How to Screen for Swing Trade Setups

01How screening works

A screener is a filtering workflow: you stack criteria across several categories and the results update dynamically as each one is applied, shrinking a broad universe to a short list of qualifying stocks. A running match count shows how selective your setup is — too many results means the screen is too broad, too few means it is too tight.

In TradersLab the filters are grouped into logical categories — Profile, Technical, Moving Average, Volatility, Volume, Performance, Relative Strength, and Fundamental — so you can combine a liquidity floor, a moving-average trend, and a relative-strength minimum in a single screen. A Sort-by field and direction push the strongest candidates to the front.

02A step-by-step swing-trade screen

Build your scan from the top down, adding one layer of conditions at a time:

• •1. Open the Screener dashboard and set your Sort-by metric and Direction (ascending or descending) to prioritize the strongest or most extreme candidates.
• •2. Start with Profile filters — price range, market cap, and daily liquidity — to define a clean, tradable universe before any technical logic is applied.
• •3. Add trend structure with Moving Average filters: use the Bullish Moving Average Pattern (10 EMA > 21 EMA > 50 SMA > 200 SMA) for longs, or Moving Average Trend set to Advancing to confirm direction.
• •4. Layer volatility contraction to find bases — combine Price Contraction, Inside Day or Narrow Range Day, and low Relative Volatility, or stack N-Day Performance vs ATR at several lookbacks to isolate VCP-style compression.
• •5. Prioritize leaders with Relative Strength filters (a high Composite RS Rating or RS Rank), and confirm demand with Volume filters like Above Average Volume or volume above the 20-day SMA.
• •6. Watch the match count, toggle between Charts and Table view to review setups, then save the screen and send the best names to a watchlist.

03Review, save, and act on your matches

Results display two ways. The Charts view renders each match as a mini-chart with selectable timeframes (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Weekly + Daily, Monthly + Weekly) for fast visual interpretation, while the Table view lays the same matches out in a spreadsheet-style grid for detailed cross-metric comparison.

Screens are reusable. Save a promising configuration to My Screens or Favorites so it can be re-run daily, or borrow from Community Screens and the curated Alex's Screens rather than building from scratch. When you find names worth trading, use Send to Watchlist to track them, or Export the full list to CSV or Excel for outside analysis.

04How TradersLab makes screening actionable

TradersLab's screener pairs a deep filters library with a fast review-and-save loop. You stack precise, volatility-normalized criteria across eight categories, watch the live match count to keep the list actionable, review matches as mini-charts or a table, and push qualifying setups straight into a watchlist — so a proven scan becomes a daily routine instead of a manual hunt.