Perhaps the above is enough for many traders, but a few further MetaStock nuances can add to the value of the information you've uncovered. For example, wouldn't you like to know which stocks have met the chosen crossover criteria in the past, say, five days? And wouldn't it be handy to be able to sort your newly discovered stocks in order of price or volume? If so, read on for a few more simple tips.

1. Go back to the main Explorer tool section, highlight your "Moving Average Crossover" Exploration, (original set up shown on the Metastock 9 page) and hit the "edit" key this time. You can now make alterations to your Exploration. Ignore the upper "Notes" section and click on Column A first. You will see a large white field for entry of formulas and a small field in the lower left, entitled "Col Name." Simply put a "c" in the large formula section and "Close" in the column name section. Repeat these actions for Column B, with "v" and "Volume" respectively. Now when your Exploration presents you with your data, you can easily sort by price (c) or volume (v).

2. Finally, click on the "Filter" tab again to slightly modify your Exploration formula. The way you have it set up initially tells MetaStock to find all stocks which meet the criteria today. You now want it to find all stocks that have met these criteria over the past five days. The answer is the MetaStock Alert function, which is written "Alert( A , Number ) where "A" is any formula you care to choose, and "Number" is the number of days. So now you put your original formula in the place of A. The result is: "Alert( Cross( Mov(C,3,E) , Mov(C,10,E) ) ,5)" without the quotation marks. Save your new Exploration with the "OK" button and you're ready to find all stocks whose 3 day moving average passed above the 10 day moving average in the past five trading days!

The above information should allow you to write further Explorations by simply changing the numbers. If you prefer to use Exponential Moving Averages instead of Simple Moving Averages, change "s" to "e" in the formulas. You can also open up the ready made Equis Explorations, investigate how they're written, and change them with the "Edit" command (then saving with a new name). A further step is to investigate the hundreds of formulas available here on this web site and modify them in the same way. This is the quick and easy way to learn how to program with MetaStock. Follow the examples given by all the kind and clever MetaStock users who have gone before you, and tweak, tweak, tweak.