Key takeaways · 5
- The screens come from Pradeep Bonde (the trader behind the Stockbee blog) and share one premise: a stock spends most of the year going nowhere, then does its real work in a few multi-day momentum bursts. The screens find names in that state.
- They are end-of-day rank screens, not buy signals. Each one scores every name in the universe on a single ratio and hands back the strong end of the list. What you do with the list is a separate decision.
- The screens split by what they read. Two read trend persistence: Double Trouble (close against the 252-day low) and Modified Double Trouble (close against the 126-day mean). One reads acceleration: Trend Intensity 65, the 7-day mean over the 65-day mean, plus its "young" flag. Two read a same-day thrust: the 4% breakout and the dollar breakout.
- The screens overlap on purpose. A name that clears three of them at once is more interesting than one that squeaks past a single threshold, so the workflow is to union them and look at the intersection.
- In the terminal each screen is a one-word source:
dt,ti65,mdt,bo,dbo. tickerstance applies Bonde’s thresholds by default; the three ratio screens show their raw reading in the score column, and the two breakout screens report as event flags.
The momentum-burst idea
Pradeep Bonde has written the Stockbee blog for years, and the whole approach rests on one observation about how stocks actually move. A big winner does not grind higher a little every day. It sits in a range for weeks, coils, then delivers most of a month’s return in three to five sessions (the momentum burst) before going quiet again. Bonde’s conclusion was blunt: if the money is made in the bursts, screen for the bursts and ignore the rest.
That reframes what a screen is for. You are not forecasting which sleepy name will wake up next week; you are scanning tonight’s closes for names that are demonstrably moving, ranking them, and deciding which are worth a chart. The work is selection, not prediction.
Each screen in the family isolates one flavour of "moving right now." One measures how far a stock has traveled from a floor, another how fast its short-term average is pulling away from its longer one, and the last pair looks only at today’s bar. None of them care what the company does or what its earnings were; these are pure price-and-volume filters, run on end-of-day data after the close.
The family sorted by what each screen actually measures: distance from a floor, speed of the short average, or a single day’s thrust.
The two persistence screens: DT and MDT
Double Trouble asks the simplest question a momentum screen can ask: how far above its own floor is this stock? The ratio is today’s close divided by the lowest low of the trailing 252 sessions, roughly a year. A reading of 1.8 means the stock trades at 1.8 times its 52-week low, up 80% off the bottom. Bonde’s screen fires at 1.8 and up. The name has already proven it can travel a long way from where it was cheap, and it has done so within the last twelve months rather than in some distant cycle.
Modified Double Trouble keeps the same spirit but swaps the floor for a moving reference. It divides today’s close by the 126-day simple moving average, the mean price over the last six months. The bullish threshold is 1.19, so the close sits at least 19% above its own half-year average. Where Double Trouble measures distance from the single cheapest print of the year, MDT measures distance from the recent mean. A stock can clear MDT without ever having made a dramatic 52-week-low-to-high run; it just has to be extended well above where it has been trading lately.
Read together, the pair separates two things people lump into "strength." Double Trouble rewards the full-cycle move off a bottom. MDT rewards being stretched above the recent mean. A young leader six months out of an IPO base might clear MDT easily while failing Double Trouble for lack of a 252-day history; a name that doubled off last October’s low but has since drifted sideways might clear Double Trouble while sitting close to its 126-day average.
The acceleration screen: TI65
Trend Intensity 65 measures speed rather than distance. It divides the 7-day average close (AVGC7) by the 65-day average close (AVGC65). When the short average sits above the long one, the recent trend is pulling up and away from the base trend, and the ratio climbs above 1. Bonde’s bullish line is 1.05: the last week’s average price is at least 5% above the last quarter’s average. It is a compact way to say "the near term is accelerating away from the medium term" without eyeballing a moving-average stack.
TI65 carries a second, more useful reading: the "young" flag. A stock that has been strong for months will show a high TI65 that is already old news. You missed the move. The young flag checks the same ratio as it stood 25 sessions ago. If the trend had not yet turned up back then (the lagged ratio was still at or below 1.05), the current acceleration is fresh, only a few weeks old. Young TI65 names are the ones near the start of a burst rather than deep into it, which is exactly where a swing trader wants to be.
This is the screen that pairs best with the persistence pair. Double Trouble and MDT tell you a name is extended; TI65 tells you whether it is still accelerating or merely elevated. A high-Double-Trouble name with a flat, old TI65 has done its work. A high-Double-Trouble name with a young TI65 is still going.
The two thrust screens: 4% and dollar breakout
The last two screens ignore the trailing window entirely and look only at the most recent session. The 4% breakout is Bonde’s signature: a name that closed up at least 4% on the day, on volume greater than the prior session, with enough liquidity to be tradeable. Bonde’s canonical version also demands institutional participation, roughly nine million shares traded, on the reasoning that a 4% jump on light volume is noise while a 4% jump on a heavy tape is a footprint. It is the raw event that starts most momentum bursts: a single high-volume up day.
The dollar breakout is the plainer cousin. It measures today’s close minus today’s open (the candle body) in raw dollars, and flags names where that push cleared about 90 cents. The 4% breakout scales to the stock’s price; the dollar breakout does not. It is a fixed 90-cent floor no matter what percent that represents, which makes it a different lens on the same day rather than a better one, and one that reads very differently at $12 than at $400.
Both are same-day screens, which is their strength and their weakness. They catch the thrust on the day it happens, before a trailing average has had time to register it, and they also fire on one-day spikes that go nowhere. Think of them as the trigger layer of the family: the persistence and acceleration screens tell you a name has been strong for weeks, and a breakout day tells you it just put a decisive session on top of that.
Why you run them as a set
No single screen here is meant to stand alone. Each isolates one property and goes blind to the rest. Double Trouble finds names extended off a low but says nothing about whether they are still moving; TI65 finds acceleration but fires on names that have not traveled far. And a breakout day, forceful as it is, can be a one-session head-fake. The screens were built to be layered.
The natural workflow is to union several of them and study the overlap. A name that shows up on Double Trouble, a young TI65, and a 4% breakout on the same night is extended, accelerating, and just thrust: three independent reads that agree. That is a materially stronger candidate than one scraping past a single threshold. The overlap is the signal; the individual lists are the ingredients.
Bonde also runs the screens in reverse, as an anticipation tool. A stock that is strong on the persistence and acceleration screens but barely moved today (a change of roughly 1% either way) has not thrust yet. Those are the names to stage on a watchlist and wait on, rather than chase once the breakout has already fired. Loaded but not yet gone off is a different, earlier setup than already moving, and the screens find both.
The intersection, not any single list, is the read. A name clearing three screens at once is stronger than one scraping past a single line.
Where the screens mislead
A trailing window cuts both ways. Double Trouble needs 252 sessions of history, so a genuinely strong new issue is invisible to it for its first year regardless of how far it has run. MDT and TI65 need shorter windows but still return nothing on names too new to fill them. If a screen shows no result on a name you know is moving, check whether it simply lacks the history the ratio requires.
The persistence screens can also be fooled by the shape of a decline. A ratio built on a 252-day low will read high for a stock that spiked and has been falling for months, because the denominator is still last year’s bottom. That is one reason tickerstance leans on the acceleration and breakout reads, and on relative strength, rather than trusting a persistence ratio in isolation. An extended reading and a fresh, young acceleration are a much better pairing than either alone.
The thrust screens fire on one-day events, and plenty of 4% up days are the last gasp of a move rather than the first push of a new one. A breakout out of a long quiet base is a different animal from a breakout after a name has already run 40%. The screens cannot tell those apart on their own; the chart and the market regime are what settle it.
How tickerstance computes them
Each screen is a one-word source in the terminal. dt returns close over the 252-day low at 1.8 or more; mdt, close over the 126-day average from 1.19; ti65, the 7-over-65 average ratio from 1.05, with the young flag beside it. The last two are same-day events rather than ratios: bo flags a 4% up-close on rising volume above a liquidity floor, and dbo flags a close-minus-open of at least 90 cents. Every threshold lives in one place in the codebase, so the terminal defaults and the underlying metrics cannot drift apart.
The three ratio screens show their raw reading in the score column rather than a bare pass or fail, so you can tell how far past the line a name sits: a Double Trouble of 2.4 is a different animal from one at 1.82. The two breakout screens are flags. bo is a yes-or-no 4%-day marker, and the row carries the Double Trouble ratio as its score; dbo shows the raw close-minus-open in dollars. Any of them tightens inline, as in dt rs>90. The more useful move is to combine them: (dt or ti65 or mdt) | overlap unions the three and shows the intersection, and 1d>-1 1d<1 on top of that leaves the names that are loaded but have not gone off yet.
None of this touches Stance. Stance is the weather report: what kind of market you are standing in. The screens are the hunt inside that weather, run on separate data and separate surfaces, so nothing a screen prints can move the regime read and nothing the regime prints filters a screen. Weather first, then names.
Frequently asked questions
What are the Stockbee momentum screens?
A family of end-of-day momentum filters popularised by Pradeep Bonde on the Stockbee blog. The core screens are Double Trouble (close vs the 252-day low), Modified Double Trouble (close vs the 126-day average), Trend Intensity 65 (7-day average over 65-day average), and two same-day breakout screens (a 4% up-close on volume, and a dollar-range expansion). Each ranks the universe on a single ratio; the workflow is to run several and study the overlap.
Who is Pradeep Bonde?
The trader and educator behind the Stockbee blog, which he has run for years. His approach centres on the "momentum burst" (the idea that a stock delivers most of its return in a few short, high-volume moves) and the screens are the tools he built to find names inside those bursts on end-of-day data.
What is the difference between Double Trouble and Modified Double Trouble?
Double Trouble divides today’s close by the lowest low of the last 252 sessions and fires at 1.8, so it measures the full move off a 52-week floor. Modified Double Trouble divides the close by the 126-day simple moving average and fires at 1.19, so it measures how far the stock is stretched above its recent six-month mean. A name can clear one without clearing the other.
What does TI65 measure, and what is the "young" flag?
Trend Intensity 65 is the 7-day average close divided by the 65-day average close; a reading above 1.05 means the short-term trend is accelerating at least 5% ahead of the medium-term trend. The "young" flag checks the same ratio 25 sessions ago: if the trend had not yet turned up then, the current acceleration is only a few weeks old, which is where a swing trader wants to catch it rather than late in the move.
What is a 4% breakout in the Stockbee method?
A stock that closed up at least 4% on the day, on volume greater than the prior session, with enough liquidity to trade. Bonde’s canonical version also wants roughly nine million shares to confirm institutional participation. It is the raw high-volume up day that tends to start a momentum burst. The dollar breakout is a related same-day screen that measures the close-minus-open range in raw dollars instead of percent.
Why run several momentum screens instead of one?
Because each screen is half-blind and the others fill the gap. Persistence tells you a stock is extended but not whether it is still moving; acceleration tells you it is still moving but not how far it has come; a breakout day is a forceful bar that may or may not last. A name that clears three at once (distance, speed, and a same-day push all agreeing) is a much stronger candidate than one scraping past a single line. That agreement is the read.
Are these screens buy signals?
No. They are rank screens that report which names are moving; they do not tell you to buy anything. Whether a screened name is a trade depends on its base structure, the market regime, your risk, and your plan. tickerstance reports the conditions and leaves the decision to you.
How does tickerstance run the Stockbee screens?
Each is a one-word terminal source (dt, ti65, mdt, bo, dbo) applying Bonde’s thresholds by default. The three ratio screens show their raw reading in the score column; the two breakout screens report as event flags. Filter any of them inline (for example dt rs>90), or union them and study the intersection with (dt or ti65 or mdt) | overlap. Add 1d>-1 1d<1 to that and you are left with names that are strong on the trend but sat still today.