📖 Signal Guide
The exact rules behind every badge on the board, written down.
🏆Cup & Handle
William O'Neil's classic pattern — a rounded cup-shaped correction, a short pullback (handle), then a potential breakout.
- ·Prior uptrend: ≥30% advance before the cup
- ·Cup: 12–35% deep, 7–65 weeks, rims within ~5% (U-shape, not a V)
- ·Handle: shallow pullback (≤12%) near the right rim
- ·Breakout: close above pivot with volume ≥1.4× average
- ·Stages: forming → handle → breakout
The cup outline, pivot and handle are drawn on the chart. Tested back to 2018, breakouts beat the market on average but won less than half the time: small frequent losses, occasional big wins. Without a stop-loss rule the pattern means little.
💪Strong Buy (52w high × volume)
A combo badge: near/at a 52-week high with a volume surge on the same day — price and flow agreeing.
- ·The 52-week-high badge (near or breakout) and
- ·the volume badge (surge or breakout) fire on the same day
Volume by itself also fires at tops, which made it unreliable. This badge keeps only the volume that shows up near new highs. Even so, over the long run the combo was about market-level. Strong name, but read it as "price and flow moved on the same day", not as a buy call.
🚀52-Week High
A stock printing a new 1-year high (breakout) or within 95% of it (near).
- ·Breakout: new 52w high within the last 3 sessions, close within 3% of the high (spike-fades excluded)
- ·Near: close at 95–100% of the 52w high
- ·Requires ≥200 sessions of history
Counter-intuitively, new highs face no overhead supply, which is why trend-followers watch them. The 52-week high level is drawn on the chart.
📈Golden / Death Cross
Short MA crossing above a long MA is a golden cross; crossing below is a death cross.
- ·Primary pair: 50/200-day (the classic long-trend signal)
- ·Secondary: 5/20-day (short-term momentum)
- ·"Fresh" on the board = within 20 sessions of the cross
Moving averages lag — by the cross, much of the move has often happened. Treat it as trend confirmation; short pullbacks right after a cross are common. The two MAs and the cross point are drawn on the chart.
📊MA Alignment
Short-to-long moving averages stacked in order — the textbook shape of an uptrend.
- ·SMA5 > SMA20 > SMA60 > SMA120, with close ≥ SMA5
- ·Score (0–1) measures how firmly the MAs are spread
- ·"New" shows how many days since alignment began
Alignment means the trend is already underway. Fresh alignment (0–3 days) differs from a long-standing one; the board highlights fresh entries. The MA fan (20/60/120) is drawn on the chart.
🎯VCP (Volatility Contraction)
Mark Minervini's pattern — swings tighten progressively, coiling near the highs.
- ·Last 60 sessions split in 3 — each leg’s range must shrink
- ·Tight: final range <12%, within 90% of the base high, volume drying up
- ·Breakout: clearing the base high (pivot) after contraction
Contraction suggests sellers are exhausted. The base shading and pivot line are drawn on the chart. It often appears alongside cup-and-handle (sibling patterns).
🔥Volume Surge
Volume ≥1.8× the 20-day average — money moved today.
- ·Surge: volume ≥ 1.8× 20-day average
- ·Breakout: surge + new 20-day high + close within 98% of the high
Volume cuts both ways: it spikes when buyers accumulate at bottoms and just as much when sellers unload at tops. In our tests volume alone was not trustworthy, so the board does not count it as a signal by itself. It matters when it overlaps a new high (Strong Buy). The volume panel shows the surge bar against its average.
🔄RSI Oversold Rebound
A deeply oversold stock just turning back up — a mean-reversion pattern, unlike our trend signals.
- ·RSI(14): 14-day Relative Strength Index (Wilder smoothing)
- ·Oversold: current RSI ≤ 30
- ·Rebound: RSI dipped ≤ 28 within the last 5 days and is now recovering into the 30–42 zone
While our other signals catch things that already ran up, this catches things that fell too far and are turning back. In our 8-year backtest it held a modest edge (20-day +2.6% vs market +1.0%) — but where matters: that edge is concentrated in cold (beaten-down) markets, where it held across two independent periods, while in hot markets it actually lost. That is mean reversion in a nutshell. Read it as a cold-market lens (the counterpart to Strong Buy, which works in neutral temperature). Check the RSI panel at the bottom of the chart and read it alongside market temperature.
🎈Bollinger Band Breakout
A stock whose volatility tightened (bands squeezed) breaking out above the upper band — compressed energy releasing.
- ·Bollinger Bands: 20-day moving average ± 2 standard deviations (upper/mid/lower)
- ·Squeeze: band width in the bottom 25th percentile of the last 6 months
- ·Breakout: close above the upper band (%B ≥ 1) while squeezed
A cousin of VCP but more intuitive — you can see the bands tighten (energy compressing) then suddenly widen and burst upward right on the chart. Volatility cycles between contraction and expansion, so a breakout after a tight squeeze can mark the start of a new trend. But upper-band breakouts do not always follow through (false breakouts are common), so they are more trustworthy when they overlap volume or a new high. Read the squeeze-and-release from the blue bands and shading.
⚡MACD Bullish Cross
Short-term momentum just turning up — the MACD line crossing above its signal line, the most popular retail momentum buy signal.
- ·MACD: 12-day EMA − 26-day EMA (gap between short and long trend)
- ·Signal line: 9-day EMA of MACD
- ·Bull cross: MACD crossing above its signal within the last 3 days. A cross below the zero line marks an earlier bottom reversal
The MACD cross is the most famous signal of all — and being popular, it fires often (10–15% of names) and whipsaws a lot. So the board keeps it as a filter and chart lens rather than a standalone homepage signal: we backtest every signal over 8 years and only light the stats card when a market-beating edge actually holds. Use it for momentum confirmation — when it overlaps a trend signal like a new high or MA alignment, read it as timing that direction just turned up. The MACD panel at the bottom of the chart shows the two lines crossing and the histogram flipping green.
🪃Disparity Mean-Reversion
Price stretched far from its average (20-day) and snapping back toward it — a rubber-band-returning-to-mean pattern.
- ·Disparity = close / 20-day moving average × 100 (100 = at the mean; below 100 = under it)
- ·Stretched: disparity ≤ 90 (10%+ below the 20-day line)
- ·Reverting: disparity dipped ≤ 85 within the last 5 days and is now recovering toward the mean (90–98)
A cousin of the RSI rebound — both are mean reversion (fell too far, turning back), but RSI is gain/loss momentum while disparity is the pure distance from the mean line. In practice the two fire together about half the time; the other half, only one catches it (which is why they are distinct lenses). And in our 8-year backtest it held a real edge, like the RSI rebound — 20-day +3.2% vs market +1.0%, win 53% (the 60-day return is larger but its win rate dips just under 50%, so only the 20-day lights the card). Mean reversion genuinely works here. But in weak markets (especially Korea) many names hang far below their mean so it fires often, so we keep it as a filter and chart lens rather than a standalone homepage signal (in strong markets like the US right now it rarely fires). Watch how far price stretches from the teal dashed mean (20-day) and then narrows.
🏅RS Rank (Relative Strength)
A 1–99 percentile of 12-month return (last quarter double-weighted) vs all stocks in the same country.
- ·IBD-style weighting: 2×3m + 6m + 9m + 12m returns
- ·Percentile within country (KR/US); 90+ = top decile
- ·Not computed for <1y history or crypto
A filter for market leaders. RS 90+ means top-10% performance in its market; see the 🏅 filter and the gauge on detail pages.
🌡Market Breadth
The market's temperature — % of stocks above their 200-day MA and % advancing today.
- ·% of stocks above the 200-day MA per market (KR/US/crypto)
- ·The ↑ number is % advancing today
- ·Colored roughly: 60%+ hot · below 40% cold
Context before reading any single signal. In cold markets breakouts fail more often — read badges together with the temperature.
⏱"Prelim" Marker
US closes are final at dawn (KST) but official adjusted data arrives in the afternoon — mornings show a public-quote patch first.
- ·Morning: yesterday’s US close patched from public quotes ("US prelim" in the header)
- ·By ~14:30 KST it is replaced by official adjusted data and the marker disappears
- ·Stocks moving ±40%+ (split-like) are not patched
Differences vs official data are minimal (dividend/split adjustments), but we mark it transparently.
🌡 Strong Buy by market temperature
Same signal, different market. We split every Strong Buy event (2018–2026, costs deducted) by the market temperature that day — the share of stocks above their 200-day average — and compared each bucket to the market in the same condition. All buckets shown, including the bad ones.
| Market | Temperature | +20d vs market | +60d vs market | Win (60d) | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KR | Cold (<40%) | -2.26%p (-1.47% vs +0.79%) | -2.15%p (-0.46% vs +1.69%) | 39.6% | 502 |
| KR | Neutral (40–60%) | +5.13%p (+5.28% vs +0.15%) | +7.81%p (+8.88% vs +1.07%) | 47.8% | 364 |
| KR | Hot (>60%) | +0.05%p (+2.38% vs +2.33%) | -0.54%p (+6.77% vs +7.31%) | 48.8% | 449 |
| US | Cold (<40%) | -3.02%p (-1.24% vs +1.78%) | -4.29%p (+1.22% vs +5.51%) | 52.8% | 199 |
| US | Neutral (40–60%) | +0.07%p (+0.62% vs +0.55%) | +1.85%p (+3.29% vs +1.44%) | 57.3% | 839 |
| US | Hot (>60%) | +0.06%p (+0.94% vs +0.88%) | -0.42%p (+1.81% vs +2.23%) | 51.3% | 577 |
How to read it: in cold markets this signal historically lost to the market in both countries. The 40–60% band was where it earned its keep — in KR through a few big winners (win rate below half), in US through steadier 60-day wins.
Window 2018~2026, round-trip costs deducted (KR 0.45% · US 0.30% 왕복 차감). Past statistics — not a prediction, not investment advice.
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