Custom Screening Presets: Build Your Own Stock Screener That Scans Your Watchlist, Not the Entire Market

The Problem with One-Size-Fits-All Screeners

Every momentum trader has used a screener. MarketSmith, Finviz, TradingView, TC2000 — they all do essentially the same thing: take the full universe of US equities, apply a set of filters, and return the tickers that pass. It works. And for most traders, it's also the wrong approach.

Here's why. If you've been trading for more than a few months, you already have a curated watchlist of 20–40 names you track. You know the story behind each one — the earnings trajectory, the institutional sponsorship, the chart personality, the sector dynamics. When you screen the entire market with generic filters, your names are in there somewhere, buried under 30 tickers you've never heard of and don't care about.

Scanning 600+ tickers when you already know which 30 names matter is noise, not signal.

The result is predictable: you spend time evaluating names you'll never trade, and you miss setups on names you actually follow because they didn't rank high enough in a list sorted by criteria that don't match your process. The screener is doing its job. It's just doing the wrong job.

The deeper problem is context loss. A traditional screener tells you that ticker XYZ has an RS of 92 and a tightening base. What it can't tell you is whether XYZ just reported earnings you liked, whether it's in a sector you're already overweight, or whether you passed on it last week for a reason. That context lives in your head — and it only applies to names you already know.

Watchlist-First Scanning

The fix is conceptually simple: instead of “scan the universe, then filter down to your names,” start with your names and apply the filters. Your watchlist is your universe.

This is what a custom screening preset does. You define a combination of filter criteria — RS percentile, moving average alignment, volatility compression, volume surge, distance from highs — and save it as a named preset. When you run it, the preset scans only your watchlist. Every result is a name you already have context on. The screener tells you which of your names are setting up right now.

The signal-to-noise improvement is dramatic. A traditional screener might return 45 names, of which you know 3 and care about 1. A watchlist-scoped preset returns 4 names, and you know all of them. You go from “sift through results to find something actionable” to “here are the setups forming on names I already track.”

There's a subtler benefit. Because you're only scanning your watchlist, you can run multiple presets quickly. A breakout scan, a dip-buy scan, and an earnings-mover scan against 30 names takes seconds. Against the full market, each scan is its own research session. Watchlist-first scanning turns screening from a 20-minute task into a 60-second check.

Building Your Own Scanner in 60 Seconds

TradeRegimen provides 10 curated filter dimensions. Each one targets a specific aspect of momentum setup quality. You enable the ones that matter for your pattern and set the thresholds.

The 10 Filter Dimensions

1. RS Percentile — relative strength ranking vs. the broad market (0–99). An RS ≥ 80 means the stock is outperforming 80% of the market over a trailing period. This is the single most important filter for momentum traders.
2. MA Stack— moving average alignment. Bullish means 10 EMA > 21 EMA > 50 SMA, confirming the trend is intact at every timeframe. Bearish is the inverse. Use this to filter out names that have broken trend structure.
3. Above 50 SMA— a simple binary: is the stock trading above its 50-day simple moving average? The most basic institutional support check. If it's below, institutions are likely distributing.
4. % Off 52-Week High — how far the stock has pulled back from its annual high. Within 5% = building a high-level base. Within 15% = pulling back but still in an uptrend. Beyond 25% = probably broken.
5. RVOL Surge — relative volume vs. the 20-day average. An RVOL ≥ 2.0 means the stock is trading at 2× its normal volume today. Surges flag institutional activity — someone big is doing something.
6. ATR Compression — the ratio of recent ATR to longer-term ATR. A value ≤ 0.7 means volatility has contracted significantly, which is the hallmark of a VCP (Volatility Contraction Pattern) setup. The spring is coiling.
7. Price Floor — minimum stock price. Most momentum traders set this at $10 or $15 to filter out low-priced names with erratic price action and wide spreads.
8. Base Length — minimum duration of the current consolidation in weeks. A base ≥ 3 weeks has had time to absorb overhead supply. A base ≥ 6 weeks is a mature pattern. This prevents you from chasing names that just started pulling back.
9. RS Line New High— whether the stock's relative strength line (vs. SPY) is making a new high before the price itself makes a new high. This is a classic Minervini/O'Neil confirmation signal: the stock is outperforming the market into the breakout.
10. Post-Earnings Gap — flags names that gapped up on earnings within the last 10 trading sessions. Earnings gaps are institutional endorsements — big money repricing the stock higher on fundamental news. These names often build bases just above the gap and offer low-risk entries.

You don't use all 10 at once. A typical preset uses 3–5 filters. The art is selecting the combination that matches the specific pattern you're hunting for.

Three Presets Every Momentum Trader Should Build

Here are three concrete presets that cover the core momentum playbook. Each one targets a different market situation and setup type.

Preset 1: Breakout Watch

This is the workhorse preset for CANSLIM and Minervini-style traders. It surfaces names that are coiling in a tight base with relative strength, ready to break out.

• RS Percentile: ≥ 80
• MA Stack: Bullish
• ATR Compression: ≤ 0.7
• Base Length: ≥ 3 weeks

When this preset returns results, you're looking at names that are strong relative to the market, in an uptrend at every timeframe, with volatility contracting and a consolidation that has had time to absorb supply. These are textbook breakout candidates. Your job is to set alerts at the pivot and wait.

Preset 2: Dip Buy Candidates

For traders who prefer buying pullbacks to bases rather than breakouts. This preset finds names that are still in their uptrend but have pulled back to a logical support area.

• RS Percentile: ≥ 50
• Above 50 SMA: Yes
• % Off 52-Week High: ≤ 5%

The logic: RS ≥ 50 ensures the stock is still outperforming at least half the market (not a broken leader). Above the 50 SMA confirms institutional support. Within 5% of the 52-week high means the pullback is shallow — this is a name trading near highs, not one that's been cut in half. These are your “buy the first meaningful pullback in a winning stock” candidates.

Preset 3: Earnings Movers

This preset catches the names that just received an institutional repricing event — a gap up on earnings — and are now building a base above the gap. These are some of the highest-probability setups in momentum trading.

• Post-Earnings Gap: Enabled
• RVOL Surge: ≥ 2.0

When a stock gaps up 8% on earnings with 3× normal volume, institutions are repricing it. The gap itself is not the entry — the 2–4 week base that forms just above the gap is. This preset finds the names in that window: they gapped on earnings recently and are still seeing elevated volume as the new price level gets tested.

Why Preset-Based Scanning Compounds Over Time

There's a compounding effect to watchlist-scoped presets that isn't obvious at first. Each day you run your presets, you're building a pattern recognition library in your own head. You see the same names cycle through different preset results as their setups develop.

Monday, NVDA shows up in your Dip Buy scan. Wednesday, it drops off. Friday, it appears in your Breakout Watch scan as the pullback tightens into a VCP. You're watching the setup develop in real time through the lens of your own criteria. That kind of progressive context is impossible when you're scanning the entire market and seeing different tickers every day.

Your watchlist is your edge. Your presets are how you systematically exploit it.

Over weeks and months, you start to see which presets produce your best trades. Maybe your Breakout Watch preset has an 80% hit rate but your Dip Buy preset only works in bullish regimes. That's data you can act on — and it only exists because you're running the same filters against the same names consistently.

Getting Started

TradeRegimen lets you build custom screening presets that scan your watchlist with your rules — in under 60 seconds. Every result is a name you already know and track. No market-wide noise, no unfamiliar tickers, no context switching.

Start with the three presets above. Run them daily against your watchlist. Within a week, you'll wonder how you ever screened any other way.