Methodology

How the radar works.

DalalRadar reads what institutions leave behind — delivery percentages, open interest shifts, money flow patterns — and surfaces actionable rotations. No black box. Every signal has a name, a definition, and a method. Read on.

1. The data

We use only publicly available NSE data. Nothing proprietary, nothing scraped from broker terminals. Everything we use, you could theoretically download yourself from nseindia.com — we just clean, aggregate, and visualize it.

Five daily inputs feed the engine:

Delivery percentages — what fraction of traded volume was actually delivered (vs. intraday churn). High delivery = serious money.
F&O open interest — number of contracts held open across futures and options. Rising OI with rising price = conviction long.
Bhavcopy turnover — total rupee value of trades per stock per day.
Price action — OHLC bars, used as confirmation rather than primary signal.
Sector classification — official NSE F&O sector tags across 21 sectors.

Data refreshes end-of-day, typically by 8–9 PM IST after NSE publishes official close files. We don't use real-time feeds — multi-day pattern analysis doesn't need tick-level data, and intraday noise would only add false signals.

2. The money flow score

The core innovation is a single number that compresses institutional intent into one comparable value across stocks. We call it the Money Flow Score — a proprietary composite calibrated specifically to Indian F&O behavior.

The score reads four kinds of evidence and weighs them against each other:

Direction — is price action consistent with buying or selling pressure today?
Magnitude — how much capital is moving through the stock relative to its own history?
Conviction — is the volume backed by delivery (real positions taken), or just intraday churn?
Confirmation — does open interest behavior in the futures contract agree with the cash-market signal?

When all four align, the score is high and the bubble is large. When they conflict (e.g. price up but delivery down), the score is low and the bubble shrinks. The exact weighting of these inputs — and how we normalize across the universe each day — is part of what makes DalalRadar's signals distinct. The output is what's visible on the chart: bubble size maps to the score's magnitude.

3. The six institutional behaviors

Once we have a money flow score for each stock, we classify daily behavior into one of six categories. These are the building blocks of every pattern:

Accumulation — smart money quietly builds positions over multiple sessions.
Distribution — smart money quietly exits, often hidden behind a rising price.
Rotation — capital moves from one sector or stock to another.
Momentum — conviction builds on the buy side, signal strength rises.
Exhaustion — a move is running out of fuel; volume drops while price stalls.
Trap — retail is being pulled in at the worst possible moment.

4. The 18 patterns

The signal engine looks for 18 specific behavioral signatures built on top of the six core behaviors. Patterns fall into four directional groups:

▲ Bullish signatures

Detect institutional positioning to the upside — accumulation clusters, breakout commitments, recovery flows, and rising-conviction setups. Catches participation before it shows in price.

▼ Bearish signatures

Detect institutional exits and shorting pressure — distribution structures, exhaustion at tops, and breakdowns in conviction. Catches the quiet leaving before the visible decline.

! Trap signatures

Detect moves that look real but lack the underlying conviction — retail being pulled into the wrong side, rollover divergences, and false breakouts. Catches the moments retail traders typically lose money.

↔ Rotation signatures

Detect capital flowing between sectors — whale clustering, sector-level confluence, and cross-stock confirmation patterns. Catches the bigger picture of where money is going next.

Each pattern has a name and a plain-language explanation surfaced inside the app — when a bubble lights up, you see what fired, why, and at what tier (strict or relaxed). The exact detection criteria, thresholds, and lookback windows are part of DalalRadar's proprietary calibration.

5. Strict vs. relaxed tiers

Not every signal carries the same weight. The engine grades each fire into one of two tiers:

Strict tier — multiple independent confirmations align. These are rare, high-quality signals that we'd consider primary inputs to a trading decision.
Relaxed tier — the core behavior is present but one or two confirmations are weak. Useful as context or watchlist filter, not as a primary entry trigger on its own.

In the chart, strict signals get a ring outline and an icon (▲ ▼ !). Relaxed signals show as solid bubbles without the ring.

6. Forward validation

The biggest problem with most trading "signals" is that they're cherry-picked in hindsight. We solve this with post-pass forward validation:

Every signal that fires is re-checked against subsequent price action over a defined window. Signals that played out get marked confirmed. Signals that didn't get marked failed. Both stay visible on the chart.

This means you can scroll back through history and see — honestly — which signals worked and which didn't. No hindsight editing. No survivorship bias. No quiet deletion of misses.

7. Reading the chart

Every bubble represents one stock on one day. The visual encoding is consistent across the entire app:

Color = behavior

Green — accumulation, strong buying, momentum

Red — distribution, selling pressure

Gold — caution, warning signal, trap

Cyan — early accumulation, before obvious move

Purple — high-conviction momentum

Gray — neutral, no clear signal

Size = money flow magnitude

Bigger bubble = more money moving through that stock that day. Tiny gray bubbles are noise. Large green or red bubbles deserve attention.

Ring + icon = strict signal today

When you see a bubble with a ring and a ▲ ▼ or ! inside it, the engine has fired a strict-tier signal for that stock on that day.

8. What this method does NOT do

Honest disclosure of where DalalRadar fits and doesn't fit:

Not a buy/sell recommendation engine. Signals describe behavior, not predictions. You decide what to do with them.
Not real-time. Data updates after market close. For intraday entries, use your broker's tools.
Not a replacement for fundamentals. A stock with strong money flow but broken fundamentals is still risky.
Not infallible. A meaningful share of signals fail forward validation. The ones that play out are what give you edge — but only when used alongside your own price-action read and risk management.
Works best in trending markets. Choppy, news-driven environments reduce signal accuracy across all methods, this one included.

Bottom line

Use signals as one input to your analysis. Combine with price action, fundamentals, and market context. Never trade off a single signal in isolation.

Ready to read the radar?

The methodology is the foundation. The chart is where it comes to life. Open the live radar and see institutional money flow across 208 F&O stocks in one view.

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Questions about the method? Ask us. ·