Precision matters when you’re making decisions in seconds. Good day trading isn’t about predicting the future, it’s about stacking probabilities in your favor and executing consistently. A stock screener is one of the few tools that compress those probabilities into something workable. It filters thousands of tickers down to a shortlist where you have an edge. The difference between a messy watchlist and a refined one is the difference between reactive trades and deliberate ones.
I’ve iterated through dozens of screeners and hundreds of configurations. What follows isn’t theory from a manual. These settings and the way to chain them together come from years of scanning stocks, journaling which filters led to actual entries, and throwing out the ones that only looked good on paper. If you’re serious about day trading, treat your stock screener like a pre-market analyst that never gets tired, but give it the right instructions.
The backbone: liquidity you can exit
Every strategy falls apart if you can’t enter and exit without moving the market against yourself. Start with liquidity filters before anything technical. I prefer to define liquidity with two levers: average daily dollar volume and intraday liquidity.
Average daily dollar volume is the 30 or 60 day median of price times volume. That smooths out one-off spikes and keeps your universe consistent. For most active strategies, a floor around 20 to 50 million dollars in average dollar volume prevents the “stuck in sludge” problem, where your shares become the market. If you trade larger size, you might raise that to 100 million plus. For small accounts, 10 million can work, but expect wider spreads and slippage.
Intraday liquidity matters more than the average. In the first 30 minutes, I check relative volume and the Level 2 depth. A screener can’t read the tape for you, but it can set Relative Volume greater than 1.5 as a first pass. That tells you today’s interest is at least 50 percent above normal. On high-momentum days, I’ll push that to 2.0. That single setting trims your list to names that can actually run.
As a sanity check, use a minimum price filter. Under two dollars, spreads often jump, halts are more common, and one bad print can derail a trade. If you specialize in small caps, ignore that rule, but respect the risks. Otherwise, a price floor around three to five dollars keeps fills cleaner.
The opening drive: gaps that attract attention
Gappers are the day trader’s bread and butter because they provide pre-built narratives and order flow. For bullish momentum, I set a pre-market gap percentage greater than 2 to 3 percent, with a preference for 5 percent when broader markets are quiet. That pulls in stocks that will be on watch lists and financial TV, which amplifies flows. For mean-reversion or fade setups, a gap greater than 7 to 10 percent, especially into obvious resistance, creates asymmetric opportunities if the news doesn’t justify the move.
Pair the gap setting with pre-market volume. Pre-market volume over 100,000 shares is my baseline for mid-priced tickers. For stocks over 50 dollars, 50,000 shares can still be enough. Without pre-market participation, gaps often fill by drift, not by tradable impulses.
I keep one more guardrail: filter out stocks with scheduled liquidity events unless you’re trading those events. An earnings catalyst works for momentum, but it distorts signals for mean-reversion systems. Use an earnings date filter to exclude today’s reporters unless the plan is to trade the opening gap-and-go or post-call reversal.
Relative strength wakes up the movers
A clean scan isolates strength or weakness versus the market. I use a simple baseline: today’s Relative Strength versus the S&P 500 greater than 1.05 for longs or less than 0.95 for shorts. Many screeners have a built-in RS metric. If not, proxy it with percentage change versus the index in the last hour or the last session.
Why it matters: when markets chop, relative strength pays the bills. A stock with genuine buyers will hold VWAP while everything else leaks. I also layer a 5 day RS reading to avoid chasing names that have already run 20 percent in two days unless I’m explicitly trading continuation with tight risk. When the 5 day RS and today’s intraday RS both align, you have a live wire.
ATR-adjusted price moves to size risk sensibly
Two stocks can move 2 percent, but one might be doing its average wiggle while the other is making a material deviation. Average True Range gives context. I prefer a 14 day ATR because it’s reactive enough for day trading without overfitting to yesterday.
Use a filter like today’s range as a percentage of ATR greater than 60 to 80 percent by the first hour. It flags stocks that are moving with intent. For breakouts, add a requirement like intraday high minus opening price greater than 0.5 times ATR to find genuine thrust. This helps position sizing too. If a stock has a 2 dollar ATR, you can’t run a 10 cent stop and expect to survive noise. ATR sets the expectation for stop distance and thus your share size.
VWAP interaction for institutional footprints
Volume Weighted Average Price is more than a line. Institutions measure execution quality against it. A screener that highlights price relative to VWAP narrows your focus to names with potential sponsorship.
For long setups, use price above VWAP with pullbacks that hold within 0.5 to 1.0 percent of VWAP on low volume. For shorts, the inverse. Some screeners let you filter for number of VWAP retests or percentage of time above VWAP in the session. If yours doesn’t, combine price above VWAP with a positive cumulative intraday delta or a simple rising one minute OBV proxy. I’ve seen countless fake breakouts that fail to reclaim VWAP. Put differently, “above VWAP and holding” is not optional when buying breakouts.
Fresh daily structure beats stale ranges
Day trading thrives on edges created by new information. I filter for proximity to multi-day levels to make sure I’m trading fresh structure, not the middle of nowhere. Two that matter:
Breakout candidates: current price within 1 to 2 percent of the 20 day high, with at least three prior failed attempts in the last month. That tells you the ceiling is well watched, and a breach can squeeze shorts.
Breakdown candidates: current price within 1 to 2 percent of the 20 day low, preferably after a lower high last week. The cleaner the prior swing points, the better. Avoid stocks sitting dead center in last week’s range. You’ll spend your day donating to the spread.
I once mapped a month where I took 40 trades in the middle third of the weekly range. My win rate dropped 12 percentage points versus trades near those 20 day extremes. The market wasn’t punishing my read, it was punishing my location.
Catalyst filters that actually matter
Not all news is created equal. If your screener lumps all press releases together, you’ll get flooded with fluff. Prioritize:
Earnings with upside surprises coupled with raised guidance for momentum longs. If your tool includes EPS surprise and guidance changes, require a positive surprise over 5 percent and guidance above consensus. If those fields aren’t accessible, filter for post-earnings gaps with outlier volume and ignore generic “partnership” headlines.
Short interest over 10 to 15 percent of float amplifies moves, but only when combined with a fresh trigger like an upgrade from a tier one broker or a product approval. High short interest by itself is a graveyard of false hopes. Add a float filter too. A float under 50 million shares magnifies the squeeze dynamic, but the trade-off is that halts are more common and slippage spikes. Respect that in your position size.
For biotech and small cap land, regulatory events drive everything. If your screener includes an FDA calendar or Phase 2/3 trial milestones, set a window for upcoming decisions. Then treat those days differently. You’re either playing the news and volatility head on or you’re staying away. There’s no prize for being caught in a halt because you forgot the calendar.
Intraday momentum that sustains, not just spikes
Most screeners can identify fast movers. Fewer can distinguish between a one candle wonder and a trend intraday. Two filters help.
First, consecutive higher highs and higher lows on the 5 minute chart for at least three bars. This is crude, but it weeds out the spike-and-fade. If your screener lacks this, use a rising 9 and 20 EMA on 5 minute alignment with price above both. Second, filter for pullback depth. A retracement from intraday high that’s less than 38 percent of the prior impulse often signals demand is still in control. If your tool can’t quantify that, check for lower Bollinger Band touches on one minute without losing the 5 minute 20 EMA.
On the short side, the mirror image applies. Lower highs and lower lows, price below a declining 9 and 20 EMA on the 5 minute, and bounces that die below VWAP. There’s no need to more info overcomplicate it. The goal is sustainability, not shock.
Volatility with guardrails
Volatility is oxygen for day trading, but too much and you can’t breathe. I create a volatility corridor with two pieces: a minimum intraday range and a maximum gap or ATR multiple that I’m willing to trade.
Minimum intraday range: set a floor like 1.5 percent for large caps and 3 percent for mid caps by mid-morning. If the stock hasn’t stretched by then, it’s probably not the right battlefield for active trading.
Maximum: if a stock gaps 15 percent and has a daily ATR of 3 percent, you’re dealing with a candidate for halts and air pockets. Some traders love that. If your method relies on scaling and tight stops, you’ll get chopped or blown out. Limit your scan to gaps under 12 percent unless the plan is a fade or a catalyst follow-through with reduced size.
Account for spread too. I filter for bid-ask spread under 0.2 percent of price for liquid mid to large caps. In small caps, I accept up to 0.5 percent, but I cut size and widen stops. A sub-5 cent spread on a 10 dollar name is workable. A 30 cent spread on a 6 dollar stock will ruin your risk math.
Time of day behavior to match your playbook
A strong setup at 9:45 a.m. is not the same as one at 1:30 p.m. If your screener can segment by time, add time aware conditions.
In the first 30 minutes, I want impulsive moves with breadth confirmation. Filter for stocks making new intraday highs with relative volume above 2.0 and advancing in sync with sector ETFs. If the sector is diverging, you’re swimming upstream.
Late morning to lunch, liquidity thins. Focus on pullbacks to VWAP that hold. A filter like pullback of 0.3 to 0.6 times ATR since the morning high, price reclaiming VWAP within the last two bars, helps find second legs without the chop.
Power hour trades benefit from multi-hour bases. Scan for ranges that lasted at least 90 minutes with decreasing volume, then a volume expansion breakout in the final hour. Add a daily context filter, such as proximity to 20 day highs, to avoid breakouts into overhead supply. The idea is to trade the day’s consensus, not fight it.
The 10 core screener settings in practice
Here is a compact checklist I keep nearby when building screens from scratch:
- Liquidity baseline: average daily dollar volume above 20 to 50 million, price above 3 to 5 dollars, bid-ask spread under 0.2 percent for large caps. Relative Volume and gap: pre-market gap over 3 to 5 percent, Relative Volume above 1.5 to 2.0 by the open, pre-market volume over 100,000 shares. Relative Strength alignment: intraday RS above market for longs or below for shorts, with 5 day RS in agreement when trading continuation. ATR framing: today’s move approaching or exceeding 60 to 80 percent of 14 day ATR by mid-morning, with stops and size planned off ATR. VWAP posture: price above VWAP and holding for longs, below for shorts, with shallow pullbacks on decreasing volume.
These five create the core universe. The next five refine entries so you’re not buying noise:
- Proximity to structure: within 1 to 2 percent of 20 day highs or lows, ideally after multiple touches. Catalyst quality: earnings surprise and guidance alignment, meaningful analyst upgrades, or regulatory milestones, not generic fluff. Short interest and float: short interest above 10 to 15 percent with a float under 50 million for squeeze potential, size adjusted for risk. Intraday trend health: 5 minute higher highs and higher lows or EMA alignment, shallow retracements that hold VWAP. Time-of-day filter: opening drive momentum, midday VWAP reclaims, or power hour range breaks, matched to your playbook.
Keep the checklist simple. Complexity drifts into overfitting. The more you add, the more you risk filtering out the trades that actually pay.
How to stitch the filters into actionable scans
The order matters. Start broad, then progressively filter. A practical flow looks like this. Set your market cap or price and average dollar volume floors. This step lops off illiquid junk and spreads. Add Relative Volume and pre-market gap thresholds. Now you’re left with stocks that have both attention and movement. Layer VWAP posture right after the open. I don’t want to study a chart where price is whipping around below VWAP for a long setup. Next, apply proximity to daily structure. A stock up 4 percent that’s still in the middle of last week’s range is less interesting than one pressing a 20 day high. Finally, refine based on catalyst, short interest, or time-of-day preference.
Run this scan three times each morning. First in pre-market to build a draft watchlist. Second at the open, because overnight darlings sometimes die quickly. Third around 10:15 a.m., after opening ranges form. If a name falls off the list twice, delete it and move on. You’re curating, not collecting.
Avoid the common traps
A day trader’s worst enemy is the almost setup. On screen it looks like a clean trend with volume. In your P&L it looks like a slow bleed. Three traps show up consistently.
The “quiet pullback” without volume confirmation. A clean flag on price means nothing if volume increases on the pullback. A screener cannot perfectly gauge volume context, but you can add a condition like declining five minute volume during consolidation. If your platform lacks that, manually verify before committing capital.
The “news without numbers” headline. Partnerships and memorandums of understanding often generate opening pops. If you can’t find revenue guidance, contract size, or regulatory teeth, you’re flipping a coin. Keep those off your buying stocks list unless you’re scalping with tiny size and hard stops.
The “RS clash” between stock and sector. Strong single names can defy a weak sector for a few minutes, rarely for hours. Add a simple filter: sector ETF up on the day for long momentum screens. If the sector is red, treat longs as scalp-only.
Sizing and risk that respect the scan
Your screener suggests trades. Your risk plan validates them. ATR determines stop distance. Spread and slippage determine size. Keep a simple rule: target risk per trade as a fixed dollar amount, then derive shares as risk dollars divided by stop distance. If a scan yields a breakout candidate with a 60 cent stop and you risk 200 dollars, you take roughly 330 shares. If the spread is wide or halts are likely, cut that in half.
Use time stops in addition to price. If a breakout doesn’t move at least one third of ATR in your favor within 15 to 20 minutes, the odds of a grind or reversal increase. Your screener found the potential. The tape needs to confirm it with speed.
Adapting to market regimes
The best screening settings are regime aware. In a high volatility tape, widen your gap and relative volume thresholds to avoid getting flooded. Tighten them when volatility contracts. In a grinding bull market, favor continuation screens with RS alignment and daily highs. In a range bound market, increase the weight on mean-reversion filters: stocks extended beyond two standard deviations from VWAP or intraday moves beyond 1.2 times ATR with no catalyst, setting up for fades back to VWAP.
One summer, the S&P traded in a 2 percent monthly range. Breakouts failed more than they worked. I adjusted by dropping the 20 day high filter and favoring scans where stocks stretched 3 to 4 times their average five minute range, then stalled against prior highs. The trades shifted from buying breakouts to shorting exhaustion and buying VWAP reclaims. Same tools, different emphasis.
Workflow that keeps you honest
A good scan is only as good as the routine behind it. Keep a lightweight playbook: one screen for opening drive momentum, one for VWAP pullbacks, one for power hour range breaks, and one for mean reversion. Name them clearly. Don’t run all four at once unless you can mentally separate them.
Each afternoon, export your results and tag which filters produced entries and which were noise. If you notice that the short interest filter lured you into too many halts without follow-through, dial it back. If relative volume under 1.5 produced mostly chop, raise the threshold. Your screener should evolve with your data, not your mood.
Finally, respect the no-trade outcome. Some days, your filters return a lot of names, but none line up cleanly with your risk model. That is a result worth keeping. The goal is not to find stocks for the sake of trading, it is to find stocks that fit the plan.
A day in practice
Let’s run a quick scenario. It’s 8:40 a.m. Futures are flat. I run the pre-market scan with average dollar volume over 50 million, price above 10 dollars, pre-market gap over 3 percent, and pre-market volume over 150,000 shares. Eight names appear. Two are earnings beats with raised guidance. One is a biotech up 12 percent on a Phase 2 headline with no numbers. I park the biotech in a separate list as “speculative” and cut size if it stays.
At 9:35 a.m., I add Relative Volume over 2.0 and price above VWAP. That leaves three names. One is pressing the 20 day high. I add an ATR check: today’s move is 0.6 ATR so far, healthy but not extended. On the 5 minute, price rides above the 9 and 20 EMAs with shallow pullbacks. The sector ETF is green.
I mark the morning high and plan a buy stop a few cents above, with a stop below the last higher low, roughly 0.45 ATR away. Risk is 250 dollars per trade. That gives me a share count. When volume pushes through the prior high, the trade triggers, and the stock moves 0.3 ATR in my favor within 10 minutes. I take a partial, move stop to breakeven after a higher low holds, and let the remainder run into late morning. The stock never loses VWAP. No heroics required, just following the structure the screener highlighted.
Across the room, a friend takes the biotech, gets caught in a volatility halt, and exits with slippage that doubles his intended risk. The difference wasn’t skill, it was the quality of the screen and respect for catalyst type.
Why this approach works
Day trading is probabilistic. You need a repeatable way to find stocks that attract volume, align with broader flows, and offer clean levels to lean against. These 10 stock screener settings do not guarantee profits, they remove low-quality noise and increase the density of good opportunities. They integrate fundamentals where relevant, but keep the focus on real-time behavior: volume, price, ranges, and location.
They also force you to think in constraints. Edge comes from saying no more than from saying yes. A stock screener that returns 200 names is useless. One that hands you five aligned candidates is worth real money.
Build your screens with liquidity first, then momentum and structure, then catalysts, then time of day. Adjust thresholds for volatility and your own tolerance for heat. Keep the two lists in this article as anchors, not handcuffs. You’ll find that the more disciplined your scanning stocks routine becomes, the less you chase, the less you rely on chat rooms, and the more you trust your own tape reading.
Most traders underestimate how much their P&L improves when they stop trying to find everything and instead consistently find stocks that fit a narrow, high-probability template. A good stock screener, wired with the right settings, is the simplest way to get there.