Rate of change (ROC)
Rate of change is the percentage difference between today's price and the price 10 sessions ago. It is the rawest momentum measure on the site, with no smoothing and no transformation between price and reading.
`roc` answers one arithmetic question: today's close against the close 10 sessions ago, as a percentage. A reading of 10 means the stock is up 10% in two trading weeks. There is no smoothing, no range-scaling, no averaging, which is exactly its character. RSI and the stochastic turn momentum into a bounded index. ROC reports it.
Its directness makes it a clean acceleration finder on daily data. Suggested thresholds are 0, 5 and 10: above zero is simple two-week strength, above 10 is genuine acceleration. Because a fast raw measure hands you stocks at their most extended, the standard pairing is a slow filter. The Rate of change leaders scan runs `roc > 10` with `rsi(14) < 70` and a 50-day check, letting ROC find the acceleration while the slower conditions confirm it has not already gone vertical.
The known artifact is the drop-off effect. Because ROC compares against exactly one bar rather than an average of the window, a single large day entering or leaving the 10-bar span moves the reading sharply on a session where nothing new happened at all. A stock that spiked 8% eleven sessions ago sees its ROC fall today whatever it does. ROC is also unbounded. A high reading is therefore relative to each stock's volatility, and a quiet large-cap at ROC 10 is not the same event as a smallcap at ROC 10.
In Sift
Written as roc — a percentage over 10 bars; positive means price is up on two weeks ago. A working scan — Two-week acceleration that has not yet gone vertical:
where roc > 10 and rsi(14) < 701
of the 500 most-traded NSE stocks match today, as of 6 Oct 2026
Scans that use it
Prebuilt scans in the library whose query reads this value — each with a hit-rate replay over the last 250 sessions.
Common questions
What is a good ROC value?
On the 10-bar setting used here, above 0 means two-week strength, while 5 and 10 are the common thresholds for meaningful acceleration. ROC is unbounded and unnormalised, though, so the same reading means different things in a quiet large-cap and a volatile smallcap. Pair it with a trend or RSI condition.
How is ROC different from RSI?
ROC is raw: the percentage change over 10 bars and nothing else. RSI transforms the same underlying price changes into a smoothed 0-100 index of how one-sided recent sessions have been. ROC reacts instantly and has no memory beyond its window. RSI is slower and bounded, which makes its readings comparable across stocks. They pair well precisely because they differ.