-movement thresholds and receive notifications when a stock’s price changes by a specified percentage.

• Fixed Price Equal or Above/Below: notifies you when the security’s latest close price is equal to, above, or below a specified price.

Fixed price alerts help you stay in touch with the markets by notifying you when a specified buy or sell price is reached.

• Dollar Gain/Loss: notifies you when the position has moved a specific dollar amount above or below the entry price.

Time

Time alerts are notifications that monitor time-specific parameters. 

Let’s review TradeSmith’s time-based alerts: Calendar Days After Entry, Trading Days After Entry, Profitable Closes After Entry, and Specific Date.

• Calendar Days After Entry: monitors a specific number of calendar days after your entry date.
• Trading Days After Entry: monitors a specific number of trading days after your entry date.
• Profitable Closes After Entry: monitors a specific number of profitable closes or opens after your entry.
• Specific Date: monitors a specific date.

Volume and Moving Average

Volume and moving average alerts notify you when a security’s trading volume or movement relative to its moving average changes.

Moving averages often represent levels of support or resistance. When a stock’s price crosses its moving average, it may represent the beginning of a larger movement. This is especially true for stocks with shorter-term moving averages stacked on top (bullish) or beneath (bearish) longer-term moving averages.

Let’s review TradeSmith’s Vol & MA alerts: Percent of Average Volume, Above/Below a Moving Average, Moving Average Crosses, Relative Strength Index (RSI), and Bollinger Bands (available to TradeSmith Platinum accounts).

• Percent of Average Volume: monitors the latest closing volume in relation to the average volume for a specified time.

Unusually high trading volume can be a good sign that a stock is picking up momentum or that the market is supporting a big price movement.

This alert allows you to create an alert that triggers when the latest volume is above or below the one-day, one-week, or one-month average daily volume.

• Above/Below a Moving Average: monitors the moving average close price for a specified time.

Moving averages are commonly used as indicators of trend. If a position is trading above a moving average, it may indicate a healthy stock. If it dips below, it could signal a period of correction.

• Moving Average Crosses: monitors the moving averages of specified times. 

For example, a golden cross is a bullish technical pattern in which the short-term moving average of a stock or overall market surpasses its long-term moving average, indicating positive momentum (50-day moving average crosses above the 200-day moving average).

Please remember that the golden cross, like any stock chart pattern, is a lagging indicator. This means it only tells you what has happened; it does not necessarily mean that positive momentum will continue.

The opposite of a golden cross is a death cross, which indicates a bearish trend. A death cross occurs when a security or market’s short-term moving average falls below its long-term moving average (50-day moving average crosses below the 200-day moving average).

• Relative Strength Index: is a momentum oscillator that measures the speed and change of price movements over a 14-period window to analyze overbought or oversold conditions.

If the RSI is above 70, it generally indicates that the asset is overbought, meaning it may be due for a pullback or correction. If the RSI is below 30, it typically signals the asset is oversold, suggesting it may be undervalued and could be poised for a rebound.

Note that once the RSI alert is triggered, you will need to set a new alert.

Note: The default RSI alert is configured for the RSI Precision strategy (Platinum strategy), which recommends an exit when the RSI crosses 80 and retraces to 70.

• Bollinger Bands: apply to a Platinum-dedicated strategy that tracks a stock’s position within its Bollinger Bands, indicating overbought or oversold conditions. The upper band is assigned a value of 100, signaling overbought conditions, while the lower band is 0, indicating oversold conditions.

This alert helps traders identify potential reversals, breakouts, and volatility shifts.

Fundamentals

Fundamental analysis can determine a company’s potential value by examining its earnings, revenue, cash flow, and other pertinent data that could influence its stock price. Our fundamental alerts help determine a company’s health and growth prospects.

Let’s review TradeSmith’s fundamental alerts: Market Cap, Enterprise Value, Enterprise Value/Revenue, Enterprise Value/EBITDA, Price/Book, Price/Earnings, and PEG.

• Market Cap: tracks the total value of the outstanding shares for the position.

A company’s total market value – its market capitalization – is widely used to create a context for judging its financial performance and business outlook.

Larger companies tend to have a more broadly diversified business model, which gives them more stable year-to-year performance, with relatively consistent earnings and revenue. As a result, they may have less volatile share prices than smaller firms. They are also less sensitive to economic headwinds.

Small companies have the potential for more rapid revenue and profit growth, but this potential is often more variable. They are also more volatile and sensitive to macroeconomic shifts than larger companies.

Market Capitalization Breakdown:

• • Nano Cap: Less than $50 Million
  • Micro Cap: $50 Million to $300 Million
  • Small Cap: $300 Million to $2 Billion
  • Mid Cap: $2 Billion to $10 Billion
  • Large Cap: $10 Billion to $200 Billion
  • Mega Cap: More than $200 Billion

• Enterprise Value: measures a company’s total value, often used as a more comprehensive alternative to market cap because it includes the market cap, the short-term and long-term debt, and any cash or cash equivalents on the company’s balance sheet in its calculation.

• Enterprise Value/Revenue: tracks the Enterprise Value/Revenue ratio.

For example, Company A’s stock may trade at $100 per share while Company B’s stock trades at $20. But if Co. A has 100 million shares outstanding, and Co. B has 500 million shares outstanding, then their market caps are precisely the same: $10 billion.

100 million shares x $100 = 500 million shares x $20

• Enterprise Value/EBITDA: tracks the EV/EBITDA ratio. This ratio compares enterprise value and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

The EV/EBITDA ratio varies by industry. According to Investopedia, the S&P 500’s EV/EBITDA has typically averaged between 11 and 16 over the last few years. 

• Price-to-Book: compares the market value of a company’s shares to its book value.

Many investors use the P/B ratio to compare a firm’s market cap to its book value and locate undervalued companies. 

• Price-to-Earnings: measures the current share price of a stock relative to the company’s earnings per share (EPS).

Investors use P/E ratios to assess whether a company is overvalued, undervalued, or fairly valued. P/E ratios represent how much investors are willing to pay for every dollar of earnings.

A high P/E ratio can mean a stock’s price is high relative to earnings and possibly overvalued.

A low P/E ratio might indicate that the current stock price is low relative to its earnings.

• PEG Ratio: a stock’s P/E ratio divided by its earnings growth rate for a specified period.

The PEG ratio determines a stock’s value while factoring in the company’s expected earnings growth.

As a general guideline, a PEG lower than 1.0 is best. This suggests that a company is relatively undervalued and may be a good buy. When a company’s PEG exceeds 1.0, it’s considered overvalued.

That’s a wrap on the individual alerts you can assign to your stock positions.

Below the alert’s menu, you will see the choice to apply any alert template you created. You can also create a new alert template from this window. Please see the article Alert Templates for details on creating Templates.

*Note—The tabs and features you see on your TradeSmith Finance site will vary based on your subscription(s) and subscription level(s). The pictures in our Education Center articles are taken from a TradeSmith Platinum account.