Breakout Pattern Scanner

WHAT IT DOES. Keeps crypto assets within a configurable distance of their all-time high, after market-cap, volume and stablecoin filters, and ranks them with signed seven-day momentum. Positive momentum is NOT an eligibility requirement. Score = 100 plus the percent distance from the high (negative below it) plus half the seven-day return, held between 0 and 100, with a missing return contributing zero without claiming a flat week. Missing ATH distance cannot qualify. Negative returns do not exclude an asset.

THE ACADEMIC RESULT WORTH KNOWING. George and Hwang (2004) found that a stock's proximity to its 52-WEEK HIGH predicted future returns, and did so better than the traditional momentum measure - and moreover that when both were used together, nearness to the high dominated. The proposed explanation is ANCHORING: investors treat a salient prior high as a reference point and are reluctant to bid above it, so good news is absorbed too slowly and the adjustment continues afterwards. That makes this a documented effect with a behavioural mechanism, not folklore.

THE MECHANICAL ARGUMENT alongside it. At an all-time high, NO HOLDER IS UNDERWATER - every owner is in profit. So the supply of sellers motivated to exit at break-even, which the disposition effect says is substantial, is absent by construction. That absence of overhead supply is a genuine structural difference from any other price level.

ALL-TIME HIGH VERSUS 52-WEEK HIGH is a real distinction and the research is on the 52-week measure. An all-time high is a stricter condition, and in crypto it is also a much shorter history: an asset listed eighteen months ago has an eighteen-month all-time high, which is a different object from a decade-long one.

THE FAILURE MODE THIS INHERITS. Breakout strategies are trend-following, and trend-following works in trending markets and whipsaws in ranging ones. A breakout that fails - price exceeding a high and immediately reversing - is common enough to have its own name, and no screener can distinguish a real breakout from a false one at the moment of the break, because the difference is only defined afterwards.

AND THE SELECTION EFFECT WORTH NOTICING. Assets near all-time highs are, by definition, assets that have recently risen a great deal. So this screener will surface whatever has run - which is the point, and also means the list is systematically composed of assets whose recent volatility is elevated.