If you looked at last week’s shortlist, this one will feel familiar.

I expected to replace quite a few names this week. The market has been choppy enough that I thought some of the longer-running trends would finally begin to break down. Instead, most of them kept going.

Seven stocks remained on the list without interruption. One returned after a brief absence, and four genuinely new names worked their way into the rankings.

That lack of change is the main story this week. Some of these stocks have slowed down, tested their moving averages, or had a rough few days, but the strongest trends are still holding together.

Here is last week’s list:

This Week at a Glance

The Shortlist

You may notice some extra information beside each chart this week.

The Trend Persistence box shows the stock’s current universe rankings and scores across each momentum period. The Returns box shows its performance over 1 day, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year.

These should make it easier to see the overall momentum behind each stock without requiring several paragraphs of explanation under every chart.

What Stood Out This Week

The Canadian banks are still holding together

I have been watching for evidence that the Canadian bank trends are beginning to break down. It looked possible recently, but so far I have been wrong.

BNS and CM remain close to their 20-day moving averages and continue ranking highly across the longer momentum periods. Last week looked more uncertain, but both seem to be settling back into the same smooth growth pattern that put them on the shortlist in the first place.

Their charts have never been explosive. That is part of what makes them notable. They have continued moving upward without many severe drawdowns or extended periods below their short-term trends, discounting March.

The established leaders are still separating themselves

Several stocks continue to pull away from the rest of the list.

SYRE remains in first place in both the 9-month and 6-month trend strategies. It reached another 52-week high of $108.14 today, although it closed down slightly from there.

ATEX is also back after I removed it last week. It had been flat for a long time and then started declining, so I thought the trend might finally be ending. The recovery came quickly enough to prove that decision premature.

I restored it using its original entry price because it remains one of the shortlist’s strongest performers. Time will tell whether that works out or not.

AIZ and ALRS have been less dramatic, but their charts continue doing what I want to see: steady gains, relatively shallow interruptions, and repeated new highs.

The new additions arrived in different ways

NESR is one of the completely new stocks this week.

Its one-year chart is choppier than several others on the list, but it makes up for that with some phenomenal growth. It has gained 321.4% over the past year and has been hanging around the momentum rankings for roughly ten months. It finally climbed high enough to earn a place on the shortlist.

PRU reached the list through a more recent surge. Its longer-term momentum is not as established, but the stock has risen more than 30% over the past three months and has spent most of that time well above its 20-day moving average.

NESR has been building momentum for months. PRU has climbed much more quickly. I will be watching whether that recent strength lasts long enough to keep PRU on the list.

The Charts

BNS is still following its 20-day moving average closely. Last week looked more uncertain, but the broader trend remains intact.

While CM is technically only showing up in the shortlist for the first time, it feels like it has been around for a while since it matches the rest of the Canadian banks that have been in and out of the top 5. The chart follows the same smooth long-term trend that tends to keep them high on the list.

NESR is another of this week’s new additions. Its chart has been more volatile than some of the other leaders, but the gains have been substantial and its momentum rankings have been improving for months.

I kept expecting SYRE to slow down. It still has not.

The stock has been in the top five since June 26 and remains first in the 9-month and 6-month strategies. It reached another 52-week high today before giving some of it back by the close.

CBL has been more of a roller coaster, but the overall direction remains upward. It reached new 52-week highs on June 10, July 1, and July 28, with each meaningful pullback eventually followed by another advance.

The 4.5% forward yield does not hurt either.

ECPG has climbed through the momentum rankings remarkably quickly over the past two months. Its recent strength has been enough to earn it a place among the higher-ranking names this week.

This was not a strong week for RPRX. It declined each day, although it opened today above last week’s closing price before giving most of that strength back.

The stock has dropped to its 50-day moving average several times over the past few weeks and recovered quickly each time. That is the main area I am watching now.

I was probably too quick to remove ATEX last week.

After spending a long time moving sideways and then beginning to decline, it looked like the trend might finally be ending. Instead, the stock has recovered rapidly and returned to the shortlist.

I restored it using its original starting price. Time will tell whether that proves justified, but the recovery was too strong to ignore.

PRU is a new addition that is surging in the 3-month strategy, for fairly obvious reasons.

The stock has climbed more than 30% over the past three months and has not come particularly close to its 20-day moving average for most of that time.

The main question now is whether this recent surge develops into a longer-lasting trend.

AIZ has been a solid listing since I added it. Evidently, the market liked its earnings. The stock jumped 7.2% today and remains one of the cleaner trends on the shortlist.

ALRS has been a mostly smooth climb, aside from the strange lows on July 30 and August 4. It is still pushing toward new highs without much deterioration in the broader trend.

HIW did not have as stellar of a week. It is down 5.8% from last week.

That was not enough to remove it from the shortlist yet (I don’t need another ATEX situation), but it is one of the stocks I will be watching more closely before next week’s update.

Closing Thoughts

The market still feels indecisive, but the shortlist does not.

When momentum begins to weaken, these updates usually become dominated by turnover. That did not happen this week. Some of these trends are showing more volatility, and a few are approaching levels that deserve closer attention, but most of the established leaders are still holding their positions.

Only a small number of new stocks have been strong enough to join them.

Next week should show whether that stability continues or whether the recent market uncertainty finally starts producing a larger rotation.

As the market continues to be quite choppy, I am seeing where the Momentum Screener strategies show their biggest weakness, and their biggest strength. Most of the market is not showing strong upward momentum right now. Stocks that had solid momentum for months are suddenly reversing course without any shift in fundamentals or news causing the change. It is just the market adjusting. However, some stocks tend to avoid the adjustments and continue to grow week after week, and those stocks are what my strategies help me find.

I have dropped many stocks across my watchlists this week, and this shortlist is no exception. However, I still have 9 returning stocks and 2 new additions to the shortlist.

If this is your first time reading a shortlist update, check out my introduction post here:

Here is last week’s shortlist:

The Shortlist

The 11 stocks fall into only 4 sectors: healthcare, financial services, real estate, and communication services.

is still growing and still ranking high across strategies.

and the other Canadian banks are still trying to decide if they want to resume their growth pattern or not.

has dropped a few points in the last week but nothing out of the ordinary for the last year so far.

Of the 11 listed stocks, has seen the most growth in the last year by far. It has been flat for the last week and has dropped out of the top 100 in the 3-month strategy, but is still ranked highly across the other 4.

continues a modest but consistent growth rate.

has had a very good last couple weeks. It is trending higher in price as well as across all 5 strategies.

is back on an upward trend after dropping a couple weeks back.

continues to lead the 3-month strategy where it has remained in 1st place for the last week. It has had rapid growth over the last 4 months since hitting its 52-week low, up 71.6%!

is also doing quite well over the last 4 months.

has had a very smooth last 4 months and is quickly climbing the ranks in the other strategies to match its high 3-month rank. This was the first new stock on the list today, although it was present a few weeks back at the beginning of July so it is not completely new.

is the other new stock. It was flat for most of the year before quickly climbing in the 3-month ranks over the last couple weeks.

The list was short enough, I decided to keep my commentary shorter and just stick every chart in the article. The charts speak for themselves much better than I can speak for them, anyway.

Despite the uncertainty in the market right now, there are still some awesome stocks with great growth, if you know where to look. If you are curious about what else might be growing smoothly right now, come try out Momentum Screener. Every subscription includes 2 months free (who knows, maybe the market will have recovered by then!) Use code SUBSTACK5 for 5% off your subscription.

If you have any questions or are curious how your favorite stock is ranking, I would love to hear from you.

Until next time!

Welcome to this week’s Momentum Shortlist update. Each week I take a look at the highest trending stocks on Momentum Screener across the 5 primary momentum trend strategies and select out my favorites. From week to week new stocks might show up and others might leave due to either dropping from the top 5 or otherwise being dropped from my watchlist.

This week’s list is a mix of familiar names continuing to hold their trends, a few names that previously dropped out of the top 5 and re-entered, and several new entrants that have recently accelerated into the highest momentum percentile. Financials remain well represented, while transportation, infrastructure, healthcare, and real estate continue to appear throughout the rankings. There were only 4 stocks that exited the list from last week.

If this is your first time reading a shortlist update, check out my introduction post here:

Here is last week’s shortlist:

The Shortlist

Many of the names that have been present for a while have started to cool off on their momentum. , , and all pulled back a couple points. They are still well above their entry point but are leveling off enough and starting to slope down more, with some in a strong negative MACD cycle. still has a slight upward slope to it but it has been slowly leveling off for a couple weeks.

is one of my favorites on the list at the moment. It has been steadily climbing for weeks without any significant drawdowns since June.

The Canadian banks that have been showing up consistently for a while all had a small pullback this week. and are still in the table but dropped out of the top 5 slightly. I expect if they resume their growth trajectory it will show back up soon.

There were 9 new names in the table this week compared to last week. Some of them had shown up previously, but there are many new and interesting stocks in the set.

The heat map in the table shows it well. There are a few stocks with some very strong 3M momentum. , , and are particularly noteworthy because their longer timeframe scores are significantly lower than the other rows. Each of these stocks dropped significantly from 12 to 3 months ago before starting a rapid climb back to their current positions.

is the last stock I will highlight. This one is ranked high in the weighted average strategy and has climbed 156% in the last year (including recovering from a significant drawdown that lasted most of 2025). The stock is on a clear path of recovery that I expect will continue for some time.

As always, these rankings are intended as a starting point for further research, not investment recommendations.

There are plenty more where these came from. Take a look through the other stocks on the list. If you want to see beyond the top 5, every subscription to Momentum Screener includes a 2-month free trial. Use code SUBSTACK5 for 5% off your subscription. You can also jump into the chat any time with questions or to discuss interesting stocks.

Until next time!

Welcome to this week’s Momentum Shortlist update. Each week I take a look at the highest trending stocks on Momentum Screener across the 5 primary momentum trend strategies and select out my favorites. From week to week new stocks might show up and others might leave due to either dropping from the top 5 or otherwise being dropped from my watchlist.

Last week’s shortlist saw a wave of turnover as market volatility reshuffled the rankings. This week was much quieter.

Most of last week’s stocks held there grounds. There were three stocks I dropped from my watchlist, 2 stocks that dropped out of the top 5, and 2 new stocks on my watchlist that entered the top 5. The remaining 10 stocks continued climbing. When momentum survives a volatile market, I pay close attention to those stocks.

If this is your first time reading a shortlist update, check out my introduction post here:

Here is last week’s shortlist:

The Shortlist

The table leaders have grown nicely since last week. The Canadian banks and recovered from last week’s drop. pulled back a bit. had a small amount of growth, while had a big jump. Checking how that correlates to the momentum scores, We see the following increases in the 3M strategy:

• BNS: 88.73 → 91.0

• BTSG: 85.92 → 88.0

• TIGO: 73.24 → 74.63

• TD: 88.73 → 91.0

• SYRE: 81.69 → 83.58

This is what persistent momentum looks like. The names have been on the list for weeks, their momentum scores are climbing, and their prices are following suit.

has maintained its original growth, relatively flat since last week. It is still leading in the 6M strategy at 73.89. It has also risen to 2nd place in the weighted average strategy. That tends to happen when stocks have rapid increases like ATEX did a couple weeks ago.

has continued to climb strongly. It is still ranked 2nd in the 9M strategy and has reached #5 in the 6M strategy. 12M is quickly approaching the top 5 as well (currently #12). SYRE has grown around 8% since last week and over 15% since I first started tracking it. It has grown 2.5x since it first started being consistently ranked back in March and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down yet.

In addition to and , a third Canadian bank has entered the top 5: . The Canadian banks continue to be a strong group with consistent and smooth upward momentum. RY has entered the shortlist at #1 in the 3M strategy, with an extremely smooth climb over the last 3 months.

is the other new entry to the top 5 on my watchlist this week, debuting at #3 in the 3M strategy. PTRN has had a rapid climb over the last few months and is a relatively recent stock both in IPO and in momentum rankings overall.

Quick notes

• slipped from #2 to #3 despite all momentum scores climbing slightly

• climbed from 6M #5 to #4 despite a negative return since entering the shortlist (it still has significant growth over the last 6 months and only slightly pulled back to its baseline trajectory)

• and pulled back in the rankings after debuting near the top last week

The lack of turnover shows momentum concentrating this week. The strongest names continue to hold their positions despite so much recent market volatility, while only a handful of new stocks have broken into the top rankings.

As always, these aren’t recommendations to buy or sell. My goal is simply to highlight where momentum is proving most persistent so you can decide which names deserve a closer look.

Share

There are plenty more where these came from. Take a look through the other stocks on the list. If you want to see beyond the top 5, every subscription to Momentum Screener includes a 2-month free trial. Use code SUBSTACK5 for 5% off your subscription. You can also jump into the chat any time with questions or to discuss interesting stocks. Investing is more fun when we do it together!

Until next time!

Thanks to for a detailed analysis of the fundamentals of the stocks in this article. Be sure to check them out and subscribe, they deserve it!

Momentum and Income Are Converging

While exploring my momentum rankings this week, I spent some time looking specifically at the dividend universe. Momentum Screener includes a mode that lets me focus on just dividend-producing stocks while continuing to filter and rank them by momentum trend persistence.

One advantage of approaching the market this way is that themes often emerge on their own. Instead of starting with an industry and searching for opportunities, the rankings surface companies with similar characteristics regardless of sector.

Seven dividend-paying stocks clustered near the top of the list. That kind of concentration usually points to something larger than individual company performance, making it worth investigating what those businesses have in common.

What The Seven Stocks Have in Common

Although the rankings didn’t start with a particular industry, they quickly converged on one.

Six of the seven companies operate somewhere within the global shipping and energy supply chain. Four transport crude oil, one transports refined petroleum products, one transports dry bulk commodities, and the final company is one of the world’s largest integrated oil producers.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all good investments. In fact, it highlights one of the first risks to recognize: this is a concentrated theme appearing across several related businesses. The lack of diversification means if one crashes, they are likely all crashing. Due to differences between them, however, how they draw back will not necessarily be similar to one another.

The interesting question isn’t why these companies pay high dividends. It’s why so many of them are showing persistent momentum at the same time.

Momentum Helps Make Sense of Yield

Variable-dividend companies (or any company, really) can’t be evaluated using yield alone.

A high yield isn’t always a sign of value. Sometimes it reflects a business generating exceptional cash flow. Other times it’s simply the result of a dividend that hasn’t yet been reduced after conditions have started to weaken.

Momentum adds another piece of evidence.

When a company continues climbing the rankings over multiple timeframes, it suggests the market still sees improving business conditions rather than deteriorating ones. That doesn’t guarantee the trend will continue, but it provides additional confirmation that investors continue to reward the company’s recent performance.

For this group, strong operating conditions are supporting higher earnings, larger distributions and persistent price strength at the same time. That’s what made these companies worth investigating.

ECO: A Modern Fleet in a Strong Market

The first company that stood out was Okeanis Eco Tankers Corp. ().

ECO operates a fleet of modern crude oil tankers, primarily Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) and Suezmax vessels. Like the other tanker companies in this article, its business ultimately comes down to one thing: moving crude oil around the world.

What separates ECO from many of its peers is the quality and young age of its fleet. Newer vessels are generally more fuel efficient, require less maintenance, and tend to command stronger charter rates than older ships. When tanker markets are strong, those advantages can translate into higher margins and larger cash distributions.

Of course, none of that guarantees future performance. ECO remains tied to the same tanker cycle as the rest of the industry. If and when freight rates weaken or shipping conditions normalize, both earnings and dividends will likely decline alongside the share price.

What did Momentum Screener see first?

ECO first entered my rankings in October 2025, where it ranked for 2 months. It reappeared in March and has been present since, steadily climbing across multiple timeframe strategies. Keep in mind, these are not the dividend-specific rankings, but the general historical rankings that compete against all the other stocks in my primary benchmark. Its momentum developed gradually as earnings, dividends, and investor demand strengthened together.

                 Dividend profile                  
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Metric                             ┃      Value ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Price                              │     $54.94 │
│ Forward / trailing annual dividend │      $5.00 │
│ Dividend yield                     │     +9.57% │
│ Payout ratio                       │    +87.57% │
│ Ex-dividend date                   │ 2026-05-28 │
└────────────────────────────────────┴────────────┘
                Momentum profile                 
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Metric                      ┃           Value ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Price return (1m)           │         +12.03% │
│ Price return (3m)           │         +13.71% │
│ Price return (6m)           │         +61.64% │
│ Price return (1y)           │        +167.99% │
│ Price vs 50-day SMA         │          +5.97% │
│ Price vs 200-day SMA        │         +33.67% │
│ 52-week range               │ $20.17 – $56.64 │
│ Distance from 52-week high  │          -3.00% │
│ RSI (14)                    │           55.46 │
│ Annualized daily volatility │         +41.09% │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────┘

Note: all returns listed in this article are adjusted for splits and dividends. Since the dividends are so large for these 7 stocks, that adjustment can have a significant impact compared to the non-adjusted return values. Momentum rankings are determined based on the adjusted returns.

FRO: The Industry Benchmark

If ECO represents one end of the tanker industry, Frontline () represents the other.

Frontline is one of the largest publicly traded tanker operators in the world, with exposure across multiple tanker classes and a long history of operating through shipping cycles. Unlike ECO, whose story is partly about fleet quality, Frontline’s advantage comes from scale.

Frontline’s inclusion adds confidence that this is an industry trend rather than an isolated company story.

The company has benefited from many of the same conditions supporting ECO. Strong freight rates have led to higher earnings, large variable dividends and continued strength in the share price. Management has also taken advantage of the favorable environment to modernize parts of its fleet.

ECO still stands out for the quality of its fleet, while Frontline offers broader exposure to the tanker industry. Both deserve consideration, but for slightly different reasons.

What did Momentum Screener see first?

Frontline has only made a few recent entrances into the broader momentum rankings. They showed up in November 2025 and a bit in April and May. They don’t have the same ranking history exposure as ECO. Within the dividend-only rankings, however, they are on-par with them.

                 Dividend profile                  
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Metric                             ┃      Value ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Price                              │     $38.13 │
│ Forward / trailing annual dividend │      $3.13 │
│ Dividend yield                     │     +8.56% │
│ Payout ratio                       │   +100.00% │
│ Ex-dividend date                   │ 2026-06-12 │
└────────────────────────────────────┴────────────┘
                Momentum profile                 
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Metric                      ┃           Value ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Price return (1m)           │          +9.71% │
│ Price return (3m)           │         +14.28% │
│ Price return (6m)           │         +73.44% │
│ Price return (1y)           │        +134.81% │
│ Price vs 50-day SMA         │          +5.01% │
│ Price vs 200-day SMA        │         +33.45% │
│ 52-week range               │ $16.40 – $42.88 │
│ Distance from 52-week high  │         -11.08% │
│ RSI (14)                    │           41.94 │
│ Annualized daily volatility │         +43.18% │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────┘

Looking Beyond the Rankings

One of the things I like most about momentum investing is that it doesn’t begin with an economic prediction.

Momentum Screener doesn’t know anything about freight rates, or vessel supply, or oil exports, or geopolitical events. All it does is measure which stocks continue attracting buyers over time.

As you regularly review the rankings, you start to notice themes appearing from time to time. This time, the theme happened to be shipping and energy. Next month it could be semiconductors again (we can hope), regional banks, or an industry that isn’t on anybody’s radar yet.

That’s one of the biggest advantages of a systematic approach. It lets the market point me toward areas worth investigating without needing to try and predict the future. I let the rankings narrow the list first. Research comes second.

The remaining five companies expand on that idea. Each participates in the same broad theme but with a different combination of opportunity and risk.

Read more

If this is your first time reading a shortlist update, check out my introduction post here:

Here is last week’s shortlist:

The Shortlist

The market has been very choppy lately. My watchlist was not unaffected. However, there have been some exceptions.

Canadian banks like and have pulled back slightly in the last couple weeks, down ~2-3% overall.

and are still on the list and are still going strong. They are up 3.97% and 6.42% since I started tracking them. Look how smooth that chart is!

and are two healthcare biotechnology companies that have also been on my list for a couple weeks now and continue to climb just fine. They are up 7.59% and 6.73% since I started tracking them.

is the biggest winner on the list right now, up 40.78% since list entry.

The five new entries on the list are worth paying attention to: , , , , and . Each of them have only recently shown up in the top 100 of one of the strategies and they quickly climbed to the top 5 (mostly in the 3M strategy).

As always, I am just an engineer looking at charts. Be sure to do your own analysis and choose the stocks you feel are worthwhile investments. My only hope is that something on this list catches your eye and you are able to make lots of money. If you found value in anything I shared, please feel free to pass it along!

There are plenty more where these came from. Take a look through the other stocks on the list. If you want to see beyond the top 5, every subscription to Momentum Screener includes a 2-month free trial. Use code SUBSTACK5 for 5% off your subscription. You can also jump into the chat any time with questions or to discuss interesting stocks. Investing is more fun when we do it together!

Until next time!

I started this newsletter to share the stocks I see trending each week in Momentum Screener with others. But Momentum Screener covers more than just stocks, and I regularly see strong momentum in other asset categories as well.

Over the coming weeks, I will begin adding additional momentum lists. In addition to the Wednesday stock list, I will introduce the following:

• ETFs/Mutual Funds

• Dividends

• Small Caps

• Crypto

• Forex

Here is the most recent stock shortlist for a preview of the format:

The strength of Momentum Screener lies in its simplicity. It makes it easy to find new investments without taking hours to research and sort through charts and screeners. For readers who want a broader view of momentum across different markets, these new lists should make The Momentum Shortlist more useful.

The Wednesday stock shortlist will continue to be published for all subscribers. The new category lists will be available to paid subscribers. Current introductory pricing is still available. If you want full access to the expanded Momentum Shortlist, now is a good time to upgrade.

If this is your first time reading a shortlist update, check out my introduction post here:

Here is last week’s shortlist:

The Shortlist

I wanted to start tracking the starting and current stock price for the listed stocks, so I am trying a new table format:

I have 20 stocks marked in the combined top-5 strategy list. The sector and industry breakdowns (assuming an equal weight holding) look like the following, with technology/semiconductors the largest:

is still ranked high, but I expect to see it drop a few spots in the next week or so, down almost 20% from when I started tracking them.

Canadian banks like and have been making a slow but smooth climb for over a year now, which has earned them high spots in the strategies.

has continued their smooth upward trajectory.

has made its first appearance in the top 5. They are rocky recently like the other semiconductors on the list.

has been the best performer by far in the last two weeks, climbing to 45.18%.

is my second highest earner, coming in at 14.25%. It has also continued to rapidly climb over the last couple weeks.

I am an engineer, not an analyst. I am not going to pretend to be smarter than the real analysts or know why these companies’ charts are behaving like they do. I just like looking at happy charts and sharing them with others.

There are plenty more where these came from. Take a look through the other stocks on the list. If you want to see beyond the top 5, every subscription to Momentum Screener includes a 2-month free trial. Use code SUBSTACK5 for 5% off your subscription.

It has been appearing in Momentum Screener’s rankings since November.

The Move Was Visible Earlier

By the time MU reached the top 10 in my 9-month trend persistence strategy, the move already looked obvious.

That is usually how momentum works. The chart gets attention after the stock has already moved. The question to ask is whether the trend was visible earlier.

For MU, it was.

The earliest MU appeared anywhere in Momentum Screener was November 10, 2025. It entered at #84 in the 3-month trend strategy.

That was early.

But it also required watching the full top 100 stocks for each strategy. That’s more than most people want to (or have time to) review each day.

The default view is limited to the top 30.

Under that setting, MU first appeared on January 26, 2026. It reached #27 in the weighted average strategy.

That was the more useful signal.

The Trend Persisted

Since the end of last year, MU has remained in the top 100 of at least one strategy continuously.

It spent most of that time in the top 30, except for a drop in April.

It recovered.

Then it pushed higher.

On June 9, 2026, MU entered the top 10 in the 9-month trend strategy.

It is still ranking highly in that category, with a peak ranking of #8 so far.

The return difference is large.

If you bought when MU first entered the full top 100 in November, you would now be up more than 450%.

If you bought when MU first appeared in the default top 30 view in January, you would now be up almost 200%.

Even if you waited until MU reached the 9-month top 10 in June, you would still be up around 20%.

That is not normal.

That is the point.

But What About the Stocks That Did Not Work?

This is where the obvious objection comes in.

One stock working does not prove the strategy works.

It could be survivorship bias.

It could be cherry-picking.

It could be luck.

I agree.

Most stocks will not behave like MU.

Most ranked Momentum Screener stocks will not behave like MU.

Even MU will not always behave like this.

Stocks do not have personalities. They are just price, volume, and time.

People have behavior.

People chase strength. They notice winners. They pile into trends after the move starts to look safe.

Momentum Screener is built around that simple idea.

Not that the future can be predicted.

Only that strength can be measured.

A current ranking tells you what is strong today.

A historical ranking tells you how long it has been strong.

Those are different things.

A stock that appears once in one strategy is not the same as a stock that keeps ranking across multiple strategies for months.

MU is one example of the second case.

So What?

The goal is not to buy every new stock that enters the rankings.

That would be a bad system.

The goal is to notice when a stock appears, persists, improves, and starts ranking across stronger timeframes.

MU did that.

It was not hidden.

It was in the data for months.

The useful question is which stocks are doing it now.

This is the kind of trend I track each week in The Momentum Shortlist

I use Momentum Screener to find stocks that are gaining strength, holding their rankings, and moving across stronger timeframes.

Every subscriber gets the weekly top-5 shortlist. Paid subscribers also get full access to Momentum Screener and a subscriber-only chat where we can discuss interesting setups and names moving through the ranks.

For a more in-depth overview of these rankings, refer to the series introduction:

The Momentum Shortlist

An Intro to the Top Momentum Stocks Series

I have spent a while trying to figure out the best way to share my list of momentum stocks in a way that has value to you as a reader. There are many configurations of the Momentum Screener—different settings and filters and strategies that can be focused on. Rather than focusing on just the “12 month trending” or the “weighted average trending” list fi…

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2 months ago · 3 likes · The Momentum Shortlist

Today’s stock rankings

is still trending highly with top rankings in 3 of the 5 strategies. They didn’t the pullback over the last couple days, but their significant run-up over the last couple weeks was enough to offset that and keep them in the top ranks.

is the highest rank stock in the 9-month strategy. They are a healthcare services platform and were completely unaffected by the last couple days, continuing a smooth upward trend.

is the highest rank stock in the 6-month strategy. They do telecom infrastructure. They had a big spike up a couple weeks ago then pulled back slightly before starting up again. Yesterday they were up but they dropped today. Over 6 months, they still have significant and smooth growth.

At the top of the 3-month strategy is . They are a network security IT company with a worldwide presence. Like the other high-ranked stocks, they have been trending up and were unaffected by the drop this week.

There were 6 stocks dropped between last week and this week, either due to dropping out of the top 5 or otherwise no longer being a stock I am watching.

There were plenty of other interesting stocks in these top rankings that are worth a look beyond the few I highlighted here. Additionally, my entire favorites list is available to subscribers of Momentum Screener if you want to browse beyond the top 5. Every subscription includes a 2 month free trial so you can experience the tool for yourself and decide if it fits your investment research style. Use code SUBSTACK5 for 5% off. Additionally, all paying subscribers to the Momentum Shortlist will receive a 20% off coupon to use.

Thanks for reading, I hope you were able to benefit from my research and will come back next week. I will be posting weekly after market close on Wednesdays. Be sure to subscribe so you can be notified when my post is live.

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What was tested?

I ran 1215 backtests against the last 10 years of market data. They covered a matrix of filters. The starting point for each test was one of 5 of my momentum strategies. These strategies are:

• trend_12

• trend_9

• trend_6

• trend_3

• weighted_average

The 4 trend strategies are looking for stocks that show momentum trends over the most recent 12 months, 9 months, 6 months, or 3 months, respectively. The weighted average strategy is a sort of combination of the 4. It looks over the 12 months, but the performance is weighted more heavily towards recent months.

After selecting a strategy, I ran the test with one of each of the following filters applied:

• Number of top holdings of the strategy:

  • 10

  • 30

  • 100

• Minimum price:

  • $5

• Minimum average volume:

  • 100K

  • 500K

  • 1M

• Minimum market cap:

  • 300M

  • 2B

  • 10B

• Rebalance period:

  • weekly

  • monthly

  • quarterly

• Restricted to just stocks in an index:

  • No restrictions

  • S&P 500

  • Nasdaq 100

That adds up to 1215 combinations, if you want to check my math:

I tested a few other minimum prices but I believe the market cap and volume filters meant anything close to $5 would be fine anyway.

Results

First, let’s look at a breakdown by strategy:

Across all the filter combinations, the weighted average had both the highest CAGR (32.98%), and the best worst CAGR (does best worst make sense?). The only stats it lost out on is average and median max drawdowns, which were ~1-2% worse than the best values. Weighted average had an average Sharpe score of 0.55, with 60.49% beating the benchmark (S&P 500 equal weight) and a total of 67.08% had at least a positive CAGR.

Next, let’s look at a breakdown by holdings count:

The trend shown here is the lower the holding count, the better the CAGR. However, the lowest CAGR is also worse for the lowest count of 10 and the drawdowns are all a bit worse as well. Overall, 64.94% beat the benchmark with a top 10 filter, and 57.78% beat the benchmark with a top 30 filter.

Here is an interesting one:

This is a breakdown by rebalance period. Rebalancing every week was negative across the board, with 0 strategies beating the benchmark. Delay that to a quarterly rebalance and 100% of the tested strategies beat the benchmark! The best/worst CAGR values were 32.98% and 10.98%, respectively. I was not expecting that result and what I learned is after picking some well-ranked stocks, I need to leave them be for longer. I think I will focus on setting reasonable stop-losses, then just let them sell when they sell.

Breakdown by minimum market cap:

I am not sure what happened to my best and worst CAGR values for this and the next chart, but the trend is that the higher market cap tends to have better stats across the board.

Breakdown by minimum average volume:

This strategy didn’t make too much of a difference between the values. The higher two minimum volumes performed slightly better overall.

The final breakdown I prepared is by index:

Not restricting to any index gave the best performance overall, but restricting to Nasdaq 100 gave the most strategies beating the S&P 500 over the last 10 years. That is not too surprising given that the Nasdaq itself has outperformed the S&P 500 over the last 10 years, but it is still worth noting.

I also want to share a glimpse at what the best strategies overall look like:

The top 6 strategies were all weighted average top 10 with a quarterly rebalance period. They varied in market cap and volume but all had at least a 28% CAGR with the highest almost reaching 33%. Sharpe ranged from 0.81 to 1.25.

I also generated a composite score from the percentile average of CAGR, Sharpe, and drawdown. Here is what that looks like:

This has completely different results. Nearly all of the top 25 are restricted to one of the two index filters. The majority of them are the top 10 holdings, and all have a quarterly rebalance period. The top 3 strategies all had a composite score over 99, which means they averaged in the 99th percentile across CAGR, Sharpe, and drawdown. They had a CAGR of up to 24.83%, a max drawdown no worse than -27.13%, and a Sharpe score of 1.19–1.20.

Summary

When I first started actively using Momentum Screener to pick stocks, I was drawn to the stocks I was seeing in the weighted average rankings. I didn’t change many of the other filters, and based on these results I think that is fine. There were variations but they all gave fantastic results. My big takeaway is that the best way to take advantage of momentum stocks is to give yourself time to ride the momentum. Selling too soon sabotages your results. I will probably still set stop losses though. I want to safeguard myself as much as possible for if and when the current bubble pops, while still being able to grow my value in the mean-time.

The best part is that I am not sitting here telling you what to buy. All of these lists and filter capabilities are available to you to try for yourself and find the stocks that you think look like worthwhile investments. Momentum Screener offers a generous two month free trial so you can try it out and see if it makes a difference. Use the code SUBSTACK5 for an additional 5% off if you decide you like what you see. And if you would rather just stick around here and keep me company, that is fine too. I will be posting the stocks I find most interesting from my screener each week. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out, and share with your friends so they don’t miss out either. I greatly appreciate it.

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Let’s look at the results first, then I will break down what each element of the chart represents and how I set up Momentum Screener to find these results.

These 16 stocks do not have a direct order across the full set. Each stock was selected from the top 5 stocks in one or more of the 5 trend persistence categories (12 month, 9 month, 6 month, 3 month, or weighted average). The 12/9/6/3 month trend persistence categories find stocks that have been continually performing well over the specified time period. The weighted average category looks at a combination of the others with a preference given to more recent performance.

Because of this, these 16 stocks represent selections from 5 different lists and can thus be sorted within those 5 lists:

• 12M: WDC, BNS, STX, TSEM

• 9M: BTSG, WDC, ITRN, SPHR

• 6M: ATEX, ITRN, CLDT, MSGS

• 3M: ATEN, ARM

• W.Avg: DOCN, WDC, TTMI, QUIK

Not every stock in the top 5 of each list is present here. I think fully relying on any algorithm to solve the stock market is doomed to failure because there are too many edge cases. There are stocks that can rank high in a formula that are sometimes clearly less than ideal investments. In this case, I regularly review my screener list and highlight the most stand-out stocks to me, and this is a selection of those stocks. This means the number of stocks I post week to week will not always be the same. If you would rather see the full, unfiltered list, it is available any time at Momentum Screener.

For each stock, there is a bar chart with 4 bars included. From top to bottom, they represent the 12M, 9M, 6M, and 3M trend persistence scores. These scores are comparable between stocks, where a higher score represents better performance over the given time period. I did not include a bar for weighted average because of the nature of how I calculate it. Each stock has a rank but the “score” that would be associated with it is not a useful metric to read compared to the 4 represented scores.

Starting next week, the set will include how the stock changed ranks and which stocks exited or entered the top-5 lists.

Screener Settings

Here is how I configured my screener settings in Momentum Screener:

For “Momentum Categories”, I enabled all of the trend categories. I have the “Volatility” categories disabled.

For Count per category, I set it to 5 for building this list. I typically set it to 30 or 40.

I set market cap to $300M+, average volume to 100k+, and price to $5+. Sometimes I set the price to $10+. I have not noticed a significant difference between the two since there are not many stocks with a low price and high market cap and volume.

I have the sector, industry, and exchange selections set to default, which is to exclude “Conglomerates” from the sectors, exclude “Conglomerates” and “Shell Companies” from the industries, and have exchanges set to AMEX, NASDAQ, NYSE, and OTCQX.

A lot of these settings are the defaults you will get with a new account, but it is worth reviewing them if you have different investment preferences from what I thought was a reasonable starting point.

If you have any questions or suggestions about my post, please leave a comment or send me a note. I would love to hear it. As thanks for reading, use SUBSTACK5 for 5% any momentumscreener.com subscription. If you would like to follow along and get a weekly momentum stock list sent straight to your inbox, please subscribe!

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This group favored momentum as their indicator of choice, but after searching out a number of “top momentum stocks” lists online, what they found were opaque lists that never agreed between themselves and didn’t include any criteria for what “momentum” even was. So they decided to make their own.

They spent some time knocking their heads together and ultimately decided on a definition of momentum that focuses on trend persistence: does the stock trend up over a given period of time, and to what degree? Most investors familiar with momentum probably associate the concept with the RSI or MACD indicators, or maybe a few others. These are great tools, but they focus on the stock price in the moment. Trend persistence says “let’s look at every RSI value for a each stock over the last year and count how many times RSI was favorable for a given stock, then rank the whole list from highest to lowest”. This can be done with any preferred indicator.

Being a bunch of hardware engineers, they came up with a great idea and put together a horrible interface to view the data, but it worked for them for a few years.

I just graduated college and got a job at the company. I dual majored in electrical engineering and computer science, which meant I was a know-it-all with a chip on my shoulder who took one look at their clobbered together web interface for their stock tool the first time they invited me to join the meeting and declared I could make a much nicer website, no problem. By this point, their tool had started to show many cracks, largely due to changes with their data source and a lack of time to do updates, so they were happy to let me take over ownership of the tool.

8 years and 4 versions later, I finally finished a version of the webpage I felt satisfied with. Most of the original crew has retired by now, but those who trade still use the tool almost religiously. They tell me they don’t do any stock trading without first referencing our momentum stock list. For my own use, it took me a few years until I had enough retirement built up to warrant needing it, but now it is a primary source of education and the starting point for all of my stock trading decisions.

Momentum Screener

Momentum Screener is a stock screener with a focus on trend persistence-based momentum filtering. The screener utilizes a combination of curation and screening tools to help you personalize your own shortlist.

Momentum Screener won’t help you with day trading since it is tracking performance over weeks and months, not hours. But if you like the idea of managing your own portfolio and want more than SPY or VOO but don’t know where to begin to find stocks, this tool can help you.

You can select up to the top 100 stocks from any of up to 10 primary trend persistence categories, with 5 focused on momentum trend persistence and 5 focused on minimal drawdown persistence. From there, you can apply standard filters such as market cap, volume, price, sector, industry, and exchange. The resulting list of stocks is a custom-tailored list of stocks you can browse and use as a starting point in choosing your next investment. This tool lets you turn the tens of thousands of securities available for trade into a curated list of only dozens. Some of the names you might recognize, but odds are high you will find opportunities you would have never discovered otherwise. That is something each of us who love to use the tool can attest to.

Does it work?

Momentum Screener will absolutely help you find stocks to invest in. I don’t have time to waste 8 years developing a website I don’t believe in or use myself. If I was the only one to ever use the tool, I would still develop it because it has delivered that level of value to me and my investment portfolio.

Naturally, it is hard to measure the exact effect of the tool since it is intended as a curated starting point, not a finalized “buy” list. I encourage everybody who uses it to regularly review the stocks that show up for you and track the ones most interesting to you, then if you research further and decide it is time to buy, you can continue tracking your purchases and watch for changes that might make you want to sell (if you don’t set a stop loss to cover you).

That being said, I wanted to provide some amount of backtesting performance data, so I have run over 1000 different simulations to get an idea of how the tool has performed historically. Here are the details of the runs:

• Select a single ranking formula from the primary momentum trend categories

• Select only the top 10, 30, or 100 stocks in the list

• Minimum market caps of 300M, 2B, or 10B

• Minimum price of $5

• Minimum average volume of 100K, 500K, or 1M

• Slippage: 25 BPS

• Commission per trade: 0

• Exchanges: AMEX, NASDAQ, NYSE, and OTCQX

• Exclude sectors: Conglomerates

• Exclude Industries: Conglomerates and shell companies

• Index filter: All stocks, only S&P 500 stocks, or only Nasdaq 100 stocks

Finally, either every week, every month, or every quarter I rebalance at open by modeling a sale of all the old top stocks and a buy of all the new top stocks with equal weighting.

Combining all these into a matrix of strategies results in 1215 different simulations. I checked each against 10 years of historical data. Here is a summary of the results (data as of June 17, 2026)

Summary Overview

• Total runs: 1215

• Date range covered: 2016 to 2026

• Benchmark used: S&P 500 equal weight

• Best CAGR run: 32.98%

• Best composite score¹ run: 99.18

• Runs beating benchmark CAGR: 56.46%

• Runs beating benchmark max drawdown: 33.91%

^{1 - Composite Score is a ranking from 0-100 based on CAGR, drawdown, and Sharpe ratio relative to all tested configurations.}

By Formula

By Holdings

By Rebalance

By Universe

Top 25 by Composite Score

Top 25 by CAGR

All backtest reports can be reviewed in the advanced backtest explorer on momentumscreener.com.

What’s next?

I plan to use this Substack to post a weekly list of notable stocks I found through my preferred screener configuration. I will probably take a bit of time to settle into a routine, but for now I intend to post a few of the top stocks from across the primary momentum trend categories. I will also include data on how the list changed from the previous week. Subscribe if you would like to follow along.

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