Learn
Notes on what we measure, and why.
The Universe of Symbols
The ~700 names behind every percentile
The cohort that defines every percentile on this dashboard: 500 S&P 500 stocks, 10 Nasdaq-100 additions, and 193 ETFs spanning every asset class a US investor can hold. ~$73T of capital exposure — about 95% of US public equity plus a curated pointer at every other asset class.
Updated June 1, 2026
Reading the Card
The four panels of SYMBOL — what they measure, and why
A walking tour through the four panels on the SYMBOL card — Perform, Persist, Profit, Peril — explaining why every number is a percentile, why each benchmark is what it is, and how the metrics interlock.
Updated May 29, 2026
Perform — Market Beat, 1 Year
Is it beating the market right now?
The Perform panel headlining metric. Stock 1-year total return minus SPY's, percentile-ranked across the universe. Formula, design rationale, 19-year backtest evidence, and the failure modes that bound the signal.
Updated May 29, 2026
Persist — Rank Persistence, 52 Weeks
Does the leadership hold?
The Persist panel headlining metric. Share of the last year a stock spent in its modal decile of the universe's weekly excess-return rank. Formula, design rationale, 19-year backtest evidence, and the tier-blindness failure mode that bounds it.
Updated May 29, 2026
Profit — Overall Growth
Is the business itself getting better?
The Profit panel headlining metric. The businessBeat composite — revenue, margin, and cash-flow YoY changes across universe AND sector. Formula, design rationale, observed failure modes, and the historical backtest that is forthcoming.
Updated May 29, 2026
Dispositions — Tier 2
Narrowing the universe to a 2D sub-space of character
The LENS framework: dispositions as deliberate 2D character sub-spaces. 19-year PIT backtest on each, and what it tells us about where alpha actually lives.
Updated May 29, 2026
Peril — Money Flow
What could go wrong, by way of who's bidding
The Peril panel headlining metric. 60-day signed-dollar-volume share — the footprint of institutional accumulation. Formula, design rationale, 3-year backtest evidence, and the failure modes that bound it.
Updated May 29, 2026
Business Growth
The operations lens — revenue, margin, and cash flow
S&P 500 stocks ranked by the three drivers behind the SYMBOL card's Overall Growth tile — revenue, margin, and cash-flow YoY changes — plus the composite that combines them.
Updated May 28, 2026
Top 20 Picks by Lens
The universe filtered through eight LENS dispositions
Twenty top picks for each of eight LENS dispositions — Surge, Alpha, Beats, ETFs, Compound, Stable, Bargains, Bear — ranked by target-quadrant fit.
Updated May 28, 2026
ETFs
How 193 wrappers span the market
From 4,600 listed ETFs, a curated 193 chosen to span the investable opportunity set. How the universe was selected, what each ETF is a bet on, and how the dashboard's stock-style signals read on baskets.
Updated May 27, 2026
Money Flow
Where institutional volume is leaning
S&P 500 stocks ranked by trading volume on up-days relative to their true peers. The footprint of accumulation.
Updated May 26, 2026