ChartInk Screener Guide for India

ChartInk is the most powerful free stock screener available for Indian markets, and it is criminally underutilized by most traders. While TradingView gets all the attention for charting, ChartInk quietly offers something TradingView cannot: real-time scanning of the entire NSE and BSE universe using custom technical conditions, delivery data, and even intraday scans — all for free. I use ChartInk every single trading day, and it has become an indispensable part of my stock selection process.

In this guide, I will teach you how to build custom ChartInk scans from scratch. I will share my actual screeners for breakout detection, volume spikes, EMA crossovers, and high delivery percentage stocks — the four scan types that generate the most consistent trading opportunities in Indian markets.

Getting Started With ChartInk

ChartInk (chartink.com) is free to use. No subscription, no premium tier for basic scanning. The site offers pre-built screeners, but the real power is in creating your own custom scans using their condition builder.

To create a custom scan, go to chartink.com/screener and click "Create New Screener." You will see a condition builder with dropdown menus for indicators, comparisons, and values. The interface takes 30 minutes to learn, but once you grasp the logic, you can build scans that would cost Rs 2,000-5,000/month on paid platforms.

The basic scan structure is: [Indicator] [Comparison] [Value/Indicator]. For example: "Close > EMA(Close, 200)" means "the closing price is above the 200-day EMA." You can add multiple conditions with AND/OR logic to create complex multi-factor scans.

Scan Type	Purpose	Best Time to Run	Expected Results
Breakout scan	Find stocks breaking above resistance	3:00 PM (near close)	5-15 stocks per day
Volume spike scan	Detect unusual buying/selling activity	2:30 PM or post-market	10-30 stocks per day
EMA crossover scan	Identify trend changes	Post-market (after 3:30 PM)	3-10 stocks per day
Delivery % scan	Find institutional accumulation	Next morning (data delayed)	5-20 stocks per day

Breakout Screener — My Most Used Scan

This scan finds stocks that are breaking above their recent consolidation range with volume confirmation. It is my primary tool for identifying swing trade candidates.

Conditions:

1. Close > Max(High, 20) — today's close is above the highest high of the past 20 days (breakout condition)
2. Volume > SMA(Volume, 20) * 1.5 — today's volume is 50% above the 20-day average (volume confirmation)
3. Close > EMA(Close, 200) — stock is in a long-term uptrend (trend filter)
4. Market Cap > 1000 — only stocks with Rs 1,000 crore+ market cap (liquidity filter)

This scan typically returns 5-15 stocks per day during trending markets and 0-3 during choppy markets. I run it at 3:00 PM IST (30 minutes before market close) to see which stocks are confirming their breakout on the closing candle. Stocks that appear on this scan near market close have a higher probability of follow-through the next day.

After the scan returns results, I manually review each stock's chart on TradingView for confirmation. Not every breakout is tradeable — I look for clean chart structures, reasonable risk-reward (stop at the breakout level, target at the next resistance), and sector alignment (if the sector is trending up, the breakout is more reliable).

Volume Spike Screener — Detecting Smart Money

Unusual volume is one of the most reliable signals that something is happening in a stock before the news becomes public. Institutional buyers cannot accumulate large positions without leaving volume footprints, and ChartInk is the best tool to detect these footprints in real-time.

Conditions:

1. Volume > SMA(Volume, 20) * 3 — today's volume is at least 3x the 20-day average (strong spike)
2. Close > Open — the stock is closing higher than it opened (bullish bias)
3. Close > EMA(Close, 50) — stock is above the medium-term trend
4. Volume > 100000 — minimum absolute volume filter (avoids illiquid stocks)

A 3x volume spike with a bullish close is a strong signal. When I see a stock with 5x or higher volume and a green candle, I immediately add it to my watchlist for the next trading day. The first pullback after a volume spike is often the best entry point — smart money has already bought, and the stock tends to consolidate briefly before continuing higher.

I also maintain a bearish volume spike scan (same conditions but with Close less than Open) to identify potential short candidates or stocks to avoid buying.

EMA Crossover Screener — Trend Change Detection

Moving average crossovers are the most basic trend signal, but they remain effective when applied systematically across the entire market. ChartInk lets you scan for crossovers that happened today — a task that would take hours to do manually across 1,500+ NSE stocks.

Bullish EMA Crossover Scan:

1. EMA(Close, 20) crossed above EMA(Close, 50) — the 20 EMA crossed above the 50 EMA today
2. Volume > SMA(Volume, 20) * 1.2 — volume is above average (confirms the crossover)
3. RSI(14) > 50 and RSI(14) < 70 — momentum is positive but not overbought
4. Close > 50 — price filter to avoid penny stocks

The "crossed above" function in ChartInk is particularly useful because it only returns stocks where the crossover happened on the current day's candle, not stocks where the 20 EMA is simply above the 50 EMA. This gives you the freshest signals.

I run this scan post-market (after 3:30 PM) and analyze the results overnight. Stocks with fresh bullish crossovers often gap up the next morning if the broader market sentiment is positive. My entry strategy: buy on a pullback to the 20 EMA within 3 trading days of the crossover, with a stop loss at the 50 EMA.

Delivery Percentage Screener — Institutional Footprint

Delivery percentage is a uniquely Indian data point — it measures the percentage of total traded volume that results in actual share delivery (transfer between demat accounts) versus intraday trading. High delivery percentage indicates that buyers are taking actual delivery of shares, which is typically an institutional behavior.

Conditions:

1. Delivery % > 60 — at least 60% of volume was delivery-based (significantly above the NSE average of 35-40%)
2. Volume > SMA(Volume, 20) * 1.5 — volume is above average
3. Close > Open — bullish day
4. Close > EMA(Close, 200) — long-term uptrend

A stock with 60%+ delivery percentage on above-average volume and a bullish close is showing clear institutional accumulation. The key insight: institutions buy for weeks or months, not days. If you see a stock appearing on this scan 3-4 times in a two-week period, the accumulation is ongoing, and a sustained move higher is likely.

Note that delivery data on ChartInk is delayed by one day (NSE releases delivery data the following morning). Run this scan in the morning for the previous day's data.

Advanced Tips and Best Practices

Save your scans. Create an account on ChartInk and save your custom screeners. I have 8 saved scans that I rotate through daily — it takes me 15 minutes to run all of them and compile my daily watchlist.

Set up alerts. ChartInk allows you to set up free alerts on your scans. You can receive email or Telegram notifications when a stock matches your conditions during market hours. I use this for my breakout scan — when a stock triggers a breakout during the day, I get an alert and can evaluate it in real-time.

Combine multiple scan results. A stock that appears on both your breakout scan AND your volume spike scan is a higher-probability trade than one that appears on only one scan. I maintain a "conviction score" — if a stock appears on 2+ of my scans simultaneously, it gets priority attention.

Use the sector heatmap. ChartInk offers a sector heatmap that shows which sectors are strongest on any given day. Before trading individual stocks, check the sector heatmap. Buying breakouts in the strongest sector of the day significantly improves your win rate.

Pair with TradingView for charting. ChartInk is excellent for scanning but limited for detailed chart analysis. Once a stock passes your ChartInk scan, pull up its chart on TradingView for proper technical analysis — support/resistance levels, chart patterns, and indicator confirmation. Use ChartInk to find the stocks, TradingView to analyze them.

ChartInk is the most undervalued tool in the Indian trading ecosystem. While everyone talks about Zerodha Streak, Sensibull, and paid screeners, ChartInk quietly offers comparable functionality for free. Master the four scan types in this guide — breakouts, volume spikes, EMA crossovers, and delivery percentage — and you will have a systematic stock selection process that most retail traders lack. The edge is not in the tool; it is in knowing how to use it.