End-of-day scoring · Prices as of last close
Educational Analytics — No Financial Advice
Scanning 9,000+ Stocks & Crypto
Most traders spend more time tweaking scanner settings than actually trading. Here's the problem: you don't need 47 filters. You need five good ones. This guide gives you the exact filter values for Finviz, TradingView, and Banana Farmer, with the reasoning behind each setting so you can adjust for your own strategy.
These settings are optimized for swing and momentum traders targeting 2 to 10 day holding periods. Day traders will need tighter real-time filters, and long-term investors won't need this at all. Know your style before copying any scanner config.
The five core filters that matter for momentum scanning, the exact values to use in Finviz and TradingView, why Banana Farmer doesn't need manual settings, and how to adjust filters based on market conditions. You'll also learn the common settings mistakes that generate too many false signals.
These five filters form the foundation of any momentum scan. They eliminate illiquid stocks, penny stocks with random volatility, and names that aren't actually building momentum. Start here, then add specialty filters for your strategy. Getting these right removes about 85% of the noise from any scanner output.
This is the most important filter. Relative volume compares today's trading volume to the 20-day average. An RVOL of 1.5x means the stock is trading 50% more than usual. Something is happening. Could be accumulation, could be a catalyst building, could be smart money entering. Below 1.5x and you're looking at normal activity. Above 2.0x and something significant is likely going on. Start at 1.5x and adjust based on how many results you get.
Below $5 you're in penny stock territory where volatility is random, spreads are wide, and manipulation is common. Above $150 and the dollar moves needed for a meaningful percentage gain become unrealistic for most retail accounts. The $5 to $150 range covers the sweet spot: enough liquidity to get in and out cleanly, enough volatility for momentum plays, and enough institutional interest to validate the signals. Some traders narrow this to $10 to $80 for even cleaner results.
You need liquidity to enter and exit without moving the price against yourself. Stocks trading under 500,000 shares per day have wider spreads and more slippage. For day traders, bump this to 1 million+. For swing traders holding 3 to 5 days, 500,000 is sufficient. This filter eliminates a huge chunk of micro-cap stocks that look exciting on paper but are impossible to trade efficiently.
This is your trend filter. A stock trading above its 20-day MA is in a short-term uptrend. You want momentum in the direction of the trend, not against it. Buying a stock below its 20-day MA hoping for a bounce isn't momentum trading. It's bottom-fishing, and the odds are worse. For a more aggressive version, require price above both the 20-day and 50-day MA. For a looser scan, just the 20-day is enough.
Float is the number of shares available for public trading. Lower float means less supply, which means price moves faster when demand picks up. Stocks with floats under 100 million shares are more responsive to volume spikes. Under 50 million is better. Under 20 million and you're in low-float territory where a single catalyst can move the stock 10%+ in a day. Be careful though: very low float (under 5 million) can mean poor liquidity and extreme volatility that works against you as easily as for you.
Finviz is the most popular free screener for a reason: it has 60+ filters and a clean interface. The free version has a 15 to 20 minute data delay, which is fine for end-of-day swing trade scans. Here's how to set up the momentum scan in Finviz.
Run this scan after 4 PM ET each evening. Sort by relative volume descending to see the most active stocks first. Then manually review the top 10 to 15 results on a chart. Look for compression patterns, ascending triangles, or any of the breakout setups from our breakout guide. Finviz finds the candidates. You still need to validate the chart.
TradingView's screener has real-time data on the paid plan and near-real-time on free. The advantage over Finviz is deeper technical indicator filters and direct chart integration (click any result to open its chart). Here's the setup.
TradingView doesn't have a direct float filter in the free screener, so use market cap under $10 billion as a proxy (smaller companies generally have smaller floats). The “Relative Volume at Time” column is more accurate than end-of-day RVOL because it compares current volume to the average at the same time of day. Add columns for RSI(14) and MACD to spot overbought conditions before entering.
Banana Farmer takes a different approach. Instead of giving you 50 filter knobs to turn, the Ripeness Score algorithm applies all of the criteria above (plus social velocity, compression detection, and sector context) automatically across 9,287 assets every 15 minutes. The output is a ranked leaderboard where position #1 has the strongest convergence of momentum signals.
There's no configuration needed. The system adjusts its weighting based on market conditions automatically. In volatile markets, it emphasizes volume confirmation more heavily. In quiet markets, it weights compression patterns higher because coiling setups become the dominant signal type. You don't need to remember to change your RVOL filter from 1.5x to 2.0x when the market shifts. The algorithm handles that.
The trade-off: you have less control. If you want to scan only biotech stocks under $20 with short interest above 25%, you need Finviz or TradingView. Banana Farmer scans everything and ranks it. Some traders prefer the control of manual filters. Others prefer the “just show me what's ripe” approach. Both work. The right choice depends on how much time you want to spend configuring versus trading.
I've seen traders spend weeks perfecting scanner settings and still miss obvious setups. Here are the mistakes I see most often, and I made most of them myself before building Banana Farmer.
Adding a 6th, 7th, and 8th filter doesn't improve results. It shrinks your output to zero on most days. Five well-chosen filters with loose-to-moderate thresholds will surface better candidates than 12 tight filters that eliminate everything. If your scan returns fewer than 5 results on a normal trading day, you've over-filtered.
Filtering for “volume above 2 million” is a common beginner mistake. A stock that normally trades 10 million shares won't show unusual activity at 2 million. Relative volume (RVOL) is always more useful because it adjusts for each stock's baseline. A 1.5x RVOL on a stock with 500K average volume (750K actual) is more meaningful than 2 million shares on a stock that normally trades 5 million.
Your momentum scan might surface 20 stocks with high RVOL and rising prices. But if the S&P 500 is down 2% that day, most of those stocks are likely counter-trend bounces, not genuine momentum. Always check the market context before acting on scanner results. Momentum scores are most reliable when they align with the broader market direction.
The settings that work in a trending bull market produce garbage in a choppy sideways market. At minimum, adjust your RVOL threshold (tighter in choppy markets, looser in trends) and your price range (shift higher-quality during risk-off periods). Review your settings monthly and track whether your scan results are producing actionable setups or just noise.
Aaron Browne-Moore
Founder, Banana Farmer
I spent months tweaking Finviz settings. I had a spreadsheet with 14 different filter presets for different market conditions. Monday was “aggressive small cap,” Wednesday was “safe swing,” Friday was “pre-earnings coil.” It was exhausting and I still missed the best setups because they didn't match whatever preset I happened to be running that day.
That frustration is literally why Banana Farmer exists. I wanted a scanner where I didn't need settings. Just tell me what's showing the strongest combination of signals right now, ranked, across everything. The algorithm handles the filtering internally.
If you like configuring scanners, Finviz and TradingView are excellent tools and the settings above will get you 80% of the way there. If you'd rather skip the configuration and just see the ranked output, that's what we built.
Disclaimer: Scanner settings are starting points, not guarantees. No filter configuration will produce winning trades on its own. Past scanner performance (80% five-day win rate, +4.51% avg return across 12,450+ signals) does not guarantee future results. Always apply your own analysis to scanner output. See our full risk disclaimer.
Common questions about momentum scanner settings
Start with relative volume above 1.5x, price between $5 and $150, average daily volume above 500,000 shares, and the stock trading above its 20-day moving average. Add a float filter under 100 million shares to focus on stocks that can move fast. These five filters eliminate about 85% of the market and leave you with the names most likely to show momentum.
Free scanners like Finviz work for end-of-day swing trade setups. They have 15 to 20 minute data delays but solid filter options. For intraday momentum scanning with real-time data, you need a paid tool. Banana Farmer's free tier shows the top 3 to 5 momentum signals daily with AI scoring. For active day traders needing sub-second alerts, Trade Ideas ($89 to $254/month) or DAS Trader are the standard.
For swing trading, once per evening after market close is enough. You're looking for setups forming over days, not minutes. For day trading, run the scanner at market open and again at 10:00 AM once the initial volatility settles. Banana Farmer scores automatically every 15 minutes, so you don't need to run anything manually. Just check the leaderboard when you're ready.
Absolute volume is the total shares traded (like 2 million shares). Relative volume (RVOL) compares today's volume to the average, expressed as a ratio. A stock with 2 million shares traded when it normally does 1 million has an RVOL of 2.0x. RVOL is more useful for momentum because it detects unusual activity regardless of the stock's size. A 2.0x RVOL on any stock means something is different today.
Yes. In strong bull markets, you can loosen your relative volume filter to 1.2x because more stocks show momentum. In choppy or bearish markets, tighten it to 2.0x+ to filter out noise. Price range should also adjust: in risk-off environments, shift toward $20 to $100 range (higher quality names) and away from sub-$10 stocks where volatility becomes random rather than directional.
Banana Farmer's free tier shows today's top momentum signals (positions 3 through 5) with zero configuration. 9,287 assets scored every 15 minutes. No credit card required.
