Relative Strength
How a stock's return compares to a benchmark (e.g. Nifty 500) over a defined period.
Relative Strength is the simple measure that underpins RS rank. It compares a stock's return to a benchmark index over the same window.
Example: if RELIANCE returned +18% over 3 months while Nifty 500 returned +6%, RELIANCE's 3-month relative strength is roughly +12 percentage points (or 1.12 in ratio terms, depending on the convention).
Why this matters: when the market itself is going up, almost everything goes up. Relative strength filters out the "rising tide" so you only see the stocks that genuinely outperformed.
Most professional traders agree that relative strength is among the top 1-2 most important factors in swing trading. Swing Edge tracks it across 1-month, 3-month, 6-month and 12-month windows and computes the multi-timeframe RS rank from that.