# Short covering rally — NSE scan

> Price up while open interest drains — shorts buying back, not buyers arriving.

Canonical: https://patternsradar.com/screener/short-covering

```sift
from fno where fut_oi_change_pct < -3 and change > 1
```

A rally on falling open interest is positions closing: shorts buying back their contracts push price up without any new money committing to the upside. These moves can be fast — a squeeze is forced buying — but they end when the covering does, which is why the setup is read as a caution on chasing strength rather than an endorsement of it.

Category: [Derivatives](https://patternsradar.com/scans/derivatives.md). Default universe: top 500 NSE stocks by 20-day turnover.

The rendered page runs this scan against the latest session and can replay it across the last 250 sessions to measure its hit rate: https://patternsradar.com/screener/short-covering.