Selecting Stocks Above the MACD Zero Line and Ranking by Attention

Summary

This document proposes a daily pre-open stock screen centered on MACD being above the zero line, then ranks qualifying names by a measure of individual-stock attention. It also includes a listing-age filter, described as favoring companies that have been listed longer, and suggests adding fundamental conditions such as earnings or profitability. The document gives the standard exponential moving average formulas for MACD and a Python sketch for calculating the indicator and ordering stocks by attention.

The stated rationale is that MACD can indicate short-term trend, attention can proxy market interest, and listing history may relate to company maturity. The author cautions that technical signals and sentiment can overlook fundamentals and long-term conditions, and that listing age alone does not establish stability. The example code does not clearly implement the MACD zero-line selection condition and uses a placeholder for the listing-age cutoff. No backtest, sample period, or performance evidence is given, so the proposed screen is not validated by the document.

Key ideas

• The proposed routine checks stocks before each trading day’s open and ranks candidates by attention.
• The main technical condition is that MACD should be above zero, with listing age as an additional filter.
• The document suggests including company fundamentals to broaden the selection criteria.
• The author warns that trend and attention measures can miss fundamental changes and longer-term risks.
• The example code leaves the listing cutoff unspecified and does not clearly apply the stated MACD threshold.
• No performance or backtest evidence is provided.

Tags

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.