Momentum scanner · Method
How the momentum scanner works
It finds fast-rising stocks and crypto, checks whether each move looks genuine, then helps you size a practice trade so a wrong call costs only what you chose to risk.
Spot the movers
It compares today's trading with what is normal for each share or coin, and measures how fast the price has risen.
Check the move is genuine
Quality checks on the size of the move, volume, price, supply and a readable reason come first; the one-minute chart is read after.
Limit the risk
It sizes each practice trade from the most you choose to lose, with a get-out price at the low of the pause.
The three zones
- Passes checksAt least three quality checks pass, no more than one fails (and not the price-range check), and the chart has just completed the pullback pattern. How the checks work
- Passes the quality checks and the chart has just turned up after a pullback.
- MixedSome checks pass, but the quality is borderline, or the pullback pattern is still forming or has not been read yet. How the checks work
- The quality is borderline, or the pullback pattern is still forming.
- Fails checksThree or more checks fail, one or none pass, or the quality holds up but the pullback pattern has failed. How the checks work
- Too weak, or the move has already faded.
The zone words are the same in Simple and Pro. Pro adds the thresholds, the technical names and a denser table; it never renames anything.
Glossary
- Relative volume
- Today's trading volume divided by the stock's usual daily volume. 5× means five times busier than normal.
- Shares in issue (float)
- How many shares exist. Fewer shares means a burst of buying can move the price further. The scanner uses total shares in issue as a stand-in for the tradable float.
- Catalyst
- The reason for the move: an SEC filing, a Nasdaq trading halt, or a headline that names the company or coin.
- Pullback
- The pause after a sharp rise, when the price dips back before deciding whether to climb again.
- Retracement
- How much of the rise the pullback has given back. Under half is healthy; more than half usually means the move has failed.
- VWAP
- Volume-weighted average price: the average price paid today, weighted by how much traded at each price. Shown as "average price today".
- 9 EMA
- An exponential moving average of the last nine candles, which reacts quickly to recent prices. Shown as "recent trend".
- Topping tail
- A candle with a long upper wick: buyers pushed the price up and sellers pushed it straight back down.
- Spread
- The gap between the best buying and selling price. A wide spread makes it costly to get in and out.
- R-multiple
- A result measured in units of the amount risked. Risking $50 and making $100 is +2R; hitting the get-out price is −1R.
- Position size
- How many shares or units to buy so that, if the price falls to the get-out level, the loss equals the amount you chose to risk.
Where the data comes from: US share movers from Nasdaq's public screener, or Yahoo Finance's gainer screens when Nasdaq does not answer, live crypto prices directly from Binance with a Coinbase cross-check, and reasons from official SEC filings, Nasdaq halt notices and news headlines. A fresh scan runs every 5 minutes from 4am to 8pm New York time on weekdays and hourly otherwise; the page then keeps updating in your browser.
What this is not: a prediction machine or financial advice. It is a practice tool. Every trade here is simulated, nothing is ever bought or sold, and the aim is to learn a repeatable process before any real money is involved.
Practice only. Nothing here is financial advice and no real orders are ever placed. Your journal and settings are saved in this browser only.
The method in detail
The momentum scanner applies five quality checks to fast-rising US shares (seven to crypto pairs), reads a six-part pullback test on the one-minute chart, and sizes practice trades so that a losing trade costs a fixed amount you choose.
The method itself is a common one among small-cap day traders, and the point of the tool is that its rules are written down and applied the same way every time. In three stages, it finds the moves that look genuine, waits for a particular pause-and-resume pattern on the one-minute chart, and then sizes each practice trade so that being wrong costs a fixed amount you chose in advance. The exact thresholds the code uses are below, and every default can be changed in the filters.
The scanner began as a separate practice app called Pulseboard, and when we moved it here in October 2026 we checked it against live data before writing any of this. Its crypto prices were within 0.2% of Binance, but on Saturday 10 October the stock list still said "Live" while showing prices from an earlier session, with JZ listed at $0.83 when its last close had been $1.28.
So every row on the new version says whether its price is live, delayed or from the last session, and this page spells out exactly what each check does, so that you can tell when the tool is working from incomplete information.
The five quality checks for shares
A share has to be moving a lot, on far more volume than usual, at a price where large percentage moves are common, with a limited supply of shares, and for a reason. Each check passes or fails, or stays unknown where the data is missing, and unknown checks count as neither. A move is treated as strong when at least three checks pass and no more than one fails, and as weak when three or more fail or only one passes.
| Check | Passes when |
|---|---|
| Up a lot today | Gain of at least 10% (up to 20 points, scaled) |
| Much busier than normal | Relative volume of at least 5× the average (up to 20 points, scaled) |
| In the price range | $2 to $20 (10 points) |
| Limited supply | 20 million shares in issue or fewer (20 points) |
| Clear reason for the move | SEC filing or trading halt (30 points) or a specific news headline (5 points) |
What counts as normal
For shares, today's volume is compared with the stock's recent daily average, roughly the last one to three months depending on the data source. A common momentum rule of thumb looks for five times the 50-day average; the scanner uses the closest average its free data provides, and says "usual volume unknown" rather than guessing when there is none. Speed of rise for shares is today's percentage gain.
For crypto, recent trading is compared with what the coin's last 30 days say is normal for the same stretch of time, and you choose the stretch: the last hour catches a burst as it starts, the last 4 hours (the default) shows a developing move and the whole day shows sustained interest. Speed of rise is measured over 5 minutes, 1 hour and 24 hours.
The supply check
The supply check uses total shares in issue as a stand-in for the free float, the shares actually available to trade, because float data is not reliably available from free sources. Shares in issue are always at least as high as the float, so the check errs on the cautious side.
When the Nasdaq source is in use they are estimated from market value divided by price, and we would read the supply check on those rows with some care, because when we checked the old version on 10 October 2026 it was showing one share, AIXI, with "0m shares in issue".
The catalyst check
The catalyst check is worth the most points because the method treats a readable cause as the clearest sign that a move is genuine rather than a burst of speculation. An official source, such as an SEC filing in the last three days or a Nasdaq trading halt, counts as confirmed and scores 30.
A news headline that names the company scores only 5, and a general market round-up that happens to mention it does not count at all. We weight headlines that lightly for a reason: when we tested the old version on 10 October 2026, its news search for JZ returned a sports story about someone called JZ George.
The seven checks for crypto pairs
Crypto needs different checks because coins have no share count and no regulatory filings, and because they trade all day and night. The scanner measures activity against each pair's own 30-day average over a window you choose (the last hour, the last four hours or the whole day), and separately checks whether the most recent five-minute candle is busier than the twelve before it, which catches a move that is starting now rather than one that started this morning.
| Check | Passes when |
|---|---|
| Up a lot today | 24-hour move of at least 4% |
| Moving right now | Positive over the last 5 minutes or the last hour |
| Much busier than normal | At least 2× the 30-day average volume over the chosen window |
| Busy this very hour | Last 5-minute volume at least 1.2× the median of the previous 12 candles |
| Easy to buy and sell | Spread of 0.8% or less and at least $5m traded in 24 hours |
| Price checked on two venues | Binance and Coinbase within 1% (never fails, only passes or stays unknown) |
| Clear reason for the move | A recent headline naming the coin |
It also checks the spread and 24-hour volume so that a thinly traded pair cannot qualify on a few large trades, and compares Binance's price with Coinbase's. Without a confirmed catalyst, a crypto pair can score at most 80 out of 100.
The pullback test
A genuine momentum move rarely goes up in a straight line. More often it rises, pauses while early buyers take some profit, and then carries on if demand is still there, and the pullback test reads the last 45 one-minute candles to find that shape. It locates the high of the move and the low before it, measures how much of the rise the pause has given back, and then checks five things about the most recent candles.
| Condition | Rule |
|---|---|
| Kept most of its rise | Retracement of 50% or less of the move |
| Buyers busier than sellers | Volume on up candles at least equal to volume on down candles, last 12 candles |
| Above its average price today | Last close above VWAP |
| Above its recent trend | Last close above the 9-period EMA |
| No rejection at the top | Latest candle's upper wick is not more than half its range and longer than its body |
| Starting to climb again | Latest candle is green and its high is above the previous candle's high |
If all six conditions hold and the quality checks pass, the row is labelled Passes checks. If the pause has given back more than half the rise, or the price is below both its VWAP and its 9 EMA, the pattern has failed, and a row that passed the quality checks is labelled Fails checks. Anything in between is Mixed, usually because the pause is still going on. Before 12 candles with real price movement, the test reports too little history.
Some stock data sources only provide prices, without volume or full candles. When that happens the volume, VWAP and upper-wick checks are dropped and the page says the reading is rough, and we would treat it with extra caution.
Position-size maths
The planner starts from the amount you are willing to lose on one trade rather than from how much you want to buy. You enter that amount, the entry price and a stop price, and it works out how many shares or units make the gap between entry and stop equal to that amount.
The suggested stop is the low of the pullback, or 2% below the price if the pattern has not formed, and the target is a multiple of the risk above the entry, two times by default, with 2.5 and 3 as options.
| Value | Formula |
|---|---|
| Units | floor(risk ÷ (entry − stop)) |
| Target | entry + (entry − stop) × R |
| Planned win | units × (entry − stop) × R |
| Valid only if | entry > 0, 0 ≤ stop < entry, risk > 0 and at least 1 unit |
Worked example
- Say you set the most you will risk at $50, the entry is $5.00 and the stop is at the pullback low of $4.75.
- The risk per share is $0.25, so the size is 50 ÷ 0.25 = 200 shares, a position worth $1,000.
- At a 2R target the exit is $5.00 + 2 × $0.25 = $5.50 and a win would make $100.
- If the price hits the stop the planned loss is $50, although in a fast market the real exit can be lower.
The 2R default comes down to arithmetic: if every win pays twice what every loss costs, you break even by being right just over a third of the time, before costs, and that leaves room for a method that is wrong more often than it is right, as long as the losses really are kept to the planned size.
The practice journal
Every saved plan goes into a journal kept in your browser. A trade marked as won is recorded at its planned multiple of the risk, and one marked as lost at minus one times the risk, which keeps the record honest about the plan rather than about a lucky exit. The journal shows how many trades you have resolved, how often you were right, your average win and loss, how many of the last six weeks were positive, and a 14-day strip of wins, losses and no-trade days.
How the journal comments on the day
It also comments on the day as it goes. If your simulated losses reach the daily limit you set, it tells you the day is done, and if you give back half of a positive day it suggests that as a natural point to stop while the day is still positive.
After 10:00 New York time it notes that the busiest part of the session is over, and when you record a day with no trades it treats that as a reasonable decision. Once you have at least three resolved trades in the same hour of the day and that hour is losing money overall, the journal points that out too.
What this tool is not
It is not a prediction machine and it does not place trades. The checks and the pullback test describe what has already happened on the chart, and none of them can tell you what the next candle will do.
Momentum trading in small shares and crypto is high risk, and many people who try it lose money. We built this as a place to practise a written-down method with nothing at stake, and the fairest way to judge the method is by the journal over weeks, not by any single trade.
Key takeaways
- Shares face five quality checks and crypto pairs seven. Each check passes, fails or stays unknown when data is missing.
- The pullback test reads the last 45 one-minute candles, and all six conditions must hold before a row can be labelled Passes checks.
- Position size comes from the amount you choose to risk: units = risk ÷ (entry − stop), with a 2R target by default.
- Wins are recorded at the planned multiple and losses at −1R, so the journal tracks the plan, not lucky exits.
Questions about the method
What is VWAP and why does the scanner use it?
VWAP is the volume-weighted average price, the average price paid for every share traded so far today, weighted by how many shares changed hands at each price. Day traders use it as a rough fair-value line for the session: above it, the average buyer today is in profit, and below it the average buyer is losing. The pullback test needs the price above VWAP because a share that has dropped below the day's average price after a big rise has often run out of buyers.
What is the 9 EMA?
It is an exponential moving average of the last nine closing prices, weighted towards the most recent ones so that it reacts quickly. On a one-minute chart it tracks the short-term trend, and the pullback test treats a close above it as a sign the move is still intact and a close below both the 9 EMA and VWAP as a failed pattern.
Why do some checks show a question mark?
A question mark means the data needed for that check is not available yet, or at all, so the check counts as neither a pass nor a fail. For shares this happens most with relative volume, when the source has no average volume for a newly listed company, and with the catalyst before the news lookup has finished. For crypto the activity checks show a question mark for the first few seconds while the 30-day baseline loads, and the two-venue check stays unknown for coins that Coinbase does not list.
Why does the strategy prefer cheap shares with few shares in issue?
Those are the conditions in which a burst of buying moves the price the most. With a limited supply of shares, a sudden rush of demand from news can push the price up 30% or 100% in a session, which is what a momentum trader is looking for, and the same conditions make the falls just as fast and leave the share more exposed to halts, wide spreads and dilution when the company sells new shares. The $2 to $20 range leaves out the very cheapest shares, where spreads tend to be widest and manipulation most common, and the more expensive ones, which rarely move this far in a day. The defaults reflect the method as it is commonly taught, and you can change every one of them in the filters, with the checks and scores updating straight away.
Can I export my journal?
Yes. The export button downloads your journal entries as a JSON file, including the days you recorded as no-trade days, so you can move your full record between browsers or keep a backup. The same page can import a saved file, including one exported from the earlier Pulseboard version of the tool, and the journal is never sent to us.
Important information
Capital at risk. The value of investments can fall as well as rise and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. Educational information only, not financial advice. Read our disclaimer.