Top pick to buy today

Screening Filters

1. monthly_average_dollar_volume ≥ $2,000,000

   • Purpose: Ensure the stocks are sufficiently liquid and easy to trade.
   • Rationale: When you ask for a “top stock pick to buy today,” you generally want names you can enter and exit without large price slippage. A minimum average dollar volume of $2M filters out illiquid, thinly traded stocks and focuses on more established, actively traded names that are more practical for most investors.

2. moving_average_relationship: PriceAboveMA200

   • Purpose: Focus on stocks in a longer-term uptrend.
   • Rationale: The 200-day moving average is a widely followed gauge of long-term trend. Requiring price to be above the 200-day MA typically selects stocks with positive technical momentum rather than those in sustained downtrends. For a “buy today” idea, this biases the list toward technically healthier stocks rather than trying to catch falling knives.

3. is_index_component: GSPC (S&P 500), NDX (Nasdaq-100)

   • Purpose: Restrict results to large, established, benchmark components.
   • Rationale: The S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 include many of the market’s largest, most followed companies. Limiting to these indices aligns with the idea of “top picks” by emphasizing higher-quality, widely held names with better disclosure, analyst coverage, and institutional participation, rather than speculative small caps.

4. one_week_predict_return ≥ 0

   • Purpose: Tilt toward names where a short-term model is not signaling negative returns.
   • Rationale: For a “buy today” decision, this filter attempts to avoid stocks where a quantitative one-week model expects downside. Setting the minimum at zero doesn’t promise gains, but it excludes stocks with an explicitly negative short-term signal, modestly improving the probability of near-term favorable performance.

5. analyst_consensus: Strong Buy

   • Purpose: Capture stocks with very favorable Wall Street analyst sentiment.
   • Rationale: A “Strong Buy” consensus means most covering analysts rate the stock at their highest or near-highest recommendation tier. Including this filter focuses on names where professional research teams are broadly constructive on fundamentals, growth prospects, and valuation—consistent with what many people mean by “top pick.”

6. target_price_upside_potential: MoreAbovePrice

   • Purpose: Ensure meaningful upside versus current price based on analyst targets.
   • Rationale: This filter keeps stocks whose consensus target price sits materially above the current trading price. For a “buy today” idea, it’s not enough that analysts like the company; you want visible upside remaining. This helps avoid names that are already fully valued (or overvalued) relative to analyst expectations.

Why Results Match:

• The screen focuses on liquid, large, benchmark stocks (volume + index membership), appropriate for real-world “today” purchases.
• It emphasizes positive technical trends (price above 200-day) rather than weak charts.
• It incorporates both quantitative and fundamental signals: a non-negative short-term model view plus a Strong Buy consensus and upside to target prices.
• Together, these filters aim to surface a short list of high-quality, widely followed stocks with positive trends, strong analyst support, and estimated upside, which is a reasonable interpretation of what many investors mean by a “top stock pick to buy today.”