Give it one stock and it finds others whose recent price action has the closest shape — ranked by correlation, with coverage and up-ratio to keep the comparison honest.
Useful in two opposite ways: finding the next stock likely to follow a move you have already spotted, and discovering that four positions you hold are really one bet.
The tool opens inside your BreakPoint account. If you are not signed in yet you will be asked to sign in first, and access depends on your active plan.
You pick a reference stock and the tool searches the market for others whose recent price shape most closely resembles it. Results are ranked, with a correlation figure showing how closely they matched, a coverage figure showing how much of the period was actually comparable, and an up-ratio describing how often the movement went the same way.
The obvious use is finding the next candidate. If one stock in a group has broken out and others are tracing the same shape a few days behind, the laggards may offer the entry that the leader no longer does.
The less obvious use is more valuable: checking your own portfolio. If four of your positions turn out to be highly correlated, you do not hold four ideas — you hold one, at four times the size you intended, and you will discover that on the day it goes against you.
Similarity describes what has already happened. Two stocks that behaved alike for three months can diverge tomorrow on company-specific news — correlation is a tendency, not a link.
Correlation is invisible until it hurts. This makes it visible in advance.
Swing traders
Find laggards behind a leader that has already moved, where the entry is still reasonable.
Portfolio holders
Check whether your positions are genuinely independent or just several versions of the same bet.
Researchers
Identify comparables that are not obvious from sector labels alone.
Beginners
See directly that stocks move in groups, which is one of the most useful early realisations in trading.
Shape-based matching
Finds behavioural similarity, which sometimes crosses sector boundaries in ways a sector filter never would.
Ranked with numbers
Correlation and coverage figures, so you can judge match quality rather than trusting a label.
Diversification check
Reveals hidden overlap in a portfolio before the market reveals it for you.
Laggard discovery
Find the stocks that have not yet made the move their peers already made.
Quality legend
Strong, good, weak and poor bands prevent over-reading a marginal match.
Exportable
Take the ranked list away for further research or record-keeping.
A search box and a ranked results table. The legend does more work than it appears to.
The search sits at the top and the table scrolls sideways; correlation and coverage are the two columns worth checking first on a small screen.
Two workflows, depending on which of the two problems you are solving.
Choose your reference stock
Either a stock that has just made a move you would like to catch elsewhere, or one you already hold and want to check for overlap.
Run the search
Review the ranked list, reading correlation and coverage together rather than relying on rank alone.
Check coverage before correlation
A very high correlation over a short comparable period is far weaker evidence than a moderate one over a long period.
Use the legend bands
Treat weak and poor matches as noise. Only strong and good matches justify any conclusion.
For laggards: compare the charts
Find matches that have not yet made the move the reference already made, and check they have a valid entry level of their own.
For portfolio checks: look at your own holdings
If names you hold appear as strong matches for each other, reduce one of them rather than congratulating yourself on a theme.
Verify with fundamentals or sector logic
Similarity without a reason behind it is usually coincidence. Similarity with a shared driver is worth acting on.
The columns, and which of them actually decide the conclusion.
| Field | What it tells you | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Rank | Position in the similarity ordering. | A starting point only; verify with correlation and coverage before drawing conclusions. |
| Symbol / Company | The matched stock. | Check whether it shares a sector or a business driver with the reference — that explains the match. |
| Shape | A description of the matched price pattern. | Confirms the two charts are similar in the way you assumed, not merely in a numerical sense. |
| Correlation | How closely the two moved together. | Higher means more alike. Read alongside coverage — high correlation over a short window is easy to achieve by chance. |
| Coverage | How much of the comparison period was actually comparable. | Low coverage undermines a high correlation. Check this first, always. |
| Up Ratio | How often the two moved in the same direction. | Distinguishes a genuine relationship from a coincidental one where the shape happens to look similar. |
| Legend bands | Strong, good, weak or poor match quality. | A guardrail. Anything below "good" should not be the basis for a trade. |
Four ways to interpret a result set.
You hold six positions and feel comfortably diversified because they come from four different sectors. Running each one through the tool shows that three of them are strong matches for each other, with high correlation across a long coverage period.
Sector labels suggested diversification; behaviour disagrees. Three of the six move together regardless of what their sector classifications say, which means your real exposure to that single behaviour is three times what you intended. On a good day this is invisible. On a bad day all three fall together and the portfolio loses far more than the plan allowed for.
The fix is not complicated: reduce or close one of the three. The value of the tool is that you learn this before the bad day rather than during it.
Correlation is a description of the past presented with deceptive precision.
✅ Do this
⛔ Avoid this
Assuming laggards always catch up. Sometimes a stock lags because the market has correctly judged it to be weaker than its peers. A similar chart shape is a reason to look, not a promise of convergence.
Correlation measures how closely two price series move together, from +1 for lockstep movement through 0 for unrelated to −1 for opposite movement. It is used both to find comparable stocks and to check whether a portfolio is genuinely diversified.
Pick a reference stock and search for the highest-correlation matches over a meaningful period. Verify that the comparison window is long enough to be credible before drawing any conclusion.
Because correlation over a short window is easy to achieve by coincidence. Coverage tells you how much of the period was genuinely comparable, and a high correlation with low coverage is weak evidence.
Sometimes. If a strong match has not yet made the move the reference made, it may follow — but only if it has its own valid setup. Some laggards never catch up, and there is usually a reason.
It reveals hidden overlap. Positions from different sectors can still behave identically, which means your real risk is concentrated even though the portfolio looks spread out.
Use the tool's quality bands rather than a fixed number. Anything below the "good" band should be treated as noise regardless of what the figure says.
No. It describes past behaviour. Company-specific news — results, an order, a governance issue — can break the relationship immediately and permanently.
Shared underlying drivers: input costs, interest rates, export demand, or the same set of institutional buyers holding both. Sector classification is administrative and does not always reflect what actually moves a stock.
It shows how often the two stocks moved in the same direction. A high correlation with a poor up-ratio suggests the shape matched by coincidence rather than through a genuine relationship.
Trade whichever offers the better entry. Often the reference has already moved and a strong match with a valid setup gives you the same idea at a better price.
When adding a position, and periodically across your holdings. Relationships shift over time, so a check from six months ago may no longer describe your actual exposure.
It complements it. Sector analysis tells you what a company does; correlation tells you how the stock actually behaves. When the two disagree, behaviour is the more useful guide for risk.
Every technical term above, written for someone who has never traded before.
How closely two price series move together.
Correlation runs from +1 (moving in lockstep) through 0 (unrelated) to −1 (moving in opposite directions). It is used both to find stocks behaving like a reference chart and to avoid accidentally holding five positions that are really the same bet.
How easily you can get in and out at a fair price.
A liquid stock has enough daily turnover that your order does not move the price. Illiquid names look attractive on a scanner because their percentage moves are large, but the spread between buy and sell prices quietly eats those gains, and exiting in a fall can be difficult.
The tendency of strong stocks to keep being strong.
Momentum is the observation that recent winners tend to keep outperforming for a while. It is the engine behind most scanners: instead of hunting for hidden value, you sort the market by what is already working and look for the cleanest way to join it.
Money moving from one part of the market to another.
Capital rarely leaves the market entirely — it moves. When banks cool off and metals begin to lead, that is rotation. Spotting it early puts you in the group of stocks with a tailwind instead of fighting a sector that has just lost its sponsorship.
The fall from a peak to the following trough.
Drawdown measures the pain in a strategy — how far your account fell from its high point before recovering. Two strategies with the same annual return are not equivalent if one of them got there through a 15% dip and the other through a 45% one.
A short, curated list of stocks you are actually tracking.
A scanner produces candidates; a watchlist is what you commit to watching tomorrow morning. Keeping it short is the point. Most traders can meaningfully follow five to fifteen names, and a bloated watchlist quietly turns into no watchlist at all.
Looking for a term that is not here? The full trading glossary covers every concept used across these guides.