---
title: "Special relations"
description: "Special relations are the pattern tests a few screener filters offer instead of numeric operators: crossings, price above or below a line, and valuation bands."
canonical_url: "https://fincanva.com/glossary/special-relations"
last_updated: "2026-10-07"
md_url: "https://fincanva.com/glossary/special-relations.md"
---

# Special relations

Special relations are the pattern tests a few [screener](/glossary/screener) filters offer in place of numeric operators: they ask whether something *happened*, or which *state* an [instrument](/glossary/instrument) is in, rather than whether a reading clears a threshold. Fifteen exist, on six filters, in three families — crossings, price against a line, and valuation bands.

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

## How does Fincanva handle it?

Six filters carry special relations — [SMA](/glossary/simple-moving-average-sma), Bollinger Bands, Stochastic, Mkt SMA, Buffet Indicator and Sec SMA, placed in the [filter taxonomy](/glossary/filter-taxonomy) — and on them the relations replace the numeric operators rather than sitting beside them, each its own choice in the filter's editor. A special relation never takes a threshold value; where it takes a number at all, that number is a time window, not a level, and the filter's [lag, period, and multiplier](/glossary/lag-period-and-multiplier) inputs still apply. The **crossings** ask whether a price or an oscillator line crossed within the last N trading days; **Price Above** and **Price Below** ask which side of the line the price sits on now; the five **valuation bands** place the market's valuation reading on the Buffet Indicator filter in one of five mutually exclusive bands. 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. Every relation, its chip and its window are in [Screen for a crossing or a valuation band](/docs/screeners/screen-for-a-crossing-or-a-valuation-band).

## 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.

Fincanva is for education and illustration only. It is not personalised financial advice, and past or simulated results do not predict future ones. [Read the Terms Addendum](https://fincanva.com/terms/addendum#section-3)