How to Set Up Stock Alerts

Most stock alert tools send you a ping when a price crosses a line. That’s not monitoring — that’s noise. Real stock alerts track whether your holdings still meet the investment criteria that made you buy them in the first place.

You bought MSFT because it had a P/E below 30, ROE above 30%, and positive free cash flow growth. Six months later, one of those criteria fails. Do you know about it? Without systematic monitoring, you don’t — not until the quarterly review you keep postponing.

ScreenerHub’s Monitoring Lab takes a different approach. Instead of setting a single price target, you pair your screening criteria with your watchlist and let the system check every stock against every filter on a schedule. When something changes, you see it — or get an email about it.

TL;DR: Stock alerts on ScreenerHub work by combining a screener (your investment rules) with a watchlist (the stocks you own or track) into a monitoring set. The system runs automated checks daily, weekly, or monthly and flags stocks that no longer meet your criteria. Free users get 1 monitoring set with manual runs. Pro users get unlimited sets, automated scheduling, and email alerts.

Why Price Alerts Aren’t Enough

Every brokerage and finance app offers price alerts. Stock drops below $50? Ding. Stock rises above $200? Ding. But price alone doesn’t tell you whether a stock still fits your strategy.

Consider this scenario:

Price alerts are backward-looking. Criteria-based alerts are strategy-aligned. The first tells you what happened to the number on the screen. The second tells you whether the stock still belongs in your portfolio.

How Stock Alerts Work on ScreenerHub

ScreenerHub’s alert system is built on three components you already know:

The Three Building Blocks

When a monitoring run executes, the system evaluates every stock in the watchlist against every criterion in the screener. The result is a pass/fail matrix — instantly showing you which stocks still meet your standards and which ones have drifted.

This is fundamentally different from setting 15 separate price alerts on 15 stocks. You’re monitoring the entire thesis, not just one number.

Step-by-Step: Set Up Your First Stock Alert

Here’s the complete walkthrough, from zero to automated monitoring.

Step 1: Create a Screener With Your Investment Criteria

Your screener defines what “good” looks like. If you already have a saved screener, skip to Step 2.

1. Open the Screener Studio
2. Add your filters — for example, a quality dividend screen:
   • Dividend Yield > 2.5%
   • Payout Ratio < 70%
   • ROE > 12%
   • Debt-to-Equity < 0.8
   • Revenue Growth (3Y) > 0%
3. Save the screener with a descriptive name like “Quality Dividend Criteria”

The criteria you set here become the rules your monitoring checks will evaluate against. Be intentional — every filter becomes a pass/fail checkpoint for your stocks.

Tip: Not sure which criteria to use? Start with one of our pre-built screens — like Value Stocks or Dividend Stocks — and customize from there.

Step 2: Build a Watchlist With Your Stocks

Your watchlist is the list of stocks you want to monitor. These are typically stocks you already own or are actively considering.

1. Go to your Watchlists and create a new one
2. Add the stocks you want to track (type a ticker or company name to search)
3. Name it something clear: “Retirement Portfolio” or “Dividend Holdings”

If you ran your screener in Step 1 and found stocks you like, you can add them directly to a watchlist from the screening results.

For a complete guide on building effective watchlists, see How to Build a Watchlist.

Step 3: Create a Monitoring Set

This is where the magic happens. You’re linking your rules (screener) to your stocks (watchlist).

1. Navigate to Monitoring Lab (under the Lab section in your dashboard)
2. Click “New Monitoring Set”
3. Select your screener — pick “Quality Dividend Criteria” from Step 1
4. Select your watchlist — pick “Retirement Portfolio” from Step 2
5. Give the set a name: “Retirement Quality Monitor”
6. Choose a schedule (Pro users):
   • Daily — for active traders or volatile positions
   • Weekly — the sweet spot for most investors
   • Monthly — for long-term, low-maintenance portfolios

Step 4: Run Your First Check

Once your monitoring set is created, run your first check immediately:

1. Click “Run Now” on your monitoring set
2. Wait a few seconds while the system evaluates every stock against every criterion
3. Review your results — each stock shows a pass/fail status for each filter

Your first run establishes the baseline. Future runs will compare against this baseline to show you what changed.

Step 5: Enable Email Alerts (Pro)

With a Pro subscription, you can receive email notifications when stocks drift from your criteria:

1. Open your monitoring set’s settings
2. Enable Email Alerts
3. Choose what triggers a notification:
   • A stock exits criteria (was passing, now failing)
   • A stock enters criteria (was failing, now passing)
   • Both (recommended)

You’ll get a summary email after each automated run, listing exactly which stocks changed status and which criteria caused the change.

Reading Your Monitoring Results

After each run, you’ll see a results dashboard. Here’s how to read it:

The Results Matrix

At a glance, you can see that JNJ and ABBV are fully aligned with your criteria, PEP has a debt concern worth watching, and T has drifted significantly from your original thesis.

Delta Comparison: What Changed?

The real power of monitoring appears when you compare runs over time. ScreenerHub’s delta comparison shows:

• Newly failing: Stocks that were passing last run but aren’t anymore (these deserve immediate attention)
• Newly passing: Stocks that improved and now meet criteria again
• Consistently failing: Stocks that keep missing the same criteria
• Consistently passing: Your strongest holdings — no action needed

Five Real-World Alerting Strategies

1. Portfolio Drift Detection

Goal: Know when holdings no longer match your original buy thesis

When to use: You’re a buy-and-hold investor who wants early warning before a holding deteriorates. This is the most common monitoring strategy.

2. Earnings Season Watch

Goal: Track fundamental changes after quarterly earnings reports

When to use: You want to see how earnings reports affect the fundamental picture of stocks you’re tracking.

3. Dividend Safety Monitor

Goal: Detect dividend cuts or payout ratio spikes before the market reacts

When to use: You depend on dividend income and want to spot vulnerabilities early. A payout ratio creeping above your threshold is a warning sign worth acting on.

4. Buying Opportunity Scanner

Goal: Monitor stocks you want to buy when they become cheap enough

When to use: You’ve identified great companies that are currently too expensive. Instead of checking prices daily, let the monitor tell you when fundamentals align with your thresholds.

5. Sector Health Check

Goal: Monitor an entire sector for broad deterioration or improvement

When to use: You’re considering sector allocation changes and want data-driven signals rather than headlines.

Free vs. Pro: What You Get at Each Level

The free tier is enough to try the workflow and monitor a small set of holdings. If you manage a larger portfolio or need automated daily checks, Pro removes the limits.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Setting too many criteria

If your screener has 15 filters, most stocks will fail on at least one — and you’ll get constant noise. Start with 3–5 core criteria that capture the essence of your strategy. You can always add more later.

Using criteria that change too often

Metrics like daily price change or short-term RSI fluctuate constantly. Monitoring works best with fundamental metrics that change on a quarterly or annual basis — P/E, ROE, dividend yield, margins. These produce meaningful signals instead of noise.

Ignoring the results

Setting up alerts is the easy part. The hard part is acting on them. When a stock fails your criteria, you have three options:

1. Sell — the stock no longer fits your strategy
2. Investigate — dig deeper to see if the failure is temporary (e.g., one bad quarter) or structural
3. Adjust your criteria — maybe your thresholds were too strict to begin with

The worst option is option 4: ignoring the alert entirely.

Not reviewing the schedule

A daily schedule on 10 monitoring sets generates a lot of data. Match the monitoring frequency to the strategy:

The Full Monitoring Workflow

Here’s how stock alerts fit into the complete ScreenerHub investment workflow:

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should I run monitoring checks?

For most investors, weekly is the sweet spot. Fundamental data changes quarterly, but price-based metrics (P/E, dividend yield, market cap) shift with daily trading. Weekly gives you timely signals without information overload.

Can I monitor stocks I don’t own yet?

Yes. Create a “Watch and Wait” watchlist with stocks you’d like to buy at the right price. Set up monitoring to alert you when they enter your criteria. That’s Strategy #4 from the examples above.

What happens when I change my screener criteria?

Your next monitoring run will use the updated criteria. Historical runs keep their original results, so you can always compare what changed. This makes it safe to refine your criteria over time.

Do I need a screener AND a watchlist to set up monitoring?

Yes. The monitoring set requires both — the screener provides the rules, the watchlist provides the stocks. You can create both in under five minutes if you’re starting from scratch.

How is this different from a stock price alert?

A price alert watches one number (the price) on one stock. ScreenerHub monitoring watches all your investment criteria across all stocks in your watchlist simultaneously. It’s the difference between checking if a student passed one test vs. reviewing their entire report card.

Ready to Set Up Your First Alert?

You’ve seen how criteria-based monitoring catches what price alerts miss. Here’s how to start:

Start from a pre-built screen — Browse our pre-built screening strategies — pick one that matches your investment style, save a watchlist from the results, and create a monitoring set in under three minutes.

Build a custom monitoring setup — Open the Screener Studio, define your own criteria, build your watchlist, and link them in the Monitoring Lab. Full control, start to finish.

Explore the feature — Read more about how the Monitoring Lab works or check out email alert capabilities for Pro users.

ScreenerHub is free to get started. Your first monitoring set with weekly manual checks costs nothing.