Mark Minervini SEPA Strategy

Swing trade stocks like Mark Minervini. Learn the SEPA strategy, identifying leading stocks consolidating in a tight range for high-volume breakout entries.

Published · Updated · Methodology: Price Action

Part of: Moving Average Strategies

  • Methodology: Price Action
  • Content type: strategy
  • Timeframes: Daily, Weekly
  • Markets: Stocks

Indicators used

  • Moving Average
  • Volume
  • Relative Strength

Source video

Decoded from: Revelada la estrategia del mejor Swing Trader de USA by Secretos del Mercado — watch the original

Key timestamps:

  • 0:00 - Introduction to Mark Minervini
  • 1:07 - Step 1: Identifying leading stocks (VCP pattern)
  • 2:37 - Stock screener usage (Marketinout)
  • 3:08 - Screener filters (Minervini's criteria)
  • 5:45 - Relative Strength sorting
  • 6:38 - Step 2: Entry point (breakout with volume)
  • 8:50 - Example with Tesla
  • 10:00 - Step 3: Position management (partial exits)

Strategy overview

A moving average smooths price into a single line whose slope and position describe trend — but in Mark Minervini's SEPA framework the averages are never a signal, they are an eligibility test, a stack of long-term lines used to decide which stocks are even allowed into the watchlist before any chart is read closely. This entry decodes "Revelada la estrategia del mejor Swing Trader de USA" from the Spanish-language channel Secretos del Mercado, a second-hand retelling of a methodology Minervini has documented publicly himself. That secondhand framing is worth holding onto while watching: the channel is compressing a book-length approach into a few minutes, and what it chooses to keep is the tell.

What it keeps is almost entirely selection. Five of the six published chapters are about narrowing the universe — identifying leading stocks through the VCP (volatility contraction) pattern, loading a stock screener, translating Minervini's criteria into that screener's filter fields, then sorting the survivors by relative strength. Only the last chapter, at 6:38, is the trade itself: a breakout entry confirmed by volume. The chapter map is a funnel that spends six minutes deciding what to buy and one line deciding when — and the published timeline ends at that entry. There is no chapter for the stop, the sell, or position sizing, which is a striking omission given that risk discipline is the part of Minervini's record most often cited. Relative strength here is a ranking key, not a trigger; it decides the order of the list, not the moment of the trade.

No extracted rules are on file for this entry, so this page does not stand in for the video. What it can do is sharpen what you take into it: does the screener reproduce Minervini's stage-analysis conditions faithfully, or an approximation shaped by what that particular screener can express? Is the volume confirmation measured against a fixed lookback or eyeballed on the chart? And since the timeline stops at the buy, where does the exit come from — the source material, or the viewer? A selection method without a sell rule is half a system, and knowing which half you are watching is the first thing to establish.

Topics

mark minervini · sepa strategy · swing trading · price action · stocks trading strategy · breakout strategy · volume trading · daily timeframe strategy · weekly timeframe strategy · moving averages strategy

Frequently asked questions

What is Mark Minervini's SEPA strategy?

SEPA (Specific Entry Point Analysis) is a swing-trading approach that first filters for stocks in a confirmed uptrend using criteria such as a stack of long-term moving averages and strong relative strength, then waits for a specific technical entry — commonly a breakout from a tight consolidation — rather than buying on the trend alone.

What role do moving averages play in this strategy?

They act as a screening filter rather than a signal. Their alignment is used to confirm that a stock is already in a sustained uptrend and therefore eligible for the watchlist; the actual entry decision comes from the breakout, not from a crossover.

What is the VCP pattern mentioned in the video?

VCP stands for volatility contraction pattern — a sequence of progressively shallower pullbacks that suggests selling pressure is drying up before a move higher. In this video it is introduced in the first step, as the visual signature used to identify leading candidates.

Does the video cover exits and risk management?

The published chapter list stops at the entry, with no timestamps for stops, targets or position sizing. If you follow this approach, treat exit rules as something to source separately — and backtest the whole sequence on historical data before committing capital.

About this strategy page

This trading strategy was decoded by Strategy Decoder's AI from a public YouTube trading video and turned into a structured, reviewable specification. In the interactive app this page shows the full entry and exit logic, risk management settings, the indicators involved with their parameters, AlgoWizard-compatible logic and a Pine Script export ready for TradingView backtesting — plus an automated backtest verdict when one has been computed for this strategy.

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