What is a Stock Screener?
A stock screener is an essential tool for investors and traders that filters thousands of publicly traded companies based on user-defined metrics. Instead of manually analyzing individual stocks, a screener instantly narrows down the universe of over 5000 NSE-listed stocks to a handful that meet your exact trading criteria, saving hours of research time.
Key Technical Indicators to Filter By
- Relative Strength Index (RSI): A momentum oscillator measuring the speed and change of price movements. An RSI below 30 typically indicates an oversold condition (potential buy), while an RSI above 70 indicates an overbought condition (potential sell).
- MACD (Moving Average Convergence Divergence): A trend-following momentum indicator. A bullish crossover (MACD line crosses above the signal line) often signals upward momentum.
- Simple Moving Average (SMA): Filtering stocks where the current price crosses above the 50-day or 200-day SMA is a classic strategy to identify the start of a new long-term uptrend.
- Volume Breakout: Identifies stocks trading with significantly higher volume than their daily average. High volume validates the strength of a price movement.
How to build a winning screen?
The most successful screens combine different types of filters. For example, screening for a "52-Week High Breakout" alone might yield too many results, including highly illiquid stocks. However, combining a 52-Week High Breakout with a "Volume > 1M" filter and an "RSI > 60" filter ensures you only see highly liquid stocks with strong underlying momentum.