Technical & Price Action
Darvas Scan is a Technical & Price Action screen. It checks every NSE-listed stock against 1 condition computed from nightly data, after excluding heavily pledged promoters and very small market caps. This page explains the rule, each figure and its source. It lists no stocks and is not advice.
Nicolas Darvas was a dancer who turned ₹10,000 into millions in the late 1950s using a simple observation: the best stocks tend to form tight price 'boxes' — ranges where buyers and sellers reach equilibrium — before breaking out to new highs. His method looks for stocks near their 52-week high (showing strength) that have not fallen far from their 52-week low (showing a narrow range), with sufficient liquidity (volume and price minimums). A Darvas setup means the stock has consolidated — it is neither crashing nor in wild swings — and is positioned to break out if buyers take control.
A stock must satisfy every condition below. Conditions are grouped under the pillar they test.
Box Quality
Liquidity
Described in the philosophy; not a pass/fail condition in the current rule
Hard excludes
Ranked by Market Cap, highest first.
Distance from 52-Week High (%)
How far the current price is below the 52-week high. Lower means the stock is closer to its recent peak.
Low is better
Price vs 52-Week Low (%)
How far the current price is above the 52-week low, expressed as a percentage. A value of 150% means the stock is trading at 2.5× its yearly low.
High is better
Average Daily Volume (shares)
The average number of shares traded per day over the recent period. Higher volume means it is easier to buy and sell without moving the price.
Darvas requires a minimum of 100,000 shares per day. This filters out illiquid micro-caps where a single trade can move the price 5%.
High is better
Stock Price (₹)
The current market price of one share in rupees.
High is better
Type hypothetical values to see which conditions they satisfy. These are not real stocks and nothing here is stored.
Enter values to begin
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We could not tell this screen's picks apart from the stocks it left out. That is an absence of evidence, not a finding that the screen is wrong; it is still a valid way to narrow a list by your own rules.
AI-generated plain-language explanation
Each month during the 64 months we measured, we checked whether the stocks this screen picked did better over the following month (21 trading days) than the stocks it did not pick. We score that from -1 (the picks always did worse) to +1 (always did better); 0 means no pattern. This screen scored 0.0046. As a measurement, the score is essentially zero. If the screen had no real edge, a score at least this far from zero would show up about 37 in 100 by luck alone. That does not mean the screen is wrong; it still works for narrowing a list of stocks by your own rules. This is a record of the past, not a prediction.
This content has been generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools by FINOME TECHNOLOGIES PVT LTD. It is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, a research report, or a recommendation under SEBI (Research Analysts) Regulations, 2014 or SEBI (Investment Advisers) Regulations, 2013. Not investment advice. Issued in compliance with SEBI circular SEBI/HO/MIRSD/MIRSD-SEC-5/P/CIR/2024/149.
In the past data we checked, we could not tell the stocks this screen picked apart from the ones it left out. Each month, across the whole period we have data for, we checked whether the stocks this screen picked did better, over the following month (21 trading days), than the stocks it didn't pick. We score that from -1 (the picks always did worse) to +1 (always did better); 0 means no pattern. This screen scored 0.0046. As a measurement, the score is essentially zero. If the screen had no real edge, a score at least this far from zero would show up about 37 in 100 by luck alone. That does not mean the screen is wrong; it still works for narrowing a list of stocks by your own rules.
This is a record of the past, not a prediction.
This is a historical, statistical measurement produced by FINOME TECHNOLOGIES PVT LTD's research harness on past data. It is not a prediction, and past results do not indicate future results. The universe is today's Nifty 500 constituents, so the sample is affected by survivorship bias. It describes how a screen's selections behaved in the past and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation.
Rule version 1.0.0