Screening Filters
Price: 5–80 USD
- Purpose: Focus on tradable, reasonably priced stocks for day trading.
- Rationale:
- Below $5 you get into penny-stock territory, which often has poor liquidity, wide spreads, and higher manipulation risk—dangerous for most day traders.
- Very high-priced stocks (e.g., $300–$1000) can tie up a lot of capital per share and make it harder to size positions flexibly.
- The $5–$80 band tends to capture many actively traded names where you can scale in/out with manageable capital and spreads.
Monthly Average Dollar Volume: ≥ $1,000,000 per day
- Purpose: Ensure strong liquidity so you can enter and exit quickly without moving the price too much.
- Rationale:
- Dollar volume (price × volume) is a better measure than share volume alone—it tells you how much money actually trades daily.
- A minimum of $1M/day helps filter out thinly traded names where fills are slow and slippage (getting worse prices than expected) can be large—both are big problems for day traders.
Relative Volume: ≥ 2
- Purpose: Highlight stocks with unusually high trading activity today.
- Rationale:
- Relative volume compares today’s volume to the stock’s average volume over a recent period (often 30 days).
- A value ≥ 2 means the stock is trading at least twice its usual volume, signaling fresh interest, often due to news, earnings, or other catalysts.
- These are the conditions where intraday moves tend to be stronger and more “tradeable” for day traders.
Moving Average Relationship: PriceAboveMA5
- Purpose: Bias the list toward stocks in a short-term upward trend.
- Rationale:
- The 5-period moving average (on intraday or daily data, depending on the screener’s setting) is a very short-term trend indicator.
- Requiring price to be above the 5-MA focuses on names where buyers are currently in control, which many day traders prefer when looking for long setups or momentum continuations.
- This avoids stocks that are currently weak or chopping sideways without direction.
5-Minute Price Change: ≥ +0.5% (min5_price_change_pct)
- Purpose: Make sure the stock is actually moving right now, not just active in volume.
- Rationale:
- A gain of at least 0.5% over the last 5 minutes indicates real short-term momentum.
- Day traders rely on these short bursts of volatility; without near-term price movement, even high-volume stocks can be poor trading vehicles.
- This filter emphasizes stocks already showing intraday strength, which can offer better intraday setups.
Why Results Match Your “Best Day Trade Stocks Today” Request
- The price band screens out penny stocks and extremely high-priced shares, leaving a practical universe for active intraday trading.
- The dollar volume and relative volume filters ensure you’re seeing highly liquid names with unusually strong activity today, which is critical for fast entries/exits and reduced slippage.
- The PriceAboveMA5 condition gives you stocks in a short-term uptrend, aligning with momentum-based day trading strategies.
- The 5-minute price change ≥ 0.5% ensures that the list contains stocks currently moving, not just theoretically interesting but inactive names.
Together, these filters are specifically tuned to surface liquid, active, and short-term trending stocks, which is exactly the type of universe day traders typically look for when asking for “best day trade stocks today.”
This list is generated based on data from one or more third party data providers. It is provided for informational purposes only by Intellectia.AI, and is not investment advice or a recommendation. Intellectia does not make any warranty or guarantee relating to the accuracy, timeliness or completeness of any third-party information, and the provision of this information does not constitute a recommendation.