The Minervini Code 33 Screener That Finds Three Quarters of Acceleration
A Code 33 situation, Mark Minervini’s term from Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard, is three consecutive quarters of acceleration in earnings, sales and profit margins at the same time. Deepvue ships his Code 33 screen as a Top Traders preset that pairs that fundamental test with trend and momentum conditions, so the list you open each morning is already filtered for both. $49 a month.
Key Takeaways
Plenty of companies grow. Far fewer grow faster every quarter, on the top line, the bottom line and the margin between them, all at once. When that happens, the stock is usually early in something big, and the biggest winners in Minervini’s studies were disproportionately in that state when they started their runs.
Checking nine growth rates across three quarters for every stock in the market is not a job for a spreadsheet. Deepvue’s screener has the Minervini Code 33 screen built in as a preset, so the acceleration test is one click and your evening goes to the charts instead.
- ✓Code 33 means earnings, sales and profit margins have each accelerated for three consecutive quarters
- ✓Acceleration is the growth rate rising, not just the number rising, which is what separates a leader from a steady grower
- ✓The preset adds trend and momentum conditions so the fundamentals are confirmed by price
- ✓The fundamentals pick the name and the chart picks the day, usually a tight base with a clear pivot
- ✓Every Code 33 name reports again within three months, so the thesis is retested each quarter
- ✓Preset, stats table, charts and alerts are all part of the single $49 a month plan
What Is a Code 33 Situation?
Mark Minervini won the U.S. Investing Championship in 1997 with a 155% return and again in 2021 with 334.8%, and he wrote up the method in Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard. In the chapter on fundamentals he tells readers to look for what he calls a Code 33 situation: three quarters of acceleration in earnings, sales and profit margins.
The name is the numbers. Three measures, three quarters each. A company that qualifies has just delivered its best three quarter stretch on every line that matters, and the stock has usually not finished pricing that in.
Acceleration Is Not the Same as Growth
A company growing earnings 30% a year is growing. A company that grew 10%, then 20%, then 35% is accelerating, and it’s the second one Code 33 wants. The distinction matters because the market prices trends in the rate of change. Steady 30% growth is usually already in the stock. A rising growth rate is a surprise every quarter, and surprises are what move price.
| Measure | What accelerating means | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Earnings per share | The year over year growth rate is higher in each of the last three quarters than the one before | Profit is compounding, not just growing |
| Sales | Revenue growth is rising quarter after quarter | Demand is real and the earnings aren’t coming from cost cuts alone |
| Profit margins | The margin has expanded in each of the last three quarters | The company has pricing power, operating scale, or both |
Why All Three Together
Any one of the three can be engineered for a quarter or two. A buyback lifts earnings per share. An acquisition lifts sales. A one off cost cut lifts margins. Getting all three to accelerate for three straight quarters is much harder to fake, because it needs demand, pricing and execution to improve at the same time. That’s the filter Code 33 applies, and it’s why the list is short.
Where Code 33 Fits in the Minervini Strategy
Minervini’s SEPA method has five elements: trend, fundamentals, catalyst, entry point and exit point. His trend template handles the first. Code 33 is the heart of the second. The mark minervini strategy that people try to copy from the trend template alone is missing half the method, because the template finds stocks in uptrends and Code 33 finds the reason the uptrend can keep going.
Why Code 33 Is Hard to Screen For
Most screeners give you trailing twelve month growth, maybe the latest quarter against a year ago. Code 33 needs the growth rate for each of the last three quarters, for three different measures, and then a comparison between them to confirm each rate is higher than the last. That’s nine data points and six comparisons per stock, and the margin series in particular is something few tools calculate at all.
So most traders run a mark minervini stock screener that checks the chart, then open the fundamentals for each candidate by hand. It works, and it takes an evening. The point of a minervini stock screener built on Code 33 is to reverse the order: qualify the fundamentals first, across the whole market, and only then look at charts.
Why Deepvue Is the Best Minervini Code 33 Screener
Deepvue ships the acceleration test as a preset, shows the quarter by quarter numbers beneath every chart, and puts the watchlist and alert one click from each row. A Minervini screener needs all three to turn a reading list into a trade list.
A Mark Minervini Screener That’s Already Built
In the screener, the drop down beside the screen name opens Screener Presets. Under Top Traders, Mark Minervini has a folder of his own, and Code 33 is one of the scans inside it, next to his trend criteria and power play screens. Select it and the list fills.
The shipped version is read only, which protects it from stray edits. A duplicate is fully yours, condition by condition.
What the Preset Tests
The preset description reads: a powerful combination of trend, momentum, accelerating earnings, sales and profit margins over three consecutive quarters, signaling potential for an explosive move. Two things are happening in that sentence.
- •The Code 33 test itself. Earnings, sales and margins each accelerating over the last three reported quarters, which is the fundamental screen from the book.
- •Trend and momentum on top. Price conditions that keep the results in stocks the market has already started to reward, so you aren’t buying great numbers in a downtrend.
The combination is what makes the list tradeable. Great fundamentals in a stock under its 200 day line is a value idea. Great fundamentals in a stock making higher highs is a Minervini idea.
The Stats Table Shows the Three Quarters
Click any result and a stats table of quarterly earnings and sales appears under the chart, one column per quarter, growth rate beside each figure. That table is Code 33 made visible: read the growth rates left to right and you can see the acceleration the screen found, and whether the most recent quarter kept it going.
Reading the Results Table
For this screen, the columns to add are daily and weekly closing range, relative volume over 20 days and the up/down volume ratio over 50 days. Code 33 tells you the business is accelerating. Those columns tell you whether institutions have noticed: rising up/down volume and strong closes on the days the stock moves are the footprint of funds building positions in a name whose numbers just got better.
Chart and Fundamentals in One View
The chart sits to the right of the results with months of price history in view, and that is where the trade gets made. Minervini buys Code 33 fundamentals through a tight base and a clear pivot, and the split view lets you check the base, the moving averages and the quarterly numbers without leaving the screen.
From Candidate to Position
A right click on any result opens the watchlist menu and the alert form. Code 33 names often need days or weeks to finish a base after the screen finds them, so park the name and let the alert at the pivot do the waiting.
How to Build Your Own Code 33 Stock Screener
The preset is the starting point. These six changes turn it into your own version, and the copy is saved for good.
Load Code 33 from the Mark Minervini folder and make a duplicate, which unlocks the conditions.
Keep the three acceleration conditions intact. Those are the pattern.
Add a floor under the latest quarter, such as earnings growth above 25%, so acceleration from tiny numbers doesn’t qualify.
Add an RS Rating minimum, around 80 or higher, to keep only the names already leading the market.
Add price above the 50 day and 200 day moving averages, with the 50 day above the 200 day, which brings in the core of the trend template.
Finish by requiring price within about 25% of its 52 week high, plus a dollar volume floor for tradeability.
If typing beats clicking, the AI Terminal accepts “stocks with three quarters of accelerating earnings and sales, RS Rating above 80, trading above the 50 day average” and builds the condition set for you to adjust.
How to Trade a Code 33 Stock
The mark minervini trading strategy separates two decisions most traders blur together: which stock, and which day. Code 33 answers the first. It says nothing about the second, and that gap is where the mark minervini trading strategy does its real work.
The Fundamentals Pick the Name, the Chart Picks the Day
A stock that just passed Code 33 can still be 30% extended from its last base, and buying it there means buying the crowd’s enthusiasm rather than the company’s numbers. Minervini waits for a volatility contraction, a base where each pullback is shallower than the last, and buys the pivot as price clears it on volume. The screen decides what goes on the list. The chart decides whether today is the day.
Where the Stop Goes
Just under the pivot or the low of the final contraction, typically a few percent below the entry. Minervini’s rule is that the stop is set before the buy and never widened. Feed that distance into the position size calculator and the share count adjusts so the dollar risk stays fixed whatever the stock costs.
Holding Through the Next Report
A Code 33 stock reports again within three months, and that report retests the thesis. If the growth rate is still rising the position deserves more room. If it decelerates, the reason you bought is gone even if the price hasn’t moved yet. With the stats table under the chart, that check takes ten seconds instead of a quarterly scramble.
Code 33, Trend Template or VCP?
Minervini’s method has three screens people confuse, and they answer three different questions:
- •Code 33. Is the business accelerating? Fundamentals, three measures, three quarters.
- •Trend template. Is the stock in a confirmed uptrend? Price against the 50, 150 and 200 day averages and the 52 week range.
- •Volatility contraction pattern. Is there a low risk entry? The shape of the base right now.
Run them in that order and each one narrows the last. The volatility contraction pattern screener handles the third, and the guide to how Mark Minervini screens for stocks walks through how the three fit together.
When a Code 33 Stock Should Be Ignored
Passing the screen is the beginning of the work. These are the results that pass and still don’t belong on the list.
- •Acceleration from nothing. Earnings going from one cent to two cents to four cents is 100% acceleration and no business. Check the absolute numbers.
- •Already priced in. If the stock tripled while the three quarters were reported, the market found it first. Code 33 works best in the first or second quarter of acceleration, not the fifth.
- •No setup on the chart. Extended, wide and loose, or below the 200 day line. Great numbers don’t fix a bad entry.
- •Guidance that decelerates. If the company just told you next quarter slows, the screen is looking backward and the market is looking forward.
- •Wrong market. In a correction, leaders with accelerating earnings still get sold. Fewer positions and tighter stops until the index confirms.
Who Gets the Most From This Screen
- •Anyone trading the Minervini way who wants the fundamental screen done for them rather than building nine comparisons by hand
- •Growth traders who want a mark minervini stock screener that qualifies the list on fundamentals before a single chart is opened
- •Swing and position traders holding for weeks to months, where the next earnings report is part of the plan
- •Anyone who has been burned buying good charts on companies whose numbers were already slowing
- •Earnings season traders who want acceleration flagged the day a new quarter posts
Pricing
$49 a month on a single plan, nothing gated.
- •All 169 presets, Code 33 among them, editable in a duplicate
- •227 earnings fields and 126 sales fields, so acceleration, growth floors and ratings can be combined in one screen
- •The stats table under every chart, plus watchlists, alerts and saved layouts, from the screen to the pivot without a second tool
- •Streaming data during market hours, so a base that breaks out at 10:15 shows up at 10:15
The comparable platform, MarketSurge, is $149 a month.
New accounts include a setup call, introductory emails and weekly webinars that each take one module apart.
Buy the Acceleration, Not the Story
Every stock has a story. Only a few have three quarters of numbers that keep getting better on every line, and the mark minervini strategy is built on owning those few. A Minervini Code 33 screener finds those few across the whole market before the open, and the trend and momentum conditions make sure the market agrees with the numbers.
The rest of Minervini’s presets, and the other Top Traders screens, are listed in stock screener by trader. For the entry side of his method, the base and pivot scans are in stock screener by pattern. Premarket and session based screens have their own home in stock screener by market timing, and the approach based screens, growth stock screening included, are in screener by strategy.
Run the Code 33 screen before the next earnings season
↑ Back to contentsFrequently Asked Questions
What is Code 33 in trading?
Code 33 in trading is Mark Minervini’s name for a stock with three consecutive quarters of acceleration in earnings, sales and profit margins. The three measures and three quarters give it the name. Deepvue runs the test as a preset in the Top Traders category.
What is a Code 33 situation according to Mark Minervini?
A Code 33 situation, according to Mark Minervini in Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard, is when earnings, sales and profit margins have each accelerated for three quarters in a row. He treats it as one of the strongest fundamental signals a stock can give, and Deepvue’s Code 33 preset tests all three.
What does earnings acceleration mean?
Earnings acceleration means the growth rate of earnings is rising from quarter to quarter, not just the earnings themselves. Growth of 10%, then 20%, then 35% is accelerating. Deepvue’s stats table shows the growth rate beside each quarter so acceleration is visible at a glance.
How do you screen stocks like Mark Minervini?
You screen stocks like Mark Minervini by qualifying fundamentals with Code 33, confirming the uptrend with his trend template, and timing the entry with a volatility contraction pattern. Deepvue ships each as a preset, with Code 33 and the trend criteria in the Mark Minervini folder of Top Traders.
What are the criteria in the Minervini Code 33 screener on Deepvue?
The criteria in the Minervini Code 33 screener on Deepvue are three consecutive quarters of accelerating earnings, sales and profit margins, combined with trend and momentum conditions so results are in stocks the market is already rewarding. A duplicate of the preset lets you adjust any of them.
Is Code 33 the same as the Minervini trend template?
Code 33 is not the same as the Minervini trend template. Code 33 tests fundamentals over three quarters. The trend template tests price against the 50, 150 and 200 day moving averages and the 52 week range. Deepvue ships one preset for each, and running both together is the point.
How many quarters does Code 33 require?
Code 33 requires three consecutive quarters of acceleration, in each of earnings, sales and profit margins. That’s where the 33 comes from: three measures, three quarters. Deepvue’s preset checks all nine data points in one pass.
Does Code 33 tell you when to buy?
No, Code 33 does not tell you when to buy. It tells you which companies are accelerating. The entry comes from the chart, usually a tight base and a pivot, which is why Deepvue opens the chart beside every result and lets you set an alert at the pivot.
Can I change the conditions in the Code 33 preset?
Yes, you can change the conditions in the Code 33 preset once you make a duplicate, since the shipped version is read only. Your copy accepts any addition: a growth floor under the latest quarter, an RS Rating minimum, moving average tests or a dollar volume requirement.
What book is Code 33 from?
Code 33 is from Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard, Mark Minervini’s 2013 book, where he tells readers to look for three quarters of acceleration in earnings, sales and profit margins. Deepvue built its Code 33 preset around that definition.