Trend Template stock screener: the 8-point checklist explained

The trend template is an eight-point checklist that answers one question: is this stock in a confirmed uptrend right now. QM Screener runs it across the whole US equity market after every close as the Trend Template screen, and publishes the names that clear all eight points together with the values that cleared them. This page is the checklist, the exact threshold each point is tested at here, and what the resulting list does and does not tell you.

What the trend template checklist is

The trend template is a widely published, trend-confirmation checklist. It stacks three moving averages, asks that the slowest of them be rising, puts price above all of them, places price inside the upper part of its own 52-week range, and finishes with a relative-strength floor. Nothing in it is a chart pattern and nothing in it is a signal: every point is a measurement of where price sits relative to its own history, which is what makes the whole thing reproducible.

That is also its limit. A checklist of this kind is a filter on trend quality, not a trade. It is deliberately slow — the 200-day average and the 52-week range are long measurements — so it confirms an advance that is already established rather than catching one as it starts.

The Trend Template screen here is an implementation of those publicly documented criteria, assembled from public sources. QM Screener is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any trader, author, publisher or firm.

The 8 points, with the thresholds this screen applies

These are the rules as the code runs them. Points 1 to 5 are strict comparisons — an average exactly equal to another fails — and points 6 and 7 are at-least tests.

1. Price above the 150-day and the 200-day SMA. Both, not either. A stock below one of them is not in the kind of trend this checklist is describing, whatever the shorter averages are doing.
2. The 150-day SMA above the 200-day SMA. The first of the stacking rules: the medium-term average has to have overtaken the long-term one.
3. The 200-day SMA above its own value 22 trading days ago. The slope check, usually written as "the 200-day has been rising for at least a month". 22 trading days is that month. It is what stops a stock that is merely bouncing inside a long decline from clearing the stack.
4. The averages stacked: 50-day above 150-day above 200-day. Read as one chain, so a 50-day that has slipped under the 150-day fails even when the 150-day is still above the 200-day.
5. Price above the 50-day SMA. The short-term check, and the first one a stock usually loses when an advance stalls.
6. Price at least 30% above the 52-week low. Distance from the bottom of the range. A name still near its low may be rising, but it is early in a repair rather than in an advance.
7. Price within 25% of the 52-week high. Distance from the top of the range. The row carries this as a signed number — it is negative while price is below the high — so the rule is written in the code as "not worse than -25".
8. A three-month relative-strength percentile of 70 or better. The stock's three-month return, measured over the last 63 trading days, ranked against the rest of the screened universe and reported as a percentile from 0 to 100. SPY's own three-month return is written into the result file beside the list, so the market's number sits next to the stock's.

Three things about the run itself, which are not points on the checklist but decide what you see.

Short-history names are skipped. Points 3, 6 and 7 need about a year of bars — roughly 252 trading days — so this screen downloads a full year, and a name without that history is left out rather than failed. Recent listings are the usual case.
The list is ranked by relative strength, descending. That is this screen's default sort. Every row has already cleared the same eight rules, so the order is a ranking of strength among equals rather than a ranking of how well each one passed.
There is no near-miss list here. The momentum continuation screen keeps the names that passed everything except relative strength; this one does not. A name that missed a point is in the run's universe file with the rules it failed written on it, which is a different and more useful answer than a second list.

The dashboard adds five controls of its own on top of the passing list, declared by the screen itself and not by the page: a relative-strength cut (80, 90, 95, or a custom band you type), a distance-from-the-52-week-high cut, the setup-tag preset, a sector filter and an industry multi-select, plus a ticker search. All of them are cuts on a list that has already passed all eight points.

What the live screen shows

The passing list is a table, one row per stock, and the row is the audit trail. Each one carries the values that decided it — the relative-strength percentile, the three-month return, distance from the 50-day average, average daily range, dollar volume — plus the company name, the sector bucket the stock was mapped into and its rank inside that bucket. Every row opens a candlestick chart in place, drawn from the same end-of-day bars the screen used, so much of the checklist can be read off the picture it is describing. The chart opens with the 50-day average on it and the 200-day is one of the overlays you can switch on; the 150-day is not one of its lines.

Each row also carries a setup tag — BASE, TIGHT, TRENDING, EXTENDED or PARABOLIC — computed from three things: how tightly the 10, 20 and 50-day exponential moving averages are bunched, how far price sits from that band, and how far above the 50-day average it has run. The first two are measured in the stock's own average daily range, and so is the ten-day range that the PARABOLIC tag asks about on top of them. The tag is the part the checklist has no opinion about: it separates a name that is strong from one that is strong and ready. There is more on the tags in how to screen for momentum stocks.

Beside the passing list, the run writes a universe file holding every stock it looked at with a failed_filters entry on each — empty for a passing name, the failed rules for the rest. That is what lets a search for a stock that did not pass answer "why not" rather than "not here". Both files are rewritten once per trading day after the close.

How it differs from a DIY scanner or a proprietary rating

Against a filter builder: the thresholds above are already chosen, published and applied the same way every day, so there is nothing to configure and nothing to get subtly wrong. A scanner where you assemble the eight conditions by hand can express this checklist — and forty variations of it that look identical in the builder and are not. The trade is flexibility for reproducibility, which is the whole argument for a methodology-first screen. Compare with Finviz.

Against a proprietary rating: the relative-strength number here is a percentile rank of three-month return and nothing else. It is one published measurement over a stated window, not a composite of earnings, accumulation and rank that only its vendor can compute or explain. That makes it weaker as a summary and stronger as an input — you can reproduce it, and you can see exactly what moved it. There is no affiliation with any rating vendor, and no vendor's data is resold here. Compare with MarketSurge.

What neither comparison changes: this is end-of-day US equities only. No intraday, no fundamentals, no news, no execution.

Who it is for

Swing and position traders who work from a confirmation list. The checklist is a good fit if you want the day's candidates narrowed to names whose trend is already established, and you do your own work on entry, size and risk from there.

It is a poor fit if you are looking for the turn. A confirmation screen is not a timing one: by construction it will not show you a bottom, and in a market that has just broken it returns very few names — which is information, but not the kind a reader expecting a daily list of ideas is usually after.

How to use this in QM Screener

Open the dashboard at https://qmscreener.com/ and pick Trend Template in the screen picker at the top. The list loads on its own default sort, relative strength descending.
Cut it down. Set the distance-from-the-52-week-high control to 5 or 10 percent for the names sitting at the top of their range, and the setup filter to BASE and TIGHT for the ones that have stopped to consolidate.
Chart the survivors. Every row opens its chart in place with the 50-day average on it; the 200-day, which the checklist also tests, is one of the overlays.
Take the list with you. Export the survivors as a TradingView watchlist, a CSV, a PNG of the table or share text, or read the same result document over the HTTP API and the MCP server.

A free account — a verified email address, no card — sees the top 5 names of each screen every day and can chart them. The full list, the per-row values and the exports are $10 a month or $84 a year, each starting with a 7-day free trial. Start there, or sign in if you already have an account.

Frequently asked questions

Is this the same as the published 8-point template?

It is an implementation of the same eight publicly documented criteria, in the same order, and seven of them are arithmetic on moving averages and the 52-week range with nothing to interpret. The eighth is an approximation: relative strength here is a percentile rank of three-month return, computed inside this screen's own universe, rather than any vendor's proprietary rating. The floor is a percentile of 70, and the rank is recomputed every run.

Why does the relative-strength floor say 70 when the filter offers 80, 90, 95?

Because they are two different cuts. A percentile of 70 is the checklist's own eighth point and is applied before the list is written, so every row already clears it. The control in the dashboard is a tighter cut a reader applies on top, for the days when the passing list is long. Setting it to any value leaves the eighth point exactly where it was.

Does passing the template mean the stock is a buy?

No. The template confirms that a stock is in an established uptrend; it says nothing about whether this is a good place to enter one. It is a confirmation screen rather than a timing one, which is why every row also carries a setup tag — BASE and TIGHT are the consolidations, EXTENDED and PARABOLIC are names that have already made the move. Nothing here is financial advice.

How often does the list refresh?

Once per trading day, after the US close. The run is keyed to the newest settled session rather than to the clock, so a run started while the market is open screens the previous close instead of a partial bar, and each result file records the session it screened.

Can I export the list to TradingView?

Yes. The passing list exports as a TradingView watchlist, a CSV, a PNG of the table, or share text. Programmatically the JSON result document is the export, and an assistant can read the same list over the MCP server; both are on the docs page.