Key takeaways · 6
- Earnings acceleration is a rising growth rate: this quarter growing faster than last quarter, not just growing. Studies of historical market winners keep finding the acceleration, not the absolute level, near the start of the move.
- Screening for it requires fields most free tools do not carry: quarter-over-quarter growth streaks, the change in year-over-year growth (the inflection), and records set against a multi-year history.
- The tickerstance terminal exposes those as ordinary screen fields.
screen eps_up_q>=6 sales_yoy>25 fund>=85 rs>90finds names with a long streak of rising EPS, real sales growth, top fundamentals, and strong price relative strength, all at once. - Adding
| metrics fundamentalsreshapes the result through a fundamentals lens, showing the underlying EPS and revenue growth, margins, and a verdict for each name. - Every fundamental field is point-in-time honest: the screen uses only data that was actually filed as of each date, so a backtest of the screen would not be able to see numbers that had not been reported yet.
- A tight result is a feature. When only a handful of names clear a strict acceleration bar, that scarcity is information, not a bug in the screen.
Growth is a level; acceleration is a change
Most fundamental screens filter on a level: earnings up 25%, revenue up 20%, a price-to-earnings ratio below some threshold. Those are useful, but they miss the thing that studies of big winners keep pointing at. It is not that the winners had high growth. It is that their growth rate was rising into the move.
William O'Neil's CANSLIM built two of its letters on this (C for accelerating current quarterly earnings, A for annual growth), and his model-book studies found the sharpest acceleration in the quarters just before the biggest advances. Academic finance reached the same place from the other direction, naming it post-earnings-announcement drift: stocks whose growth rate is improving tend to keep outperforming for months. The common thread is the second derivative: a company going from 20% to 45% growth is telling you something a company holding steady at 45% is not.
The practical problem is that acceleration is genuinely hard to screen for. Most retail tools give you the level (this quarter's growth) but not the change in the level (whether that growth rate is rising or falling), and almost none give you the streak (how many quarters in a row the trend has held). Screening for the inflection needs fields the level-based tools simply do not carry.
The fields that make acceleration screenable
tickerstance carries a set of point-in-time fundamental fields built specifically for this, and they fall into a few families. Streaks count consecutive quarters of a condition: EPS up for six straight quarters, revenue up for eight, profitability sustained, free cash flow positive. A streak is the terminal's way of expressing durability, a growth trend that has held rather than a single good quarter.
Inflections measure the change in the growth rate itself. The year-over-year EPS-growth delta, expressed in percentage points, is literally the acceleration: it is this period's growth rate minus the prior comparable rate, so a positive number means the company is growing faster than it was, and a negative one means it is decelerating even if it is still growing. The same exists for sales. These fields are the screenable form of the second derivative that the winner studies keep circling.
Records and presence round it out. A flag for a trailing-twelve-month EPS or revenue at a multi-year high tells you the company is not just growing but setting records against its own history. Presence flags (has revenue, is profitable, pays a dividend, is free-cash-flow positive) let you require the basics before you start reading growth rates, so you are not fooled by a triple-digit growth number sitting on top of no actual profit.
One screen for the inflection: streak, growth, strength
Put those fields together and a single line finds acceleration with quality underneath it. screen eps_up_q>=6 sales_yoy>25 fund>=85 rs>90 reads as one sentence: earnings per share have risen for at least six straight quarters, sales are growing more than 25% year over year, the composite fundamental rank is 85 or better out of 99, and the stock's price relative strength is above 90. That is a durable earnings streak, real top-line growth, strong fundamentals, and a market that is already voting for the stock, all required at once.
The striking thing is usually how few names clear the bar. On the session below, the whole 5,500-name market narrows to four: Micron, SiTime, Travere Therapeutics, and BrightSpring Health. That scarcity is the point: the intersection of a long earnings streak, strong sales growth, elite fundamentals, and price leadership is rare, and rare is exactly what you hunt for at the start of a major move.
Requiring rs>90 alongside the fundamentals is what makes the screen work. You are not just finding companies whose numbers are accelerating; you are finding the ones the market has already begun to notice. O'Neil's argument was that the two together, a fundamental catalyst confirmed by price leadership, is what precedes the biggest moves, and the screen encodes that pairing directly.
screen eps_up_q>=6 sales_yoy>25 fund>=85 rs>90 on the 2026-07-02 close. The whole 5,500-name universe narrows to four stocks that clear a long EPS streak, real sales growth, elite fundamentals and price leadership at once. The scarcity is the signal.Reading the growth underneath: | metrics fundamentals
The default screen result shows price-side columns. To see the growth that got each name onto the list, reshape the same query through the fundamentals lens: append | metrics fundamentals and the table re-columns to show sector and industry, the composite fundamental rank and its within-sector rank, a verdict label, and the actual growth numbers: year-over-year EPS growth, year-over-year sales growth, trailing-twelve-month EPS and revenue, and margins.
The numbers make the acceleration concrete. On the same four names, read on the 2026-07-02 close, Micron's trailing EPS growth reads in the four figures year over year with sales up more than 300%, a genuine cyclical inflection off a trough; BrightSpring shows EPS up more than 300% on 25% sales growth; SiTime pairs 80%-plus EPS growth with 88% sales growth. Whatever you make of any single name, the lens shows you the engine behind the screen rather than asking you to take the rank on faith. The verdict column ("Leader," "Strong," and so on) is a derived label from the composite, not a recommendation.
You can also select the acceleration fields directly. Asking for the EPS-up streak, the year-over-year growth, and the year-over-year growth delta side by side shows the streak length next to the inflection, so you can see not just that a company is growing but whether the growth rate itself is still rising. That delta, positive for acceleration and negative for deceleration, is the single field that most directly answers "is this speeding up or slowing down."
| metrics fundamentals re-columns the same screen to show the growth underneath: sector and industry, the fundamental rank and verdict, then year-over-year EPS and sales growth beside trailing EPS and revenue. Micron's +1,368% EPS and +346% sales growth are the cyclical inflection the screen was built to find.Why point-in-time honesty matters
A fundamental screen is only trustworthy if it uses the numbers that were actually known at the time. tickerstance's fundamental fields are point-in-time: each figure is tied to when it was filed, so a reading for any past date reflects only what had been reported by then. A company that later restated a quarter, or reported a blowout after the close, does not retroactively appear in the screen for the days before that information existed.
This matters most the moment you try to reason about whether a screen "works." If the data could see the future (filling in a quarter's earnings on the day the quarter ended rather than the day it was reported weeks later), any backtest would be quietly cheating, and the screen would look far more prescient than it could ever be in real time. Point-in-time data removes that lookahead. The screen you run tonight uses exactly the information a trader could have acted on, which is the only honest basis for trusting it going forward.
Scarcity versus breadth: loosening the screen
The strict screen returned four names, and that scarcity is the signal, not a failure. When you want a broader watchlist, loosen the thresholds and the count opens up. screen eps_up_q>=4 sales_yoy>15 fund>=70 rs>80 asks for a shorter earnings streak, softer sales growth, and lower fundamental and relative-strength floors, and the same universe now returns dozens of names. The trade is explicit: you are exchanging scarcity for breadth, a longer list of merely-growing names for a shorter list of accelerating leaders.
screen eps_up_q>=4 sales_yoy>15 fund>=70 rs>80 returns 63 names where the strict version returned four. Scarcity versus breadth is a dial you set, not a limitation.Reading it honestly
A fundamentals screen is a filter, not a verdict. It narrows the universe to the names that satisfy a set of conditions you chose; it does not rank them by how good an investment they are, and it certainly does not tell you to buy them. The verdict labels and composite ranks are derived measurements, the same way a percentile is a measurement, and the terminal is careful never to cross from "these numbers are accelerating" into "therefore, act."
One practical caution: acceleration off a trough can flatter a number. A company swinging from a tiny loss to a small profit posts an enormous percentage growth that says more about the low base than about a durable trend, which is why the streak fields and the multi-year records matter as a sanity check.
Where to screen for it
The fundamental streak, inflection, and record fields, and the ability to screen and reshape on them, live in the tickerstance terminal. The interactive terminal is a Pro feature at $28 a month, and the fundamental data is deliberately point-in-time and free of any "buy this" framing. It gives you roughly ninety queryable fields, including the acceleration set, so you can ask the precise version of "whose growth is inflecting" that your strategy cares about.
Open the terminal and try screen eps_up_q>=6 sales_yoy>25 fund>=85 rs>90, then append | metrics fundamentals to see the growth underneath the ranks. Tighten or loosen the thresholds until the screen returns a watchlist you can actually work through, and remember that a short list of accelerating leaders is usually a better starting point than a long list of merely growing ones.
Frequently asked questions
What is earnings acceleration?
Earnings acceleration is a rising growth rate: a company growing its earnings faster this quarter than it did last quarter, rather than simply growing. It is the second derivative of earnings, the change in the growth rate, not the growth level itself. Studies of the market's biggest historical winners repeatedly find the sharpest acceleration in the quarters just before the major advance.
How do you screen for accelerating earnings?
You need fields for the change in growth, not just the level. In the tickerstance terminal, screen eps_up_q>=6 sales_yoy>25 fund>=85 rs>90 requires at least six consecutive quarters of rising EPS, more than 25% year-over-year sales growth, a composite fundamental rank of 85 or better, and a price relative-strength rank above 90. The year-over-year growth delta field measures the acceleration directly: positive means the growth rate is rising, negative means it is slowing.
What is the difference between earnings growth and earnings acceleration?
Growth is the level (earnings up 30% year over year). Acceleration is the change in that level (this quarter up 30% after last quarter was up 15%, so the growth rate itself is rising). A company can have high growth that is decelerating, or moderate growth that is accelerating. The winner studies tend to find the acceleration, the rising rate, near the start of a major move, which is why screening for the change matters as much as screening for the level.
What does the C in CANSLIM stand for?
In William O'Neil's CANSLIM framework the C stands for current quarterly earnings: earnings per share up sharply versus the same quarter a year earlier, with the growth rate accelerating. O'Neil's studies of historical market winners found the sharpest quarterly acceleration in the quarters just before the biggest advances, which is why screening for a rising growth rate, not just a high one, is the point.
Why does a strict earnings screen return only a few names?
Because the intersection of a long earnings streak, strong sales growth, elite fundamentals, and price leadership is genuinely rare. On a 5,500-stock universe, a strict acceleration screen commonly returns a handful of names, and that scarcity is information: it tells you how uncommon the full set of conditions is right now. If you want a broader watchlist you can loosen the thresholds, trading scarcity for breadth.
What does point-in-time fundamental data mean?
Point-in-time data ties every fundamental figure to when it was actually filed, so a reading for any past date reflects only what had been reported by then. It prevents lookahead bias: a screen run against a historical date cannot see a quarter's earnings before the day they were reported. That makes any evaluation of the screen honest, because it uses only the information a trader could have acted on at the time.
How do I see the growth numbers behind the screen?
Append | metrics fundamentals to the screen. It reshapes the same result through a fundamentals lens, showing sector and industry, the composite fundamental rank and its within-sector rank, a verdict label, and the underlying growth: year-over-year EPS and sales growth, trailing-twelve-month EPS and revenue, and margins. You can also select individual acceleration fields, like the EPS-up streak next to the year-over-year growth delta.
Does the terminal tell me which accelerating stocks to buy?
No. A fundamentals screen is a filter that narrows the universe to names meeting conditions you chose; it does not rank them as investments or tell you to buy them. The verdict labels and composite ranks are derived measurements, and the terminal deliberately stops at reporting the numbers. What you do with a list of accelerating leaders is your decision.