MetaStock is a marvellous program for traders, but can appear complicated and intimidating at first. In reality, it's easy and fun, if you take it slowly, step by step.

Let's consider a common trader's question: "How can MetaStock help me find all the stocks where the 3 day moving average has just crossed above the 10 day moving average?"

MetaStock's Explorer tool allows you to search all the stocks in the ASX, and within a minute or two (depending on your computer's speed!) generate a list of all stocks meeting this particular criteria.

Here's a step by step guide for beginners:

1. Open up your Explorer tool in MetaStock by clicking on the little "binoculars" symbol in the upper right field of your screen, or find it under Tools in the drop-down menu.

2. You will be presented with the Explorer screen showing a list of ready-made Equis Explorations plus various options to view or edit them. More about these later. Look instead at the list of options to the right.

3. Choose the "New" button and click. You've just starting writing your own MetaStock Exploration! MetaStock gives it the name "<New Exploration>" but let's rename it "Moving Average Crossover" for the sake of this exercise.

4. Note that the Explorer screen has an upper section labelled "Notes" and then, just below, seven columns, with tabs, labelled "A" to "F," plus "Filter." For now we're just going to work with the "Filter" column. Click on its tab and you're ready to write a MetaStock formula in this column.

5. Enter the following without the quotation marks: "Cross( Mov(c,3,s) , Mov(c,10,s) )" but don't worry about the *spaces* between letters and punctuations marks, nor about capitalisation.

6. Here's a quick explanation to ponder, before we go further. What you've just entered under MetaStock Explorer's Filter is a much more simple formula than you realise! It means only "Crossover A over B" or "Crossover 3 over 10" in ordinary English. MetaStock writes this as "Cross( A , B )" where A and B are other MetaStock formulas, any formulas you like. In this case, we're putting two different moving averages in the place of A and B. MetaStock writes the English language phrase "Moving Average of the past 3 days" as "mov(c,3,s)" and the second moving average is exactly the same, with the numeral 10 substituted for the 3.

7. Your first MetaStock Exploration is now finished. Click "OK" in the lower left of the Explorer field to save it and you will quickly find your own "Moving Average Crossover" Exploration added to those already on MetaStock's ready-made list.

8. Next, click on the "Explore" button and MetaStock will prompt you for the path to the place on your computer where you have all your ASX (or other) data. Choose which securities you want to scan. I suggest that you choose them all to start with, and save this as a "List" named "All" so that when you make more Explorations you won't have to go through this step again. You can just choose the "All" list whenever you want to scan stocks. (Take note at this point that MetaStock has excellent assistance for you under its "Help" tab as well as one of the best software manuals ever written.)

9. MetaStock will quickly verify that your stocks are where you say they are, and prompt you for an "OK". Once you do this, you can watch a nifty screen where MetaStock outlines its search for all the stocks that match your search (Filter) criteria. How long this process takes depends once again on the speed of your computer!