ThinkorSwim Watchlist Scanner Alerts Not Working - useThinkScript Community (2024)

I have this issue intermittently with custom scan alerts under the 'Stock Hacker' sub-category. Though I use 'Study' alerts, I use thinkscript to customize and they are meant to work indefinitely.

However, they do stop working from time to time and I have no explanation as to why. I go in and re-enable the alert for the custom scan and that USUALLY does the trick; else I go into MarketWatch header, find the scan, clear it, then re-enable it.

Because I cannot figure out the rhyme or reason as to why (i.e. a backend limit to how many times a scan alert can be hit, backent limit to how many days it can remain functional, etc.) I am going to reach out to their support.

If I find out anything useful from them I'll definitely post it here.

It's working for me.

Thanks. I figured the cure would be to lose everything that I've created, custom charts, etc. I grew accustomed to the alerts as they woke me sometimes from other activities (emails, writing new indicators, reading trading posts, etc. you know....) If I am the only person experiencing it I don't think that support would do anything other than tell me to uninstall, which I think might take a lot of time reconfiguring. I am going to delete all of the alerts that I have, though, and try re-creating one alert to see if that helps.....Thanks for responding.

So much for the learning curve using TOS. All of my charts are for one thing, the /NQ. Before expiration, all the charts update automatically to the next contract. I'm pretty used to not changing the contract for trading. Thinking that the alerts would update, I never thought to look. Sure enough, the alerts are contract specific, and it was stuck on NQU. In my defense, everything on the charts just says /NQ. And glancing at the watchlist, I never really looked at the NQU or NQZ because the charts update automatically. So I feel silly that I wasted the board's valuable time in something I should have noticed, but the support people did say there was a known problem, so I never looked on my end. Anyway, I redid the alerts to NQZ and it all "seems" to be working fine. Thanks again for the board.

Hey guys, i been having trouble with watch list columns, any and all custom scripts turn to "custom expression" when i open say AMZN but then I open DPZ and all the custom scripts go back to normal. i have eliminated all the custom scripts from the watch list and tried adding each one separately to see if i can find which one might be the problem, but each one gives me same results, has anyone else had this problem, if so were you able to fix it? or does anyone know the cause? or do i just have to live with it?

Thank you in advance

You have exceeded your limit of 1500 custom scripts.

custom expression subscription limit exceeded

Click to expand...

MerryDay said:

"custom expression subscription limit exceeded"
You have exceeded your limit of 1500 custom scripts.

Click to expand...

As Merry Day has stated, too many custom scripts running, or too many complex scripts, usually happens when there are too many entries in your watchlists... It can also happen on a chart that spans too long of a timeframe... These instances can be resolved by reducing the number of custom scripts, reducing the size of your watchlist, or shortening the time span of your chart...

Break Trader said:

http://tos.mx/YAFvMK
thank you for your responses. above is a link to the live watch list. im only running 3 scripts and it only turns to "custom expression" on a few charts not all charts.

Click to expand...

Nothing seemingly out of place in the code... How many charts are running this script...???

I've had a few instances recently where charts have become corrupt and needed to be deleted and recreated because they were eating up program resources and slowing TOS to a crawl... Have you checked Help > System to see what your bandwidth throughput looks like...??? If it shows red lines from bottom to top then one of your charts is most likely corrupt... Another thing to try is to delete Thinkorswims usergui directory and let it be recreated when you restart the program...

Edited to add image:

Example of mildly excessive bandwidth throughput...

Example of minimal bandwidth throughput...

MerryDay said:

The shared link that you provided is to a study that cannot be used as a watchlist as is... Watchlists can only have one plot

Click to expand...

Ahhh...
@Break Trader Is this a chart or a watchlist problem...

MerryDay said:

The shared link that you provided is to a study that cannot be used as a watchlist as is... Watchlists can only have one plot

Click to expand...

wow, thats odd, i shared a link to my watch list and im not even running supply and demand on my watch list or any of my charts. I dont even have that script in my studies anymore.

Let's see if this is the actual watch list update, i closed all charts and just clicked on the watch list symbols to see how they would react, still about 7 to 10 symbols will changes the "custom expression" while all the rest work fine.