The vocabulary used across Stage2Stocks.

The basing phase. Price moves sideways after a Stage 4 decline; the 50-day MA turns up while still below the 200-day; volume is quiet. The longest-duration phase by design — the 2008–2009 IT cohort sat in Stage 1 for 14 months before NIITTECH led the 2010 turn. Observation, not action. See also: Stage 2, 1→2 transition.

The advancing phase. Price above a rising 50-day MA, itself above the 200-day MA. The only phase with systematic long-side edge. Median weeks in stage across the live cohort: 9.

The topping phase. Price stalls near recent highs; volume rises but price does not; the 50-day MA stops rising while still above the 200-day. Tighten stops; stop adding. See also: 2→3 transition.

The declining phase. The 50-day MA sits below the 200-day and is falling. Each rally is a distribution opportunity. Avoid longs entirely. See also: 4→1 transition.

The percentage of NSE constituents currently classified Stage 2. Above 25% is constructive; below 15% is bearish. Direction (20-day delta) matters more than level. See also: regime, breadth.

Moves between stages (1→2, 2→3, 3→4, 4→1). Transitions concentrate price change into short windows — the largest percentage moves in the fewest sessions. On NSE the 4→1 transition is the slowest and the 1→2 the fastest; PSU bank cycles tend to compress 4→1→2 into 4–6 months once policy clarity arrives, whereas IT services post-2022 has shown 1→2 attempts that stretched across four quarters of failed bases. See also: 1→2, 2→3, 4→1.

A stock crossing from Stage 1 basing into Stage 2 advancing — typically a base breakout on expanding volume. The classical buy point in Weinstein's framework. See also: volume thrust, failed base.

A stock crossing from Stage 2 advancing into Stage 3 topping. Price stalls; volume rises on red days more than green; the 50-day MA stops rising within ~30 sessions. See also: Stage 3.

A stock crossing from Stage 4 decline into Stage 1 basing. The bottom-callers' trap. Most Stage 1 candidates never become Stage 2 — base-and-fail accounts for the bulk of attempts. See also: failed base.

How many calendar weeks a stock has held its current stage. For Stage 2 there is a sweet spot in the middle of a run — past the point where nothing is proven, before the point where topping risk starts to rise.

The calendar date a stock entered its current stage. Used alongside weeks-in-stage to assess maturity of the trend before adding capital.

A 1→2 attempt that loses its breakout level within ~5 sessions. The failure signal is sharper than the success signal: a fail tells you the demand wasn't there, a success only tells you it was there yesterday. In NSE data since 2008, two-thirds of 1→2 attempts fail within four weeks — which is why disciplined entries wait for the second test of the breakout level, not the first.

50-day MA: the medium-term average, and half of the Stage 2 test — it must sit above the 200-day and still be rising. Its slope over the last 20 sessions is the other half.

200-day MA: the classical long average, used here as the reference the 50-day is measured against. Separately, the percentage of NSE stocks above their 200-DMA is the headline breadth signal — a different measure that answers a different question.

30-week MA: Stan Weinstein's original formulation in the 1988 book, roughly 150 daily sessions. This site does not compute it, and does not compute a 150-day average either — it substitutes the 50/200 relationship above. See also: golden cross, full bull stack.

The ratio of advancing stocks to declining stocks in a session. Above 2.0 is broad advance; below 0.5 is broad decline. Today: 911 advancers vs 1,566 decliners. See also: cumulative A/D line.

How many constituents participate in a market move. Narrow rallies — a few names rising while most decline — are structurally weak. Wide rallies are sustainable. See also: full bull stack, Stage 2 share.

Running sum of (advancers − decliners) since reset. Direction matters more than level: a flat or falling A/D line during a rising Nifty is the classical breadth divergence — fewer stocks driving more of the index. Distinct from Mansfield RS, which compares one stock to a benchmark. The 20-day slope above is positive when more stocks participated than declined over the last month.

Weinstein's preferred breadth gauge: a smoothed ratio of a stock or index against a benchmark, designed to flag divergence before price. Distinct from IBD-style RS, which is a ratio-rank rather than a slope-based filter.

Investor's Business Daily's ratio-style relative strength: stock close divided by the benchmark, normalised, percentile-ranked. The US-blog convention. Our RS rank is comparable but single-window, using 1-month, 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month relative returns.

A Stage 2 stock whose trend is steepening — our read on whether a move is gaining force or merely continuing. Measures kinetics; position (stage, RS rank) tells you where the stock sits. Two stocks at identical RS rank can have very different acceleration. On NSE, acceleration is most diagnostic in mid-cap PSU and capex-cyclical names — they tend to enter Stage 2 with low slope and accelerate only after a budget or order-book catalyst. See also: kinetics.

Speed-and-direction of a trend (slope, acceleration) — distinct from where price sits (stage, RS rank). Position tells you where; kinetics tells you whether the move is still accelerating or fading.

The 20-day and 50-day price-slope readings. Their delta (20d − 50d) measures whether the trend is steepening or flattening — the empirical input to is_accelerating.

50-day MA crossing above (golden) or below (death) the 200-day MA. Lagging — by the time the cross prints, the trend has been underway for weeks. Useful as confirmation, not as entry timing. The Nifty 50 golden cross of April 2009 confirmed the recovery six weeks after the actual bottom — late but reliable.

Today's session volume at or above 2x (or 3x) the 50-day average. Confirms institutional participation in a breakout. A 1→2 transition without a volume thrust is a higher probability failed base. The dual reading above separates broad participation (2x) from genuine accumulation (3x).

Price > 20-DMA > 50-DMA > 100-DMA > 200-DMA — all four MAs aligned by maturity. Full bear stack is the inverted order. The most disciplined breadth filter because it requires agreement across four timeframes.

52-week highs minus 52-week lows on the session. Positive means the universe's strongest names are still extending; negative during a rising Nifty is a textbook narrowing-rally signal — the index pulling forward while individual names roll over. See also: breadth, cumulative A/D line.

p25 / p50 / p75 / p90 of today's setup_score distribution. Tracks how scarce prime setups are versus recent history — when p75 is high, the broader cohort is in good structure, not just the top names.

A five-bucket regime label sitting below the four-bucket regime: it adds a transitional "TURNING" state between Bear and Recovery. State 5 reacts faster; regime is the smoother headline label.

A 1–99 percentile rank of a stock's price performance versus the Nifty 50 over a proprietary trailing window. RS 90 means outperforming 89% of NSE stocks. RS in a down market measures relative survival, not absolute strength. See also: Mansfield RS, RS leaders.

A stock holding RS rank ≥80 within its sector, on a rising MA stack. Today's leaders across three sectors:

NSE's breadth posture as a whole — Bear, Recovery, Topping, Bull. Determines whether systematic Stage 2 longs have positive expectancy in this window. Leading flags (thrust, breadth-rebuild, divergence, washout) tick alongside the headline label and often turn before the regime itself does. See also: state 5.

NSE sectors whose earnings are sensitive to the business cycle — Materials, Industrials, Consumer Discretionary, Financials, Energy. Tend to lead off the bottom of a cycle. See also: defensive sectors, sector rotation.

NSE sectors whose earnings stay stable across cycles — Consumer Staples (FMCG), Pharma, Utilities. Tend to lead late in the cycle. Healthcare is treated as defensive here despite Indian pharma's USFDA cyclicality. See also: cyclical sectors.

The slow redistribution of capital between sectors as the macro regime shifts. On NSE the rotation that matters most is Private Bank → PSU Bank → NBFC late-cycle, then back to IT and FMCG when the cycle turns. The 2003–2007 cycle and the 2022–2025 cycle both followed this sequence within 6-month windows. See also: market rotation.

The set of NSE stocks actively scanned and classified by Stage2Stocks. Three hard cuts: market cap between ₹500 cr and ₹15,000 cr · close above ₹30 · continuous daily trading history. The lower bound excludes micro-caps that don't price-discover cleanly. The upper bound excludes mega-caps where stage transitions take 5+ years and index flow swamps single-stock structure. Mirrors the prop-scan filter exactly. See also: pct_accelerating_s2.

Share of Stage 2 stocks whose slope is steepening within a sector or universe. Leading indicator of where new strength is concentrating before headline Stage 2 share reflects it.

NSE Sectoral Indices group the universe into ~11 broad themes (Auto, Banks, Energy, FMCG, IT, Metal, Pharma, PSU Bank, Private Bank, Realty, Media). NSE Industries are ~70 finer cuts (Cement, Specialty Chemicals, NBFCs, Two-Wheelers, etc). Industry-level cuts beat sector-level on NSE — Private Bank vs PSU Bank is the canonical example.

A sector or industry return calculated by weighting constituents by free-float market cap: return = Σ (weight × stock_return). Reflects what a cap-proportional position returned — different from an equal-weight average, which is what most retail screens display.

Net daily cash equity flows from Foreign Institutional Investors and Domestic Institutional Investors. Direction over a 10–20 session window matters more than the daily number — single-day FII selling on F&O expiry rarely changes the regime, but a sustained 15-session sell from FIIs with DIIs absorbing tracks regime turns reasonably well.

A proprietary 0–10 model grading structural setup quality. It reads short-term trend behaviour against the medium-term trend, how extended the move already is, and how mature the Stage 2 run is. Tuned over years of testing on NSE data. Computed only for Stage 2 stocks above ₹30. Prime setups (≥8) are deliberately scarce. See also: setup score percentile, setups.

The setup family describing a stock newly transitioning from Stage 1 to Stage 2 — broken above a multi-week consolidation on expanding volume. The classical Stage 2 entry. See also: failed base.

The setup family describing a Stage 2 stock in a controlled pullback. The conditions are ours, refined over years of watching which pullbacks resolve upward and which do not. Tight stops below the 50-day MA make this the highest risk-reward Stage 2 family — but also the most prone to whipsaws during F&O expiry weeks. See also: setup score.

The proprietary daily scan that ranks the universe by setup_score, regime fit, sector strength, and RS. Results land in /prop-scan and feed every downstream screener on the platform.

Additional Surveillance Measure — SEBI/exchange tag with stricter margins, lower intraday limits, and periodic full-margin requirements. Triggered by abnormal price-volume action, often after a 30%+ move in a short window. The surveillance friction distorts the structural read, but note that we do not ingest the exchange's ASM list — tagged names are scored like any other, so checking the tag is the reader's job. See also: T2T.

Trade-to-Trade segment — every trade requires full delivery; no intraday netting. Mostly used for thinly traded or surveilled names like RTNINFRA and SHALPAINTS through 2023. Should disqualify a stock in your own screening — we do not filter on it — because the friction prevents normal price discovery.

Stocks whose F&O open interest exceeds 95% of the market-wide position limit. No new positions until the stock drops below the threshold; existing positions can only be reduced. DELTACORP and ZEEL both appeared on the ban list during their post-event volatility windows. Matters because a 1→2 transition timed during an F&O ban often gets rejected at the breakout level until the ban lifts.

Equities settle T+1: trade today, delivery tomorrow morning. Matters for breakouts because Day-1 buyers must hold to take delivery — the next-morning open often retraces 5–10% as flippers exit, providing the second entry point on a confirmed 1→2 transition.

US Food & Drug Administration. Inspects Indian pharma plants and issues 483 observations and warning letters. Indian pharma is episodically cyclical because of this — a single warning letter can take a Stage 2 name to Stage 4 in three sessions.

Public Sector Undertaking — government-majority-owned companies (SBI, BANKBARODA, NTPC, ONGC, COALINDIA). Trade on the combination of policy windows and earnings cycles; periodic multi-year re-rating windows (2003–07, 2022–25) drive most of the multibagger returns in this segment.