How to Use Relative Strength to Find Swing Trade Candidates

01What relative strength tells you

Relative strength (RS) is not the same as the RSI oscillator. It ranks how a stock is performing compared to the broader market — a high RS reading means the stock is outperforming, a low reading means it is lagging. Swing traders lean on it because leadership tends to persist: the strongest names entering a move are usually the ones that run furthest.

TradersLab measures RS several ways so you can read leadership across horizons. Single-timeframe RS Ratings cover 1M, 3M, 6M, and 1Y windows, a Composite RS Rating blends those timeframes into one score, and Alex's proprietary RS Rank combines multi-timeframe strength with a stock's distance from its 52-week high and low. Reading them together tells you whether strength is recent, durable, or both.

02Work top-down: sectors and themes first

Start above the individual stock. The Sectors and Sub Markets dashboard ranks the whole market through two lenses — Sectors (broad classifications like Technology, Energy, and Healthcare) and Sub-Markets (market-cap tiers from Mega-Cap down to Micro-Cap) — while Themes Lab ranks narrower narrative themes like Artificial Intelligence and Gold Miners the same way.

Each group shows a radar chart of its relative-strength rank across multiple timeframes and a return distribution that reveals whether strength is broad or concentrated in one or two names. This keeps you on the right side of rotation: strong groups rise to the top of the rankings, weak groups sink, and the Sub-Markets view tells you whether large caps or small caps are leading the tape.

03How to build a relative-strength candidate list

A repeatable, top-down workflow turns relative strength into an actionable focus list:

• •1. Rank sectors and sub-markets by performance on the Sectors and Sub Markets dashboard — and themes in Themes Lab — using the radar charts to compare relative strength across the 1M, 3M, 6M, and 1Y timeframes.
• •2. Open a strong sector or theme and review its leaders, using the return distribution to confirm broad participation rather than a one-stock move.
• •3. Check the Sub-Markets view to see whether large or small caps are leading — this frames overall risk appetite and where capital is rotating.
• •4. In the screener, add Relative Strength filters (a high Composite RS Rating or RS Rank) to surface the market's outperformers, and set Sort-by so the strongest candidates come to the front.
• •5. Confirm the trend visually — use the Mini-Charts view and its moving-average signals (10 EMA, 21 EMA, 50 SMA, 200 SMA) before acting, and send qualifying names to a watchlist.

04How TradersLab makes relative strength actionable

TradersLab pulls relative strength into one connected workflow. The relative strength tools rank stocks, sectors, and themes against the market so you can spot leadership at a glance, and the screener's Relative Strength filters — 1M/3M/6M/1Y RS Ratings, the Composite RS Rating, and RS Rank — let you isolate outperformers inside the strongest groups. From there, send matches to a watchlist to track them daily instead of rebuilding the list each session.