Special relations

Also seen as: special strings, pattern relations, cross relations

What does each special relation test?

The relation names in the editor are the full labels; the chip shows a shorthand code. {N}d in a chip is the window in days, not a threshold.

The five valuation bands are mutually exclusive: on any given date the reading is in exactly one of them, so picking two bands in two conditions on the same date yields nothing.

What is the window on a cross relation?

The number on a cross relation is a lookback window in trading days, and the condition passes when the crossing happened at any point inside it. The choices are 7, 14, 21, and 28 days, and 28 is the default — so out of the box a cross relation asks "has this crossed in the last four weeks", not "did it cross today". A shorter window makes the test stricter, because the crossing has to be more recent to count.

Price Above and Price Below carry no window. They describe where the price is right now relative to the line, so they stay true for as long as the price stays on that side, while a cross relation goes false once the crossing ages past the window.

Is Crosses Above the same as a golden cross?

No — Crosses Above tests the price against one moving average, while a golden cross is conventionally a faster moving average crossing above a slower one. The two are related signals but not the same test: with Crosses Above there is one line on the chart and the price crosses it; with a golden cross there are two lines and they cross each other.

The relations that do compare two lines to each other are the Stochastic filter's Fast/Slow pair, and there the two lines are the oscillator's fast and slow lines, not a pair of moving averages. So "golden cross" is a useful mental picture for what Crosses Above signals, and the wrong description of what it measures.

Defaults in Fincanva

• Only six filters carry special relations: SMA, Bollinger Bands, Stochastic (Technical → Indicators), Mkt SMA and Buffett Indicator (Market & Sector → Market Technical and Market Fundamental), and Sec SMA (Sector Technical).
• On a filter that has them, the special relations replace the numeric operators rather than sitting alongside them, and each one is its own choice in the editor.
• The eight cross shorthand codes stay in English in every language (X-Above 28d, F/S Bull-X 14d); the Price Above and Price Below chips and the five valuation-band chips are translated.
• A filter's Advanced inputs still apply. The SMA filter's Bars input sets how long the moving average is, and Months Ago shifts the whole reading back in time; see lag, period, and multiplier.
• Because Mkt SMA and Buffett Indicator read the market rather than an instrument, a condition on them gates the entire screen: on a date where it fails, the screener returns no matches at all. Sec SMA gates whole sectors the same way. See filter taxonomy.
• Fincanva describes what these relations detect. It does not rate a crossing as bullish or bearish for your purposes, and a relation being true is not a signal to act.

Worked example: a bullish moving-average cross

Take the SMA filter with its default 252-bar average — roughly one trading year — on a stock that has been below that average for months and then rallies through it eight trading days ago.

• Pick Crosses Above and leave the window at its default of 28 days. You're saying reads "SMA crosses above (28 days)." The crossing happened 8 days ago, which is inside the window, so the stock passes and the chip reads SMA (252) X-Above 28d.
• Narrow the window to 7 days. The same crossing is now 8 days old, one day outside the window, and the stock stops passing — with no change to its price at all.
• Switch to Price Above instead. The window disappears, and the stock passes for as long as its price stays above the 252-bar average, whether it crossed eight days ago or eight months ago.

The three conditions read the same chart and select different things: a recent event, a recent-enough event, and a current state.