Reading the Card

Open any stock and you get one card that answers four questions about it — is it beating the market, is that strength holding, is the business behind it getting better, and who's doing the buying. Read together, those four answers tell you a stock's character in about the time it takes to read a headline.

Here's the one thing that makes this card different from most stock screens: almost every number is a rank, not a raw figure. You won't see "P/E of 28" or "revenue up 12%." You'll see a score from 0 to 100 that says where this stock stands against the field.

Why a rank beats a raw number

A raw number floats free. Revenue up 12% — is that good? You can't know without a denominator: up 12% versus what, versus whom, versus last year's 30%? A rank gives you the denominator built in. A score of 90 means this stock beat 90% of the field on that measure. A 10 means it trailed 90% of it. You know where you stand instantly, with no mental math.

And the "field" isn't vague. Every stock is scored against the same group of about 700 names — the S&P 500, the rest of the Nasdaq 100, and ~200 ETFs spanning every asset class a US investor can put a dollar in: foreign stocks, bonds, gold, even bitcoin. That's roughly the whole menu your money is choosing among. So when AAPL scores 87 on Perform, it means its return above the market beat 87% of everywhere else that dollar could have gone — the index funds, the sector ETFs, the long-term Treasuries, the gold trust, all of it.

A rank does give up one thing: magnitude. It tells you a stock ranks high, not by how much. So where the size genuinely matters — the price, the valuation, the actual growth rate — the card shows the raw number underneath too. But the first read is always the rank. A color scale rides on top — deep red at the bottom, deep green at the top — so you can read a stock's character with your eyes before you read a single number.

The four reads

Each stock gets four panels. Each answers one plain question:

The value isn't in any one panel — it's in reading the four together, and noticing the gaps. The rest of this page takes each in turn, then puts them back together.

Perform — is it beating the market?

The simplest question on the card: is this stock beating the market, or trailing it? It takes the stock's total return over the past year, subtracts what SPY did over the same stretch, and ranks the result against the whole field. The headline tile is the 1-year read; the 1-month, 1-week, and 1-day tiles below it zoom in on shorter windows.

The one trap worth burning in: a high score is not "buy," and a low score is not "sell." The edge is a U, not a ladder. Both ends carry a small forward edge for opposite reasons — winners tend to keep winning, deep losers tend to bounce — and the entire middle (40–60) carries no signal at all. A 90 and a 10 are both "interesting"; a 50 is the score staying quiet.

Persist — does the leadership hold?

Persist asks whether a stock's standing actually holds — or whether it's all chop. Perform tells you a stock is winning this week; Persist measures how much of the past year it spent parked in the same rank-band of the field. A high score means it held its place; a low score means it bounced around.

It's direction-blind on purpose — a stock that sat at the front all year and one that sat at the back all year both score high. So the rule is simple: always read it next to Perform, which tells you which direction the durable position points. High Persist + high Perform is a durable leader — the cleanest single read on the card. Of the four panels this one overlaps least with the others, which makes it the cleanest sorter from "steady" to "all over the place" — exactly what you want from money you don't intend to churn.

Profit — is the business getting better?

Profit looks past the share price to the company underneath it. It blends three things — revenue growth, margin change, and cash-flow growth — each measured against the same period a year ago and ranked both against the whole field and against the stock's own sector. A high score means the business is improving on most fronts.

This is the slowest, steadiest read on the card; fundamentals move on a quarterly clock. Two cautions: a 100 is sometimes a merger, not a miracle (this-year-versus-last-year growth flatters a company that just bought another), and the score describes the business, not next month's price. The most interesting case is a high Profit under a flat price — a possible under-loved compounder the market hasn't repriced yet. For buy-and-hold money this is often the right first question: would I be comfortable owning this business if the market closed for a year?

Pressure — who's doing the buying?

Pressure reads the footprint of the big money. It adds up the dollars that trade on up-days, subtracts the dollars that trade on down-days, and reports which way the balance leaned over the last 60 days. A high score is the signature of accumulation; a low score, distribution.

The catch: a high score on its own is not a buy — it earns its keep only when it disagrees with the price. High Pressure into a flat or falling price is accumulation into weakness — capital positioning ahead of a move that hasn't happened (the most interesting case, and the easiest to be wrong about). Low Pressure under a rising price is a rally being sold into — vulnerable to a snap-back. It's also the fastest-moving read on the card, so read it fresh and don't anchor to last month's color. Treat it as the final sanity check, not the opening move.

Reading them together

The gaps between the four are where the questions live. A stock strong on Perform but weak on Profit is a price running ahead of its business. A strong business with a weak price is a possible bargain the market hasn't noticed yet. Persist tells you whether any of it is durable; Pressure tells you whether capital is behind it today. No single panel is a trade — the read is in the combination.

Perform — beating the market

1 Year — How far the stock beat, or trailed, the S&P 500 over the past year, ranked against the field. High = gained much more than the market; low = badly lagged.

1 Month — The same race over the past month — leading or lagging lately.

1 Week — The same race over just the past week — a very short-term read.

Last Session — The same race for the most recent trading day.

Persist — does the leadership hold?

Rank Persistence (1 year) — How consistently the stock stayed a market-beater over the past year. It rewards names that held a strong position week after week instead of spiking once and fading. High = dependable, durable strength.

6 Month · 3 Month — The same durability check over shorter windows.

Trend Hold — How much of the past year the stock spent above its 200-day average price. High = trending up almost all year; low = lots of time below its trend line.

Profit — is the business getting better?

Composite Growth — A single "is the business growing?" score, blending three things versus a year ago: sales growth, profit-margin improvement, and cash-flow growth. High = firing on all three; low = growth stalling.

Revenue Growth — How fast sales grew over the last year (latest 12 months vs the 12 before), ranked against the field.

Margin Growth — Whether the business got more profitable on each dollar of sales (the change in operating margin). High = margins widening; low = getting squeezed.

Cash Flow Growth — How fast the actual cash the business generates grew over the past year (operating cash flow, latest 12 months vs the prior 12).

Pressure — who's buying, and how rough is the ride?

Money Flow (60-day) — Whether more money flowed in than out over the past 60 trading days, counting each day's dollars as buying on up-days and selling on down-days. High = steady accumulation; low = distribution.

Money Flow (30-day) — The same read over the past 30 days — faster and more recent. A 30-day pulling ahead of the 60-day flags accumulation that's picking up.

Max Drawdown (1Y) — The stock's worst peak-to-trough drop over the past year vs the S&P 500's worst. Flipped so higher = safer: high = fell less than the market at its worst.

Volatility (1Y) — How jumpy the price has been over the past year vs the S&P 500. Flipped so higher = calmer: high = smoother, steadier action.

That's the card. Four reads, one warning light, one screen — and a way of looking that puts every stock on the same honest footing.