Minervini Trend Template

The Minervini Trend Template is Mark Minervini's checklist for identifying stocks in a confirmed Stage-2 uptrend - the kind of high-quality market leaders his SEPA methodology buys. This strategy buys any stock that satisfies every criterion of the template and holds it until the trend breaks below the 50-day moving average. It is a growth-investing / trend-following strategy and the hardest in the set: MINERVINI() bundles many filtering rules into a single flag.

It is a hard, trending, daily position/growth strategy.

How it trades

Buy (stock meets the full trend template):

MINERVINI()

Sell (trend breaks):

Close < SMA(50)

MINERVINI() is a boolean flag - it is 1 only when all of the following hold, else 0:

1. Close is above the 150-day and 200-day SMAs.
2. The 150-day SMA is above the 200-day SMA.
3. The 200-day SMA is trending up (higher than it was ~1 month / 20 bars ago).
4. The 50-day SMA is above the 150-day SMA, which is above the 200-day SMA.
5. Close is above the 50-day SMA.
6. Close is at least 30% above its 52-week low.
7. Close is within 25% of its 52-week high.
8. Relative strength: the stock is outperforming the benchmark (RS > 1).

Criteria 1-5 are the "moving-average stack" that defines a healthy uptrend; 6-7 place price in the upper part of its yearly range; 8 restricts the universe to genuine market leaders.

When it works best

Built to find high-quality market leaders in strong, established uptrends - it is deliberately strict, so in a broad bull market it surfaces a focused list of the strongest names, and in a bear or choppy market it simply produces few or no signals (most stocks fail one or more criteria). Its trade-off is the flip side of that strictness: the many filtering rules can screen out early-stage moves and, like any trend-follower, it gives some of the gain back on the SMA(50) exit.