Custom screener: which combined conditions to set and why

The custom screener is one screener running up to three conditions at once: a change in price, a change in open interest, and a change in 24-hour turnover. The alert arrives only when every enabled condition is met at the same time, on one pair and one exchange. Each condition has its own percentage threshold and its own window, from 1 minute to 4 hours.

In short

There are three conditions: a change in price, in open interest, and in 24-hour turnover. The ones you enable work only together, on one pair and one exchange.
A threshold can be negative — that is how you build combinations like “price falls while open interest rises”.
A combination lives by its rarest condition: one threshold set too tight silences the whole setup.
An open-interest condition and its floor exclude spot: open interest does not exist there.

What you can combine, and by what rules

Three conditions, one rule

The Scenarios block has three rows: price trigger, OI trigger, and volume trigger — the last one measures 24-hour turnover. Each row has two fields: an amount in percent and an interval in minutes. A disabled condition gets out of the way while an enabled one binds: if two of the three are on, both have to fire.

The combination is checked on one exchange

The screener compares snapshots venue by venue, so every enabled condition has to line up on the same exchange. A price rise on Binance plus an open-interest rise on Bybit is not a combination. If the match occurs on several venues, the alert carries a block for each.

A negative threshold is a condition on a drop

A minus in front of the number changes what the condition means: the field label becomes Decrease, and the screener waits for a fall of at least that many percent. That is how you build opposing combinations — say, price at −4% and open interest at +8% over the same window.

One event, one alert

The screener sweeps the market every minute, and conditions hold for many minutes in a row. The alert fires only on the minute the combination first came together: if the same combination already held a minute earlier, the event counts as spent. A side effect: when the previous minute cannot be checked — right after a collection restart, or on a freshly listed pair — the screener stays quiet.

When a combination is worth it

The ready-made presets for the custom screener are built for exactly these scenarios, and their numbers come from the observed alert flow rather than from a guess.

A move with new positions, and one without

The first three presets answer one question: are positions being opened or closed. Price and open interest rising together means new money is entering the move. Price rising while open interest falls means the rise runs on positions closing. All four combinations are worked through in the article on open interest.

A combination without open interest is for spot

The fourth preset is deliberately built from price and turnover, and its open-interest floor is zero: that is what lets the combination work on spot venues. Which markets get checked is set by the market filter in the Filters block: spot and futures, spot only, or futures only.

Ready-made setups

These are the same sets applied with one click in the screener settings. The values below are exactly what gets filled in.

Price, OI and turnover rise together

Price +3% · OI +1% · Volume +1.5%

Period: 360 min.
Pause between alerts per coin: 360 min.
Which market to watch: Futures only
Min. Open Interest Value: 5 M $
Min. Exchange 24h Turnover: 10 M $

Logic: within the same 15 minutes price, 24h turnover and open interest all rise — all three conditions must line up at once. The OI threshold is low on purpose: it checks that positions are being opened on the rise, not closed; any stricter and the preset stays silent for days. Open interest from $5M, turnover from $10M.

Price rise with new positions

Price +4% · OI +10% in 10 min

Period: 240 min.
Pause between alerts per coin: 80 min.
Which market to watch: Futures only
Min. Open Interest Value: 3 M $
Min. Exchange 24h Turnover: 10 M $

Logic: price rises while new futures positions are opening — the rise comes with positions being added, not closed. 10-minute window, open interest from $3M, turnover from $10M.

Price falls, OI rises

Price −4% · OI +8% in 20 min

Period: 360 min.
Pause between alerts per coin: 180 min.
Which market to watch: Futures only
Min. Open Interest Value: 4 M $
Min. Exchange 24h Turnover: 10 M $

Logic: price falls while open interest rises — new positions are opening into the drop. Whether they are longs or shorts, OI alone does not show. 20-minute window, open interest from $4M, turnover from $10M.

Price rise on rising turnover

Price +6% · turnover at double pace in 30 min

Period: 240 min.
Pause between alerts per coin: 60 min.
Which market to watch: Spot and futures
Min. Exchange 24h Turnover: 10 M $

Logic: price rose within half an hour, and over the same half hour 24h turnover picked up noticeably — the rise happens on elevated activity, not in an empty order book. The open interest filter is off so the combo also works on spot, where there is no open interest; turnover from $10M.

Any set is a starting point, not a recommendation. Once applied the thresholds are yours: move them and the screener starts counting the new way immediately.

Which thresholds and filters to set, and why those

The open-interest threshold is low on purpose

In the preset where price, OI and turnover rise together, open interest asks for only +1% — and that is not sloppiness. A measurement took the combination apart: “price +3% in 15 minutes” alone produced about 165 hits a day, and with “OI +5% over the same 15 minutes” added it produced exactly zero across an hour and a half of usable data. At 2% it was zero too, and only at 1% did the combination come alive: about 45 hits a day. The point of such a threshold is not “strong confirmation” but “open interest is not working against the move”.

Turnover is measured against the daily figure

The turnover condition compares 24-hour turnover now against 24-hour turnover N minutes ago, not the turnover of those N minutes. Hence the arithmetic: 15 minutes is 1.04% of a day, so at a normal pace the daily figure barely moves. A rise of 1.5% means the last 15 minutes traded roughly 2.4 times more actively than usual. The percentages are small not because the threshold is loose but because the denominator is a whole day.

The floors are in millions of dollars

The Filters block has two fields: minimum open interest and minimum 24-hour turnover, both in millions of dollars. All four presets keep turnover at $10m and up, and open interest between $3m and $5m wherever its condition is enabled. On a thin pair a combination can come together off a single large order: price jerks, the daily figure ticks up, both conditions are formally met. Why a dollar floor is not a guarantee is covered in the article on liquidity.

How the screener helps

You can line up price, open interest, and turnover on one coin by hand. Across 7,300+ pairs on 10 exchanges you cannot. The custom screener checks the combination every minute and sends an alert only when every enabled condition is met at once. The alert names the venue, the change in each metric, the size of that change in dollars, and the 24-hour price range. No need to pick a coin.

Open the custom screener

How to read the alert you get

A custom-screener alert is laid out by venue: the pair first, then a block for every exchange where the combination came together:

The pair and the venue. Several blocks mean several exchanges matched — different observations of one event, not different events.
The funding rate. This line appears when the rate is known and non-zero. It hints at the balance between the two sides — see the article on funding.
The change in each metric. A line appears only for the conditions you enabled: the percentage change plus the size in dollars — for open interest that is its value, for turnover the size of the increase.
The 24-hour price range. Low, current price, and high: you can see whether the event happened at the edge of the daily range or in the middle of it.

A combination answers “what is happening”, not “what to do”. The alert is a reason to open the chart: levels, the higher-timeframe trend, and per-trade risk are checked separately. A single alert taken apart piece by piece is in its own article.

Where a combination breaks

Three tight conditions equal silence

Every condition you add multiplies the rarity of the event rather than adding to it. That is what burned an earlier version of one preset: it asked for “turnover +25% in 15 minutes”, some 25 times the normal pace — unreachable in principle — and the preset never fired at all. Start with two conditions and moderate thresholds.

Windows of different length describe different events

Price over 5 minutes and open interest over 4 hours are two unrelated observations, and their coinciding in one minute means nothing. Keep the condition windows comparable: in every preset they are equal to each other.

An open-interest condition cuts off spot

This is the most common silent breakage. The screener sees both spot and futures, but an open-interest condition can never be met on spot, because there is nothing to measure. If you expected hits on spot pairs and got none, check whether that condition is on and whether a non-zero floor is set for it.

One setup for every case

A move with new positions, a reversal, and a rise on short covering call for different thresholds and windows. Keep a separate setup per scenario and change thresholds a little at a time. Cutting noise is covered in the article on unwanted hits, and the framework for protecting your capital in the piece on risk management.

Combined conditions FAQ

What is a custom crypto screener?

It is a screener where you enable up to three conditions at once: a change in price, a change in open interest, and a change in 24-hour turnover. The alert arrives only when every enabled condition is met at the same time, on one pair and one exchange.

How many conditions can run at once?

Up to three. Each has its own percentage threshold and its own window, from 1 minute to 4 hours. A disabled condition is not checked at all; an enabled one must be met.

Why does my combination send nothing?

Usually because of one condition set too tight: the event lives by the rarest of them. The second common cause is an open-interest condition while you are waiting for spot pairs: there is no open interest on spot, so it can never be met there.

Can I set a condition on a price drop?

Yes, enter the threshold with a minus and the field label changes to Decrease. That is how opposing combinations are built, for example price at −4% and open interest at +8% over one window.

Why is the turnover threshold in the presets only 1.5%?

The condition compares 24-hour turnover now with 24-hour turnover N minutes ago. A normal 15 minutes is about 1% of the daily figure, so a 1.5% rise means trading roughly 2.4 times more active than usual.

Will the alert repeat while the conditions hold?

No. It fires on the minute the combination first came together. The per-coin rate is further limited by the alert cap and the pause in the Limits block.

Every form field is explained in custom screener settings, where the presets above live as well. How the screener counts and how it differs from its neighbours is in the article on the custom screener, and the metrics it watches are in the overview of cryptocurrency parameters.