These alerts report when a stock's price is acting differently than expected based on the prices of related stocks.

The server reports a breakout and displays a green arrow if the stock is performing better than the rest of the sector.  The server reports a breakdown and displays a red arrow if the stock is performing worse than the rest of the sector.  These are all relative measurements.  It is possible that all stocks in the sector are moving up today.  If one stock in the sector is moving up faster than the rest, that stock will report a breakout.  If another stock in that sector is also moving up, but much more slowly than expected, it will report a breakdown.

The server determines which stocks are related to which other stocks empirically.  It compares the intraday moves of each stock to the intraday moves of a variety of different indices.  It records which index is the best predictor of the stock, and it records additional statistical information about the relationship.  This is often an index of the stock's sector, but it may also be a broader market index.  For some stocks no index is appropriate.  The server never reports one of these alerts for those stocks.

During the day the server monitors various ETFs and similar products.  These give a more timely description of the underlying stocks than watching an index directly, especially near the open.  In real time the server compares the changes in each stock's price to the expected changes based on the other products.  It reports an alert as soon as the actual price varies too much from the expected price.  It recomputes this every time a stock prints; it does not include any type of confirmation.

These alerts are not available for indexes.  The opening price data for an index is not reliable.  Instead, use the following alerts, which are similar but use the previous close rather than today's open.

The server does not report a breakout unless the actual stock price is at least 1% above expectations.  It does not report a breakdown unless the actual price is at least 1% below expectations.  The user can require higher standards, as described below.