Relative strength and momentum

Two ideas, often confused

• Relative strength (RS) compares a stock's return with the market's: a stock up 20% while the Nifty is up 5% has strong RS.
• Momentum is a stock's own trend: how much it has risen over the last months, often adjusted for how jumpy it was.

Both rest on one of the most studied effects in finance: over 3 to 12 months, stocks that have risen the most tend to keep doing a little better than the rest, on average. NSE even runs a Nifty200 Momentum 30 index on this idea.

Ranking against everyone

A stock's raw return says little on its own. This site ranks every NSE stock against all others as a percentile: RS 90 means the stock beat 90% of the market. Minervini wants RS of at least 70; O'Neil preferred 80-90 or higher.

Limits

• Momentum works on average across many stocks, not for any one stock.
• It can reverse sharply, often at turning points in the market, and momentum stocks then fall the hardest.
• Using 12-month RS (IBD's style) or 3-month RS gives different lists. In our November 2026 backtest the 12-month version did a little better; see the backtest results.