Best stock today

Screening Filters

1. Market Cap ≥ $300M ('market_cap': {'min': '300000000'})

   • Purpose: Focus on established, more liquid companies rather than tiny micro-caps.
   • Rationale:
     • The “best-performing stock” on a raw % basis is often an illiquid micro-cap that moved on a single trade or news spike, which may not be investable or relevant.
     • By setting a minimum market cap, we tilt the search toward companies where big moves reflect broader market interest, not just random price jumps.

2. Share Price ≥ $1 ('price': {'min': '1'})

   • Purpose: Exclude penny stocks and distressed names.
   • Rationale:
     • Stocks under $1 are often at risk of delisting, highly speculative, and can show extreme percentage moves on tiny price changes (e.g., $0.20 → $0.30 is +50%).
     • Filtering out sub-$1 shares helps ensure the “best-performing” names are more meaningful, not just technical penny stock fluctuations.

3. Average Daily Volume ≥ 500,000 ('volume': {'min': '500000'})

   • Purpose: Ensure results are liquid and actively traded.
   • Rationale:
     • A “best-performing” stock that trades only a few thousand shares is not very actionable; spreads can be wide and prices easy to manipulate.
     • A 500k+ volume floor focuses on names with strong trading interest, where today’s move is backed by real participation.

4. US Major Exchanges Only ('list_exchange': ['XNYS', 'XNAS', 'XASE'])

   • Purpose: Limit the universe to primary US listed stocks.
   • Rationale:
     • Your question is about the “US market,” which typically means NYSE (XNYS), Nasdaq (XNAS), and NYSE American (XASE).
     • Excluding OTC and foreign minor exchanges keeps the search aligned with mainstream US-listed equities, where data quality and regulation are stronger.

5. Today’s Price Change ≥ +10% ('price_change_pct': {'min': '10'})

   • Purpose: Capture top gainers for today’s session.
   • Rationale:
     • “Best-performing” in a daily context is usually interpreted as the largest positive percentage price change today.
     • A 10% minimum price jump is a high bar that isolates strong movers; from this set, you can then rank by highest % gain to find the single top performer or top few.

Why Results Match Your Question

• The exchange filter ensures we’re only looking at US-listed stocks, directly matching your “US market” requirement.
• The price change ≥ 10% filter targets stocks that are clearly among today’s strongest performers by percentage gain.
• The market cap, price, and volume filters refine the list so that the “best-performing” stocks are:
  • Large enough to be meaningful (not micro-caps),
  • Out of penny-stock territory,
  • And liquid enough to be realistically tradable.

Together, these filters produce a focused list of credible, actively traded US stocks that are among the top performers today, from which the actual “best-performing” (highest % gainer) can be identified.