How we measure. All of it.

The yardstick

A signal wins if its contract trades +30% above the alerted fill before it trades −50% below it. Intraday, first touch decides — if both levels print on the same day, whichever the tape reached first is the verdict. The clock runs from the moment the alert fires to the contract's expiry.

Why that shape? Because it is the question a trader actually faces: if you took this signal at the alerted price, did a disciplined take-profit get paid before a disciplined stop got hit? A yardstick you could not have traded is not a yardstick.

When a signal is scored

At contract expiry, and not before. Until then a signal sits in the maturing bucket — visible, counted, and excluded from every published rate. No partial credit for open positions, no early victory laps on trades that are still moving. That is also why recent months read lower on the monthly chart: most of their contracts are still alive, and only their fastest resolutions have been scored.

Peak is not a return

Alongside the win rate we publish peak figures — the best price a contract traded at after the alert. A peak marks how far the move ran. It is not what anyone banked, and we never present it as a return. The honest use of a peak is sizing the opportunity that existed, not the profit that was taken.

What the headline number excludes, and why

• Index products are listed apart. SPY and index flow are scored by the same yardstick but never join the headline number — different mechanics, different holders, different reasons to trade. Blending them would flatter or punish the record for reasons that have nothing to do with reading single-name flow.
• Small samples stay unranked. Any cut of the record below a minimum sample size shows its n in amber and never gets ranked or headlined. Ten trades is an anecdote.
• Unverifiable fills are dropped — and the drop is counted. If we cannot verify a contract's fill price, the signal leaves the record and the exclusion is tallied, so the denominator cannot quietly improve.

Uncertainty is published, not hidden

Every headline rate ships with its 95% range. Re-run the same history with different luck and the true rate lands inside that band 95 times out of 100. When the range is wide, the honest reading is “we do not know yet” — and the page says so rather than rounding confidence upward.

What this record is not

It is a record of contract prices, not member returns. Nobody's account is being tracked, no fills are assumed better than the alerted price, and nothing here is a model portfolio. It is educational research on single-name equity and ETF options flow, measured by one yardstick, applied to everything — winners, losers, and the ones still working.

Where to check the work

The live record — every cut described above, with its ns and ranges — is published on the track record page and stays there. Losers included. Nothing gets deleted, nothing gets a do-over.

Questions traders ask

Why +30% and −50% instead of measuring at expiry?

Because almost nobody holds options to expiry. First-passage scoring against a take-profit and a stop mirrors how the trade is actually managed; expiry-only scoring would grade a different trade than the one people take.

Do losing signals get removed from the record?

No. Every scored signal stays, winners and losers. Signals leave the record only when a fill price cannot be verified, and those exclusions are counted and disclosed.

Why do recent months show lower win rates?

Signals are scored at contract expiry. A recent month's cohort is mostly unscored, and its early resolutions skew short-dated. Rates settle as contracts mature — hatched months on the chart mark exactly this.

Are the published peaks realistic profits?

No, and they are never presented that way. A peak is the best price the contract traded at — it marks the size of the move, not a booked return.

Is SPY included in the headline win rate?

Never. Index flow is scored by the same yardstick but listed apart. The headline number is single-name equity and ETF flow only.