is there a stock price program that will alert me when any stock exceed a certain...

[willie r]

...price ie 40 week floating av just read a book for novices that explains the concept of floating averages and how investing when current prices are above the floating average then a stragy of investing in profitability is maintainted. I am therefore looking for a software application that might calculate the average for a specific period and alert me when any stocks exceed their average, ie a rising trend. Any

[muncie birder]

I am not familiar with the term floating average. Could that possibly be "moving average"? Better known as the 200 day moving average. One of the concepts of technical analysis is indeed that when a stock price crossed the 200 day moving average, that is a potential buy signal. TD Ameritrade has software called "StrategyDesk" where you can set up an alert when the stock price crosses a particular moving average. You can even have the software automatically buy the stock for you if you like. Not something I would recommend however. The software is meant really for short term traders and not long term term traders, so the 200 day moving average is not in the predefined library, rather the 10 day. But you can define your own strategy and you can back test it to see how it works.

There are stock screening tools available that you can use to give you this information. My favorite is the one provided by Fidelity. It shows 126 stocks just crossing the 200 sma.

You have to be very careful using such tools. Stocks will whip saw you. That term means they will cross the moving average and then they will drop back below it. RATE has crossed the 200 day average 7 times since Aug 1. A strategy to mitigate this possibility is to set a criteria that it must have crossed by a least a certain % or $ amount before you jump in.