— shark-report

The Shark Report dashboard has one column that appears in every section: RS. It's a number between 0 and 100. For many users it's the first thing they look at; for others it goes unnoticed. Understanding it changes how you read every signal the scanner produces.

What RS measures

Relative Strength doesn't measure how much a stock went up in absolute terms. It measures how well a stock performed compared to the market over a given period.

The difference is critical. A stock that rises 5% in a month where the broad market rises 10% is losing ground — its RS is low. A stock that rises 3% in a month where the broad market falls 5% is gaining ground — its RS is high.

RS doesn't reward absolute performance. It rewards relative performance. That's exactly what matters: finding the stocks that institutional money is choosing above all others.

RS Percentile: how to read the number

The scanner's RS is a percentile calculated across the 1,000 most representative US stocks.

An RS of 85 means that stock outperformed 85% of the universe over the last 6 months.
An RS of 50 means it's exactly at the median — 50% outperformed it, 50% fell below.
An RS of 20 means it lagged 80% of the universe — weak in relative terms even if its absolute price hasn't fallen.

Scanner thresholds:

RS ≥ 82 → Gems — leadership relative strength
RS 70–81 → Opportunities — emerging momentum
RS 50–69 → Pullback and Quality Dip zone
RS 20–49 → Deterioration zone — watch with caution
RS ≤ 20 → Structural Breakdown — short candidates

RS vs one benchmark vs multi-benchmark RS

Basic RS is calculated against a single reference index — the broad US market. The problem: that index is biased toward large-cap tech. A solid consumer stock may have low RS versus the broad market but be strongly leading versus its sector or versus the small-cap universe.

That's why the scanner calculates a composite multi-benchmark RS: relative performance against four reference indexes — the broad market, the tech-heavy index, the small-cap index, and the industrial index — weighted as:

Composite RS = average × 0.6 + best individual RS × 0.4

A stock that leads across multiple benchmarks simultaneously has a more robust momentum signal. To qualify for Gems, a stock needs RS ≥ 80 in at least 2 of the 4 benchmarks.

The 80-82 threshold: where momentum becomes institutional

The 80-82 threshold reflects what the system's historical signal analysis consistently shows: stocks above that percentile demonstrate sustained institutional accumulation. Below it, momentum is either absent or fragile.

It's not an arbitrary number — it's the level at which relative outperformance becomes structural, not speculative.

Why RS matters more than price or volume

Price can rise for many reasons: a tweet, a rumor, media coverage. Volume can also be noise. RS, calculated over 6 months (126 market sessions), is hard to manipulate and hard to sustain artificially. A stock with RS 90 maintained that relative leadership for half a year — that requires consistent institutional buying.

This is why RS is the first metric the scanner evaluates before looking at technicals, fundamentals, or any other signal. If RS doesn't clear the threshold, the stock doesn't enter the pipeline regardless of how good the chart looks.

How to use RS to confirm a signal

When the scanner shows a Gems signal with RS = 88, it means that stock outperformed 88% of the scanned universe over the last 6 market months, and institutional money is actively choosing it.