Momentum Lab
The market moves before the bell. PatternX is already watching.
Catch the move while it's happening.
PatternX Momentum Lab scans extended-hours movers lists, refreshed every 15 seconds, for significant price movements, tracks qualifying opportunities in real time and can execute your configured momentum strategies automatically.
- ◆ Elite plan only — every plan can preview
- ✓ Starts in Paper
- ✓ Live needs a typed confirmation
- Trading involves risk of loss
Scanning the premarket
WATCHINGFrom 4:00 AM ET the stocks on the premarket movers lists are measured against their reference price — by default the previous official close.
Illustrative sequence with simulated prices — not a real security, real market data or a typical result. Moves can reverse before or soon after an entry, and trades can lose money.
The edge is attention — not prediction
Before the open, stocks react to earnings, filings and overnight news — often several at once, often within minutes. Momentum Lab does not forecast those moves. It makes sure your rules are applied to the movers it picks up, the moment they qualify.
Monitors many stocks at once
The top 50 gainers and 50 losers from each data source, refreshed every 15 seconds through the extended-hours session — not just the handful of tickers one person can keep on screen.
Reacts the moment rules match
When a real move meets your trigger and passes your filters, the action you configured happens right away — not after someone notices it.
Keeps deterministic state
Every symbol moves through explicit states. A stock that crosses its trigger again is not entered again unless your re-entry rules allow it.
No attention limits
No fatigue, hesitation or distraction at 6:45 AM. It executes exactly what you configured — which is why the configuration, and Paper testing, matter.
Three ways to trade the move
Each strategy runs on its own settings, its own limits and its own statistics — switch on one, two or all three.
Premarket Momentum Breakout
Watches US stocks through the premarket session and measures each one against a reference price. When a stock crosses your trigger, Momentum Lab can enter — then trails the exit behind the highest price reached after the fill.
- Session
- Premarket, 4:00–9:30 AM ET
- Reference price
- Previous official regular-session close
- Entry
- Crosses +5.00%
- Exit
- 0.50% trail from the high after the fill
Reference price, trigger and trail are all yours to change.
Momentum Reversal
Finds extreme premarket movers that start to reverse — extreme gainers turning down and extreme losers turning up — and trades the turn once it is confirmed.
- Minimum premarket move
- 8% (up or down)
- Reversal from the extreme
- 1.5%
- Volume, price, spread
- Configurable minimums and maximum
- AI filter
- Optional
Short entries happen only where your connected broker allows short selling.
Opening Momentum Continuation
Follows strong premarket movers into the 9:30 AM ET open and enters only after the confirmation you choose: a premarket-high breakout, an opening-range breakout, a hold above a premarket level or the VWAP relationship (where data is available).
- Qualifies at
- Premarket move of 5% or more
- Confirmation
- Your choice of the checks above
- Also checks
- Spread, liquidity, volume; optional AI confidence
- Exit
- 0.5% trail
No confirmation, no entry — a strong premarket alone is not enough.
Defaults shown. Every parameter, with its default, is in the Momentum Lab guide.
The life of a Momentum Lab trade
Scan, detect, filter, confirm, enter, trail, exit: the same seven stages for every strategy, in paper and live mode. Numbers are the defaults.
Scan
Watch the movers lists
Every 15 seconds Momentum Lab refreshes the movers from your data source: up to 50 top gainers and 50 top losers. It works from these lists, not from every US stock.
Detect
A strategy arms a candidate
Breakout arms near its trigger (default +5% against the previous close), Reversal after an 8% extreme move, and Opening Continuation once a stock qualifies before the open. Stale data never arms or triggers anything.
Filter
Every gate must pass
Fresh, two-sided quotes; the mandatory market-cap minimum (default $500M, and an unknown market cap never passes); price of at least $1; premarket volume and dollar volume; a spread of at most 1% of the mid; no halt. The optional AI filter runs last and can only skip or rank.
Confirm
The move has to hold
Breakout needs a fresh tick above the trigger after being seen below it, Reversal needs a 1.5% pullback from the extreme on 2 consecutive fresh observations, and Opening Continuation must confirm within 15 minutes of the 09:30 open.
Enter
A limit order, sized by your rules
A marketable limit order at the ask (the bid for shorts) plus a 0.5% buffer, working for 10 seconds. Size follows your settings (default $1,000 a trade, at most 3 open positions and 10 entries a day), capped by available capital. Breakers and STOP block new entries.
Trail
The stop follows the best price
From the fill, the trail follows the best price since entry (default 0.5%, 1% for Reversal) on fresh data every cycle, with a 3% hard stop from the average fill. In live mode an emergency stop-limit also rests at the broker, in extended hours only where the broker accepts stops then.
Exit
Out on the trail, the stop or the clock
A position exits when price pulls back by the trail, reaches the hard stop, the session rule ends it (by default flat 2 minutes before the close, never overnight) or you press Exit or STOP. Exits are marketable limit orders, re-priced on each attempt (a market order only on stale data in the regular session), and a trail is not a loss limit: gaps and spreads can fill worse.
Every threshold is yours
Nothing about a Momentum Lab strategy is hidden or fixed. Each setting below is configured per strategy, so a cautious breakout and an aggressive reversal can run side by side.
Entry filters
- Trigger %
- Direction
- Minimum & maximum price
- Minimum volume
- Minimum premarket volume
- Relative volume
- Market Cap Safety Filter ($100M+ / $500M+ / $2B+)
- Maximum spread %
- Max simultaneous positions
- Symbol exclusions
- Exchange filters
Position sizing
- Fixed dollars
- % of available capital
- % of portfolio
- Fixed shares
Exposure caps
- Max position value
- Total Momentum Lab exposure
- Daily entries
- Per-symbol exposure
Exits
- Trailing %
- Hard emergency stop %
- Take-profit % — or none, trail indefinitely
- Time-based exit
- Exit before the open, or continue into the regular session
- Max holding duration
- Exit on momentum deterioration
- Exit on unacceptable spread
Broker Native — or the PatternX Synthetic Trail
PatternX chooses a position's protection once, when the entry fills. The trail rests at your broker only when every Broker Native condition below is met; otherwise — including with the default 3% hard stop — PatternX runs the trail itself.
The trailing order rests at your broker. Used only when all of these hold: Live mode, “prefer native trailing” on with a trail above 0, an entry filled in the regular session, a broker that supports native trailing stops then, a session policy that does not continue into after-hours, and the hard emergency stop set to 0.
The default — and always used while a hard emergency stop is set (3% by default). PatternX tracks the high-water mark continuously and sends an extended-hours-compatible exit order the moment the trail is hit. In Live mode, an emergency stop-limit order at the hard-stop level also rests at your broker wherever it accepts stops in that session. The high-water mark is stored server-side, so it survives a restart. Because this trail runs on PatternX rather than at your broker, it depends on PatternX, your broker connection and your market data being available — which is why data and broker failures are circuit breakers.
Every open position shows which protection it has: Broker Native or PatternX Synthetic Trail.
A 0.5% trail is not a 0.5% maximum loss
A trailing distance is not a loss limit. A 0.5% trail does not guarantee a maximum 0.5% loss or a 0.5% give-back: premarket liquidity, price gaps, wide spreads, slippage, rejected orders, partial fills and broker order restrictions can produce a realized exit that is materially different from the trail level.
The entry order fills.
The trail now sits 0.50% lower, at $10.746.
The next trade prints below the trail; the exit fills around $10.60 or lower — about 1.9% off the high, not 0.5%.
Illustrative arithmetic, not real market data.
No fresh data, no trade
- Entries are blocked whenever market data is stale — you set the threshold.
- Every quote carries its timestamp, source, bid/ask, last trade, session and freshness.
- Market Cap Safety Filter, checked before anything else: $100M+, $500M+ (the recommended default) or $2B+. A stock with an unknown or stale market cap is never entered automatically.
- Liquidity filters: maximum spread, minimum quote size, minimum volume, minimum dollar volume, minimum price, and optional halt and volatility-pause detection.
- A stock that fails is shown as Skipped — Liquidity Filter, with the reason — never silently dropped.
- Sessions run on New York exchange time, not your device's clock — daylight saving, weekends, exchange holidays and shortened sessions included, across premarket, regular hours and after-hours.
- Last trade
- 12.48
- Bid / ask
- 12.46 / 12.49
- Session
- Premarket
- Source
- Broker feed
- Timestamp
- 07:42:18 ET
- Freshness
- 0.4 s old
Illustrative interface mock-up — not real market data.
One symbol, one state — no duplicate entries
Every symbol moves through the same deterministic states. A stock that crosses its trigger a second time finds its existing state, not a fresh one, so it is not entered twice — re-entry happens only under your re-entry rules.
Paper first. Live on purpose. Stop in one tap.
The same engine and the same rules in both modes — with the decision to risk real money always yours, and always explicit.
Identical logic in Paper and Live
Only the execution adapter differs — simulated fills in Paper, real orders in Live. Start in Paper. Switching to Live requires an explicit typed confirmation, so it never happens by accident, and the current mode is always shown prominently.
A kill switch that does exactly four things
- Disables new entries immediately
- Cancels eligible pending entry orders
- Keeps existing positions visible
- Lets you decide, separately, whether to exit them
Automatic circuit breakers
- Max daily loss
- Max strategy loss
- Max consecutive losses
- Max number of trades
- Max aggregate exposure
- Market-data failure
- Broker-connection failure
- Execution-error threshold
AI ranks real moves. It never invents them.
The deterministic market-data engine has to detect a genuine price move first. Only then can PatternX AI, if you switch it on, rank or filter that opportunity — it never manufactures a price event.
Know what each version of your strategy did
Results are attributed to the exact parameter version in force at the time. Change the trigger from 5% to 7%, or the trail from 0.5% to 1%, and that is a new version — so two different strategies are never blended into one set of numbers.
- Trades
- Win rate
- Average win / loss
- Profit factor
- Expectancy
- Net P&L
- Max drawdown
- Average hold time
- Average slippage
- Best / worst trade
- Max favorable / adverse excursion
- Premarket vs regular-session results
Test the grid before the bell rings
Backtests replay real extended-hours history wherever your data source provides it — nothing is fabricated where history is missing. Compare entry thresholds against trailing distances, and add liquidity, volume and opening-confirmation filters.
| Entry | 0.25% | 0.5% | 0.75% | 1% | 2% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3% | Entry 3%, trail 0.25% | Entry 3%, trail 0.5% | Entry 3%, trail 0.75% | Entry 3%, trail 1% | Entry 3%, trail 2% |
| 5% | Entry 5%, trail 0.25% | Entry 5%, trail 0.5% | Entry 5%, trail 0.75% | Entry 5%, trail 1% | Entry 5%, trail 2% |
| 7% | Entry 7%, trail 0.25% | Entry 7%, trail 0.5% | Entry 7%, trail 0.75% | Entry 7%, trail 1% | Entry 7%, trail 2% |
| 10% | Entry 10%, trail 0.25% | Entry 10%, trail 0.5% | Entry 10%, trail 0.75% | Entry 10%, trail 1% | Entry 10%, trail 2% |
4 entry thresholds × 5 trailing distances = 20 runs. Backtested results are hypothetical, cannot fully reproduce premarket spreads and fills, and past results do not guarantee future results.
What you need
Momentum Lab trades on real-time data it can verify — so the data source matters as much as the plan.
The Elite plan
Paper and live execution are Elite-only and enforced server-side. Every other plan can open a preview.
Real-time extended-hours data
From your connected broker — Interactive Brokers market data, or an Alpaca account with a real-time consolidated feed — or a supported premium data provider. PatternX never trades on scraped web pages.
The right entitlement
Real-time premarket data generally requires a real-time market-data entitlement with your broker or data provider. Without fresh data, entries stay blocked.
A connected broker for Live
Paper needs no real orders. Live orders go through your own broker connection; short entries need a broker that allows short selling.
Connecting a broker? Follow the connection guide.
Momentum Lab questions
Which plan includes Momentum Lab?
Elite. Every other plan can open a preview of Momentum Lab, but paper and live execution can only be enabled on Elite — and that is checked on the server, not just hidden in the interface.
Does a 0.5% trailing stop limit my loss to 0.5%?
No. The trailing distance decides when PatternX starts exiting, not the price the exit gets. In extended hours, thin liquidity, price gaps, wide spreads, slippage, rejected orders, partial fills and broker order restrictions can all produce a realized exit that is materially different from the trail level. A 0.5% trail does not guarantee a maximum 0.5% loss or a 0.5% give-back.
What happens if my broker does not support trailing stops before the open?
PatternX runs the PatternX Synthetic Trail: it tracks the high-water mark on its servers and sends an extended-hours-compatible exit order when the trail is hit. That is also what the default settings use. A Broker Native trail is used only when all of these hold: Live mode, “prefer native trailing” on with a trail above 0, an entry filled in the regular session, a broker that supports native trailing stops then, a session policy that does not continue into after-hours, and the hard emergency stop set to 0. In Live mode, an emergency stop-limit order at the hard-stop level also rests at your broker wherever it accepts stops in that session. Each position is labelled Broker Native or PatternX Synthetic Trail, and the high-water mark is stored server-side so it survives a restart.
What market data does Momentum Lab need?
Real-time extended-hours quotes from your connected broker — Interactive Brokers market data, or an Alpaca account with a real-time consolidated feed — or from a supported premium data provider. Real-time premarket data generally requires a real-time market-data entitlement with your broker or provider. PatternX never trades on scraped web pages, and it blocks new entries whenever the data goes stale.
Can I try it without risking money?
Yes. Every strategy can run in Paper mode, which sends no real orders and uses exactly the same strategy logic as Live — only the execution adapter differs. Switching to Live requires an explicit typed confirmation, so it never happens by accident, and the current mode is always shown prominently.
How do I stop it immediately?
Press STOP MOMENTUM TRADING. New entries are disabled at once, eligible pending entry orders are cancelled and your existing positions stay visible — you then decide separately whether to exit them. Automatic circuit breakers can also stop new entries on their own, for example on a maximum daily loss, too many consecutive losses, or a market-data or broker-connection failure.
Does AI decide what Momentum Lab trades?
No. The deterministic market-data engine has to detect a real price move first. PatternX AI is optional: it can rank or filter those genuine opportunities using factors such as volume, liquidity, spread, volatility, market regime (SPY movement) and, with Alpaca data, news context — it never manufactures a price event.
More answers in the Help Center and the Momentum Lab guide.
Be watching before the bell
Set your rules, rehearse them in Paper, and let Momentum Lab watch the extended-hours market for you.
Already on Elite? Open Momentum Lab →
Momentum Lab risk notice. Extended-hours trading carries additional risk: thinner liquidity, wider spreads, sharper price swings and order types your broker may not accept outside the regular session. Momentum Lab applies the rules you configure — it does not predict prices, and a move can reverse at any moment. A trailing distance is not a loss limit. A 0.5% trail does not guarantee a maximum 0.5% loss or a 0.5% give-back: premarket liquidity, price gaps, wide spreads, slippage, rejected orders, partial fills and broker order restrictions can produce a realized exit that is materially different from the trail level. Backtested and paper results are hypothetical, and past results do not guarantee future results. Trading involves risk of loss. Read the full risk disclaimer.