Relative Strength Rating Screener

By Christian Richter | Last updated 2026-09-23

William O'Neil built the Relative Strength Rating as the centerpiece of growth stock selection. The concept: stocks that outperform the market tend to keep outperforming. Leaders score 80 or higher. The strongest performers, the ones that go on to make the biggest moves, typically score 90 to 99 before their major advances. O'Neil weighted the most recent quarter at 40% and the three prior quarters at 20% each, then ranked every stock against the full market on a 1-99 scale. This is the core of both CAN SLIM and VCP screening, where an RS Rating of 80+ is a precondition before any pattern or fundamental check matters. For a step-by-step walkthrough, see the RS Rating screening guide.

One honest caveat: this is an O'Neil-style calculation, not the proprietary IBD RS Rating published by Investor's Business Daily. The methodology matches what O'Neil described in his books (40/20/20/20 quarterly weighting, percentile ranking), but the exact numbers will differ from MarketSmith because IBD uses undisclosed smoothing and a different universe. For practical screening, the two systems identify the same leaders.

How the rating is computed

The weighting formula

The RS Rating uses four quarterly price returns over the trailing 12 months (approximately 252 trading days). Each quarter is roughly 63 trading days:

The composite formula:
Weighted Return = 0.4 × Q1 return + 0.2 × Q2 return + 0.2 × Q3 return + 0.2 × Q4 return

After computing the weighted return for every stock, the result is percentile-ranked across the full market to produce a 1-99 score. A rating of 95 means the stock outperformed 95% of the market on a recency-weighted basis.

The 40% weight on the most recent quarter means a stock that accelerated recently will rank higher than one with the same total 12-month return spread evenly. This is by design. O'Neil observed that the biggest winners accelerate in the last quarter before their major advance.

Example screens

The momentum leadership screen. Claude computes all four quarterly returns from daily closing prices, applies the 40/20/20/20 weighting, and ranks the full market. Stocks scoring 95-99 are the top performers on a recency-weighted basis. Expect to see a mix of biotech, semiconductor, and whatever sector is leading the current market cycle.

The RS Rating alone identifies momentum. Adding earnings growth (the C and A criteria from CAN SLIM), 52-week high proximity (the N criterion), and financial strength (Piotroski) filters the list to stocks with both price momentum and fundamental quality. This is the intersection that O'Neil's system targets. Typically 10 to 30 stocks pass all criteria at once.

Relative strength divergence. A stock with RS 90+ that has pulled back 10% or more from its high is still outperforming the market overall, but price has corrected. Growth traders watch for this pattern as a potential entry point: the RS line holding up while price consolidates is the setup that precedes many VCP breakouts. Not all divergences lead to breakouts. Some are the start of a larger decline.

How it compares to other RS tools

Most RS Rating tools are either proprietary (MarketSmith) or single-chart scripts (TradingView community). No other free tool computes an RS Rating across the full market and lets you combine it with fundamental filters.

MarketSmith is the purpose-built O'Neil tool. It has the proprietary RS Rating, EPS Rating, Composite Rating, and automated pattern recognition that Shibui does not offer. The trade-off is price ($149.95/month) and a fixed set of filters. On Shibui, you define the RS calculation yourself, combine it with CAN SLIM criteria, VCP setups, Piotroski F-Score, Darvas box signals, or any other filter in one query, and study how the screen performed historically. See the AI stock screener overview for how Shibui compares on other screening approaches.

Want to run this screen daily on a schedule? See the automated stock screener workflow for scheduling commands and prompt reliability patterns.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Relative Strength Rating?

The Relative Strength Rating ranks a stock's price performance against the entire market on a scale of 1 to 99. William O'Neil introduced it in How to Make Money in Stocks as a core criterion for growth stock selection. The calculation weights the most recent quarter at 40% and the three prior quarters at 20% each, then ranks all stocks by this weighted return. A rating of 80 means the stock outperformed 80% of the market. O'Neil recommended buying only stocks rated 80 or higher. Shibui computes this from daily prices across 10,000+ US stocks.

Is there a free Relative Strength Rating screener?

Shibui Finance computes an O'Neil-style RS Rating for free across the entire US market. Connect it to Claude (the free plan works) and describe your screen in plain English. Most RS Rating tools require a MarketSmith subscription ($149.95/month). TradingView has community-built RS scripts, but they run per chart, not as a market-wide screener. Shibui ranks every stock at once and lets you combine the RS Rating with earnings growth, valuation, or any other filter in one query.

How is this different from IBD's RS Rating?

IBD's RS Rating is a proprietary metric published by Investor's Business Daily. It uses a 12-month weighted formula and is part of the MarketSmith platform. The exact weighting, smoothing method, and universe definition are not public. Shibui's RS Rating follows the methodology O'Neil described in his books: 40% weight on the most recent quarter, 20% on each of the prior three quarters, percentile ranked across all US stocks. The concept is the same. The exact numbers will differ because the formulas are not identical. For practical screening, a stock ranking 90 on both systems is a momentum leader on both.

What is a good RS Rating for growth stocks?

O'Neil set the bar at 80 or higher for CAN SLIM stocks. That means the stock outperformed at least 80% of the market over the trailing year, with extra weight on recent performance. The strongest leaders, the stocks that go on to make the biggest moves, typically score 90 to 99 before their major advances. A score below 70 means the stock is underperforming most of the market. Below 50, it is a laggard. The RS Rating is most useful for growth and momentum strategies, not value investing.

Can you backtest Relative Strength strategies on Shibui?

Yes. Shibui has daily prices going back over 60 years. You can ask Claude to compute the RS Rating at any point in history and check whether buying high-RS stocks near 52-week highs produced better returns than buying the market. Survivorship bias applies since delisted companies are not in the dataset. The backtest also does not account for trading costs or slippage. These are historical observations, not forward-looking predictions.

Does Finviz have a Relative Strength Rating?

No. Finviz has simple performance columns (1-week, 1-month, 3-month return) but no weighted RS Rating and no percentile ranking against the full market. You cannot screen for "RS 80 or higher" on Finviz. MarketSmith has the proprietary IBD RS Rating but costs $149.95/month. Shibui computes an O'Neil-style RS Rating across the full US market for free.