Scanning for the right stocks can be the difference between being profitable and not. Stock selection is one of the most important aspects of trading, in my opinion.
Nowadays, there are many good software options for this task, and TradingView is among the largest. While it lacked some scanning features before, their new scanner is actually excellent.
In this article, I will show you how I scan for swing trading stocks in TradingView and what my criteria are. Let’s dive straight into it.
In This Article:
TradingView Swing Trading Stock Scanner
1. Locate TradingView Screener
The first thing you need to do is open TradingView and look for the scanner. This depends a bit on your TradingView layout, but you can usually find it in the bottom-right corner. Click this scanner, and a new window will open.
2. Add New Filter
When you open the scanner, make sure you have selected Stock Screener in the upper left corner. You also want to make sure you are scanning the US stock market, if that’s where you want to find stocks.
Here you will see many options, and the hidden ones can be opened by clicking Add new filter. This will be required for some of the criteria I’ll list soon.
3. TradingView Stock Criteria
In the picture above, you can see what the scanner should look like when it’s ready if you choose to go with my criteria. If you can’t see the picture for some reason, here are my swing trading stock filters:
- Price > $2
- ADR > 5
- Share Volume > 1M
- Dollar Volume (Price * Vol) > 100M
- Price Above: 50 and 200 Simple Moving Average
There are many reasons I chose these criteria, and you can use them regardless of whether your account is small or large. This will get you the most liquid, strong, and momentum leaders. Let’s take a closer look at each criterion to see why I chose it.
You can also use these swing trading stock criteria in any software; you don’t need TradingView. I have other articles on this page about how to set up your scan in other screeners.
Price
The first thing you will enter in the scanner is the price. In this case, I chose a price above $2. You can choose whatever you want, but I prefer slightly higher-priced stocks, since I’ve found in my journaling that I’m more profitable trading them.
If you are a beginner, I would recommend looking at stocks priced above $3, up to $10. Go with what you feel comfortable with.
Average Daily Range (ADR)
The next thing we are going to enter is the ADR. ADR stands for Average Daily Range and measures the percentage range the stock moves each day. A higher ADR indicates the stock is volatile and has momentum. Momentum is good because it will quickly move from your stop, and you won’t get chopped up.
I usually go with stocks above 6 ADR, but it depends on how many results you are getting in your scan. If you get fewer than 50 stocks, you can lower the ADR or dollar volume to get some more results.
Volume
The share volume isn’t very important, since we have a high dollar volume criterion, but it’s still nice to have. Stocks with high share volume usually have a narrower spread and are a bit easier to trade, in my opinion. In this scan, I go for 1 million, but you can go down to 500k or something similar. Remember to check the spread the stock is trading at.
Dollar Volume
The following stock criteria is the dollar volume. The dollar volume is Price * share volume and measures the dollar value traded in the stock per day. I like stocks with high dollar volume, since it’s these stocks that the funds and institutions are interested in. You’ll get stopped out less often, and they move much more nicely.
If you get too few stocks in your scan, you can lower this slightly, but I wouldn’t recommend going below $50M in dollar volume even if you have a smaller account. Also, here, you can feel a bit what you are comfortable with.
Simple Moving Averages
The last screener filter is that the stock be above both the 50- and 200-day simple moving averages. This ensures you see only the strongest stocks in the market, since they are already in a confirmed uptrend.
However, in a bear market or a downtrending market, most of the stocks might be below these moving averages, so you may need to remove the 50 simple moving average if you don’t get any results at all.
(Optional) Revenue Growth
The last scan filter is the fundamentals of the stock: revenue growth. While I haven’t included this in the screener, it’s a big plus if the stock has a revenue growth above 30%. These types of growth stocks can make big moves because funds and institutions are interested in them.
You can trade stocks purely off technicals, but if you want to boost your trading slightly, you can also go with this scan filter.
4. Final Result
So when you have entered all of the scan filters, you should get a list like this with around 40-50 stocks. As discussed, because of the moving average filters, the number of stocks can vary widely across market cycles.
In normal bull markets, I would rather adjust the ADR or dollar volume slightly rather than the moving averages to get fewer or more results.
Last Words
I hope this scan will help you find better swing trading stocks than you did before. I’ve put many hours into experimenting with different scans, and these are the types of stocks that work well for me. Everyone is different, though, so you might be better at trading other types of stocks, and the filter is very easy to modify for your own needs.
Don’t forget to journal your trading to improve. If you have any other questions on how to scan for swing trading stocks in TradingView, feel free to leave a comment down below. You can also find me on X/twitter where I post daily charts and other trading thoughts.
