Guide

How to Read the Screen

What the rankings mean, how to read a stock's detail view, and what this data cannot tell you. · Last updated September 5, 2026

This page explains how to actually read the two lists, what the detail view is showing you, and — importantly — what conclusions the data does not support. If you only read one page on this site before using the screen, make it this one.

Start with the market status, not the stocks

The indicator at the top of the page showing "Confirmed Uptrend," "Mixed," or "Under Pressure" is not decoration. It corresponds to the M factor in CANSLIM, which O'Neil considered the most important of the seven, on the research finding that a large majority of stocks move with the general market.

The practical implication: identical setups have historically had materially different outcomes depending on this reading. A list of strong-looking candidates during a market-wide correction is not the same opportunity as the same list during a confirmed uptrend, even if the individual stocks look identical.

Read the trend bar before the score

Each row shows a segmented bar representing how many of the eight Trend Template criteria the stock currently meets. This is the primary sort key for both lists — deliberately, because we consider trend confirmation more meaningful than any composite number we could construct.

A stock at 8/8 with an unremarkable composite score is showing something structurally different from a stock at 4/8 with a high composite score. The second is being carried by short-term momentum signals without the underlying trend structure to support them.

Days when nothing qualifies. Some days no stock in the entire universe clears the Trend Template gate. When that happens the screen says so at the top, in place of the usual summary. The lists still populate with the closest candidates, because seeing where relative strength sits during a weak tape is useful — but that is a fundamentally different situation from ten qualifying setups, and the page is built to make sure you never confuse the two. In the frameworks this screen borrows from, a day with no qualifiers is generally read as a reason to do less, not to lower the bar.

Check whether names actually qualify. Both lists always display a fixed number of stocks. When few or no stocks clear the full Trend Template threshold, the lists fill with the closest available candidates, marked accordingly. A list where nothing qualifies is telling you something important about market conditions — it is not a list of ten opportunities.

What the detail view shows

Selecting any row opens a full breakdown. It is organized to be read top to bottom:

Range bar and price context

The visual bar shows where the current price sits between its 52-week low and high. A marker far to the right means the stock is near its highs — minimal overhead supply, which trend frameworks favor. A marker in the middle means the stock has meaningful prior resistance above it.

The moving-average stack

Price and the 50, 150, and 200-day averages are listed high to low, with price highlighted. This exists because Minervini's fourth criterion is about the order of the averages, and a grid of four numbers doesn't make that order obvious. When the stack reads price, then 50-day, then 150-day, then 200-day from top to bottom, the averages are arranged the way the framework looks for, and the panel says so directly.

Moving averages with distance

Each average is shown alongside how far current price sits above or below it, as a percentage. This distance matters for reasons the raw number does not convey: a stock 3% above its 50-day average and one 30% above it are in very different situations. Extended stocks — far above their averages — carry more downside risk on any mean-reversion, a point Minervini's own writing emphasizes.

Volatility and liquidity

ADR indicates how much the stock typically moves in a day, which bears directly on position sizing and stop placement. Average dollar volume indicates whether a position can be entered and exited without difficulty — thinly traded names can be materially harder to exit than to enter, particularly under stress.

Momentum returns

Trailing 3, 6, and 12-month returns show the shape of the move, not just its magnitude. A stock up 40% over twelve months but flat over three is decelerating. One up 40% over three months and 45% over twelve made nearly all its progress recently — a different and often more extended situation.

The Trend Template checklist

All eight criteria, with met and unmet clearly marked. As covered in the Trend Template guide, which criteria are unmet matters far more than the count alone.

Triggered signals

Framework-specific signals from CANSLIM, Zanger-style breakout rules, Qullamaggie-style momentum rules, and traditional value metrics. An empty section means no signal fired for that framework today — which is normal and not a negative reading. Most stocks trigger few or no signals on any given day.

Company, sector, and charts

Each entry shows the company name alongside its ticker, and the detail view adds its sector. Sector matters more than it might appear: CANSLIM's leadership factor is explicitly about being strong within a strong group, so several names from the same sector appearing together is itself a signal about where money is currently rotating.

There is no chart drawn here, deliberately — on delayed data, a chart we render ourselves would look authoritative while being slightly wrong. Each detail view links out to a live chart instead, which is the right place to verify price action before forming any view.

Moving between stocks

The detail view has Prev and Next controls at the bottom, and the left and right arrow keys do the same thing. This is worth using: comparing several candidates against each other tends to be more informative than examining any one in isolation, because it makes the differences between them obvious.

What this screen cannot tell you

Being direct about this is more useful than any feature:

Whether to buy anything. The screen surfaces candidates matching published historical criteria. It does not evaluate whether a stock is appropriate for your circumstances, portfolio, or risk tolerance.
Where to place a stop or how much to size. These determine outcomes far more than entry selection does, and no screen can answer them for you.
Anything about company-specific risk. Pending litigation, regulatory action, accounting concerns, key-person risk, customer concentration — none of this appears in price and volume data.
Whether a gap or volume spike had a good reason. The screen detects the signature of a large move on heavy volume. It has no earnings calendar and no news feed, so it cannot distinguish an earnings beat from a failed drug trial or an accounting scandal.
Real-time prices. Data is delayed. Do not use these figures for execution decisions.

A reasonable way to use it

The screen is best understood as a starting point that narrows roughly 900 stocks to a manageable set worth examining — not as a conclusion. A sensible workflow looks something like: check market status first; look at which names actually qualify rather than just appear; open the detail view for the ones that interest you; then verify everything independently against primary sources — company filings, an actual chart, and the earnings calendar — before forming any view.

The single most important thing the screen does not do is manage risk, which is the part that determines results. That remains entirely yours.