Holding Up Best

About Holding Up Best

When NIFTY falls, most stocks fall. The useful question is which ones fall less than their own history says they should — and that is not the same as which ones fell least.

Each stock's normal response to an index decline is measured from a year of one-minute data, giving it a down-capture profile of its own. Today's move is then scored against that profile as a z-score. A low-beta stock falling a little is behaving normally and scores nothing; a high-beta stock falling a little is the anomaly worth seeing.

How to use this page

1. Use it on down days. On a rising index the measure has little to say.
2. Read the z-score, not the percentage change. The percentage tells you what happened; the z-score tells you whether it was unusual for that particular stock.
3. Cross-check against the bullish scanner. A name that is both holding up and scoring well intraday is a stronger case than either on its own.
4. Remember that strength on one day is not a trend. The measure is a snapshot of behaviour against history, not a forecast.

Common questions

What is relative strength in stocks?

Here it means falling less than a stock's own history predicts for a given index decline, measured as a z-score against a year of that stock's one-minute behaviour — not simply falling less than the index, which mostly identifies low-beta names.

Why not just use beta?

Beta already explains why a defensive stock falls less, so ranking by raw decline mostly rediscovers beta. Scoring each stock against its own down-capture profile removes that and leaves the part that is genuinely unusual.

When is this page most useful?

On days when the index is down. It measures behaviour during declines, so on a rising index there is little for it to measure.

More detail: the method page documents every formula, and the guides explain how to read each dashboard and where the numbers mislead.