# A swing trading screener for India

> A working swing-trading screen in three filters: trend, setup, trigger. How to build it for NSE stocks, which scans express each stage, and how to check the screen actually works.

Canonical: https://patternsradar.com/blog/swing-trading-screener-india

Published 2026-08-15. Related scans: https://patternsradar.com/screener/near-52-week-high.md, https://patternsradar.com/screener/inside-bar-squeeze.md, https://patternsradar.com/screener/pullback-in-uptrend.md, https://patternsradar.com/screener/above-200-dma.md, https://patternsradar.com/screener/strong-and-quiet.md

Swing trading lives in the space between a day trade and an investment: positions held for days to a few weeks, aimed at catching one leg of a move rather than the whole trend. A swing screen therefore has one job — **find stocks where the next few days are unusually likely to move in a known direction** — and almost every good one is built from the same three layers.

## Layer 1: Trend — only fish upstream

The single highest-value filter in swing trading costs one condition:

```
where close > sma(200)
```

Stocks above their 200-day average are in long-term uptrends; pullbacks in them get bought. The stricter version demands the average itself be rising — months of accumulation, not one sharp rally over a flat line — which is the prebuilt **[Above a rising 200-day average](https://patternsradar.com/screener/above-200-dma.md)** scan. This layer isn't a signal. It defines the pond.

## Layer 2: Setup — strength that has paused

Within the trend pond you want stocks that have already proven relative strength and are currently *resting* — because entering strength mid-sprint is how swing trades start underwater. Three classic shapes:

**The pullback.** Short-term washed out inside a long-term uptrend:

```
where close > sma(200) and rsi(14) < 40
```

Stocks above their 200-day rarely push RSI this low, so the list is short on most days — the point. Run it: **[Pullback in an uptrend](https://patternsradar.com/screener/pullback-in-uptrend.md)**.

**The high-tight consolidation.** Coiling just under the 52-week high with the trend intact — often a better entry than the breakout candle itself, because you are not paying for the gap or wearing the failed breaks: **[Within 3% of the 52-week high](https://patternsradar.com/screener/near-52-week-high.md)**.

**Strong but not overbought.** A three-month gainer with RSI parked mid-range — the same momentum names, caught in a pause rather than a sprint: **[Strong but not overbought](https://patternsradar.com/screener/strong-and-quiet.md)**.

## Layer 3: Trigger — the bar that starts the clock

The setup says *where*; the trigger says *when*. For swing horizons the cleanest trigger is a compression bar inside the setup — an inside bar whose entire range fits within the previous session's:

```
where pattern is inside_bar and close > sma(50) > sma(200)
```

The inside bar gives an unusually well-defined level to trade against: above its high is confirmation, below its low is invalidation, and the distance between them is your initial risk. Prebuilt: **[Inside bar in an uptrend](https://patternsradar.com/screener/inside-bar-squeeze.md)**.

## Assembling it

The layers compose in one query — this is the whole point of screening with a language rather than a form:

```
where close > sma(200)
  and sma(200) rising for 20 bars
  and rsi(14) between 40 and 55
  and pattern is inside_bar
```

Open any preset above and edit it; every condition in this guide is a line you can add or drop. The [momentum](https://patternsradar.com/scans/momentum.md) and [breakout](https://patternsradar.com/scans/breakouts.md) hubs collect the related families.

## The step everyone skips: check the screen works

Every scan page here has a hit-rate replay: run the scan on each session of the past year and measure what happened next over your holding period. For a swing screen this answers the only questions that matter — how often does the setup resolve upward within 5–10 sessions, and what does the typical failure cost? A screen that looks brilliant and tests at coin-flip odds is a story, not a system; five minutes of replay sorts one from the other before any money is involved.