How TradeStupid works

TradeStupid turns market data into a plain-English read on any stock — how it has done against the market, what analysts think, and what the chart, price and news say right now. It's a free personal project — no ads, no paid tier, nothing to sell you.

The score

Every stock gets a score from 0 to 100 built from two parts, 50 points each. They are the only two things that showed any positive record in our tests (see what we've tested). The score is not a prediction of how much the stock will return.

Past year vs the market

The stock's return over the past 12 months, leaving out the latest month, minus the S&P 500's over the same months (relative strength (12-1 momentum)). The last month is left out because one-month moves tend to reverse. 0 points if it trailed by 37 points or more, 50 if it led by 43 or more, in ten steps.

What analysts think

What analysts think overall · analyst consensus, recent rating changes · upgrades / downgrades, changes to their profit forecasts · estimate revisions, and whether their middle price target · price target sits below the price. One or two analysts count for less than a real spread of coverage. Funds have no ratings and sit in the middle.

The score maps to a verdict: 80+ Buy, 48–79 Consider, 29–47 Watch, below 29 Wait. The cut-offs keep each verdict about as common as before (roughly 13% Buy, 44% Consider, 35% Watch, 9% Wait); they weren't tuned to make the results look good.

Buy — has beaten the market over the past year and analysts are positive. In our 2017–2026 test, stocks like this beat the S&P 500 over the next 3 months about half the time (51%), a bit more often than the rest (47–48%). Not a guarantee.
Consider — one of the two is strong.
Watch — lagging the market, or analysts are lukewarm.
Wait — lagging badly and analysts are cool on it. In the test this hasn't meant the stock will fall (Wait stocks didn't do worse on average), only that there's no tailwind.

Shown on every stock, but worth no points:

Timing info — the long-term trend · 200-day SMA, price against its recent average · 50-day SMA (entry zone), the 14-day momentum gauge · RSI, and the last few days (MACD, Bollinger Bands). Useful for picking a day, not a stock.
Price check — price vs. earnings · P/E, price vs. growth · PEG, or price vs. sales · P/S when there's no profit.
News — what this week's company news says, red flags, and whether the price agrees with it.
Warnings — big swings, new shares being issued (dilution), earnings coming up, serious company news, and the whole market being in a downtrend · market below its 200-day. They help you decide how much to buy, not whether.

A strong score can't override real problems. The verdict is held down — and the page says why — when:

Analysts' middle (median) price target is more than 20% below the current price (40%+ drops the rating to Wait).
The company is burning cash while revenue shrinks.
The stock is down more than 55% over the past year.
Debt minus cash is large relative to the company's size, and it's burning cash.
There's no price-vs-earnings figure · P/E and no analyst coverage, so the score would be mostly placeholders (not applied to funds).

Buy ranges and exit prices

The checklist's buy range · entry zone runs from a stock's recent average · 50-day SMA to 8% above it — a consistent definition, not a predictor (in our tests, entries there didn't beat other entries). A suggested exit price · stop-loss is insurance with a price, not a way to make more money. It sits 20–25% below the high — 20% for calm stocks, 25% for jumpy ones, by how much the stock swings · volatility. Narrower stops did worse in our 10-year test: the old one, at 2–3× the typical daily move · ATR (about 5–8%), sold 98–99% of positions within a year. Even at 20–25%, a stop almost removed the −40% outcomes but gave up about 9–15 points of return a year, and most of the time the stock was higher 3 months after it sold. A close below the long-term average price · 200-day SMA is shown as a prompt to review why you own a stock, never as a sell signal — as a sell rule it cost about 8 points a year. The cheaper protection is how much you put in · position size: sizes plan for a realistic bad year — about a 30% drop for calm stocks, 40% for a typical one and 50% for jumpy ones (roughly the worst 1-in-20 year in the test) — so that drop costs only a small, fixed share of your portfolio. A stop is not a guaranteed exit price: once triggered it sells at the next available price, and a stock that opens sharply lower overnight or after quarterly results · earnings report can sell well below it. Position sizes use the portfolio size in your profile — until you set one, they're based on an assumed $10,000.

Signal accuracy

Every morning an automated scan scores a fixed list of 47 large companies. The first day one of them is rated Buy, that's logged as a call (at most once per 20 days per stock). Twenty calendar days later it's graded against the price the scan recorded then, and compared with the 500 biggest US companies · S&P 500 (via SPY, a fund that tracks them) over the same window.

Limits worth knowing: the sample is small and only covers the time since tracking started; it ignores trading costs and taxes; 20 days is a short window for a strategy meant to be held longer; and calls logged before mid-October 2026 used a looser definition (score alone, ignoring the caps above), so they're reported separately until enough new calls resolve. The score was rebuilt in November 2026; the old score's calls are shown (and labelled) until the new score's first calls are 20 days old, and both scores are logged side by side every day for six months so the switch can be checked on fresh data.

What we've tested

We test the score against what actually happened, using only information that was available on each past date, across about 530–600 large US stocks:

Chart readings — trend, entry timing, the momentum gauge (2022–2026; the old score as a whole, 2017–2026): no reliable advantage over the following one or three months. That's why they're now information, not points.
Valuation (2017–2026, rebuilt from SEC filings as they were filed): no reliable advantage — if anything, stocks that were cheap on earnings trailed slightly over this period.
Analyst opinion (2017–2026, from rating-change history) and the past year against the market: the only two with any positive record — higher-rated and stronger stocks did slightly better, but not by enough to call it reliable on its own.
The old six-part score (November 2026, 529 stocks, 107 months, 2017–2026): its Buy group did slightly worse than the average stock (−0.4 points vs the S&P 500 over 3 months) and its Watch group did best. The order was wrong, though the gaps were small enough to be noise.
The rebuilt score: we fixed six candidate scores in advance and tested them on the same nine years. Only past year + analysts cleared the bar we set, and only just (t 2.02 against a bar of 2; a stricter bar for trying six things was 2.6). Its Buy group beat the average stock by about 2.5 points over 3 months, in both halves of the period. Its lead shrinks by about half once the list's 10% biggest winners are taken out — today's list is made of survivors, which flatters stocks that ran up. We switched because it's less misleading, not because it's proven better.
Buy and sell signals (2017–2026, week by week): buying dips back to the recent (50-day) average did worse than average, and stocks stretched well above it kept doing better. No sell rule we tested — dropping below the recent or long-term (200-day) average, several downgrades at once, exits that rise with the price — beat simply holding.

So read the verdict as what it is: a checklist — has it beaten the market over the past year, and do analysts back it — not a forecast of returns. Even the Buy group beat the S&P 500 only about half the time. That's why the app shows its own Buy-call record with every verdict, and measures your holdings against the S&P 500 on Home.

Limits: the stock list is today's, so companies that collapsed are missing; past-year strength is known to crash in sharp bear-market rebounds (we flag it when the market is below its 200-day average, but no guard we tested beat simply holding); analysts' profit forecasts have no free history and weren't tested; no trading costs.

The data

Prices, fundamentals, analyst estimates, and news come from Yahoo Finance. "LIVE" means the app re-checks the price every 15 seconds while the market is open — the quote itself can still lag the exchange. Fundamentals and analyst data update less often, and upcoming earnings dates are frequently estimates until the company confirms them. Index bars show the fund · ETF / index fund that tracks each index (SPY, QQQ, IWM), so prices are the fund's, not the index level.

The AI summaries

The "What to watch" list under each analysis is not AI — it's built directly from the score's two parts and its caps. The longer written summary is AI, generated by open-weight models (OpenAI's gpt-oss family, run by Groq) from the same numbers shown on the page. The AI is given the final verdict and told to explain it, not change it, and responses that contradict the verdict are automatically rejected — but it can still get details wrong. The score breakdown is the source of truth.

Your data

Your watchlist, positions, and profile are stored in your browser. They're only kept anywhere else if you sign in.
If you sign in, that data is synced to a database tied to your email so your devices match. Signing out (and confirming) erases it from that device.
Sign-in links and the daily briefing are sent through an email provider. AI features send the relevant numbers to an AI provider to write their text.
No ads, no third-party analytics or trackers, and nothing is sold.
You can delete your account and everything stored for it at any time — details in the privacy policy.

Glossary

Every page leads with plain words and puts the trader's term beside them, so beginners and experienced traders read the same thing. Here's every term in one place.

Price & trend

Past year vs the market · relative strength (12-1 momentum): — The stock's return over the past 12 months, leaving out the latest month, minus the S&P 500's over the same months. Stocks that beat the market over a year have tended to keep a small edge; one-month moves tend to reverse.
Recent average price · 50-day SMA: — The average closing price over the last 50 trading days (about 2½ months). Shows the stock's recent trend; prices well above it have run up fast.
Long-term average price · 200-day SMA: — The average closing price over the last 200 trading days (about 10 months). Above it usually means a long-term uptrend; below it, a downtrend.
Recent trend crossed above the long-term trend · golden cross: — When the 50-day average rises above the 200-day average — a common sign the trend has turned up. The opposite is a "death cross".
Momentum gauge · RSI: — Relative Strength Index: a 0–100 score of how strongly the price has been rising or falling over the last 14 days. Above about 70 = running hot; below about 30 = beaten down.
Momentum shift · MACD: — Compares a fast and a slow average of the price to show whether upward or downward momentum is building or fading.
Normal price range · Bollinger Bands: — A band around the recent average that stretches with volatility. Near the top = unusually high for the recent range; near the bottom = unusually low.
How strongly it's been moving · momentum: — The speed and direction of recent price moves. Stocks that have been rising tend to be compared on how strong that run has been.
The past year's low to high · 52-week range: — The lowest and highest prices of the last 12 months.
Shares traded · volume: — How many shares changed hands. Big moves on heavy volume mean more people were behind them.
The checklist's buy range · entry zone: — From the stock's 50-day average up to 8% above it. A consistent definition, not a prediction — in our tests, entries there didn't beat other entries.
How well things line up today · entry checklist: — The score checks two things: how the stock did over the past year against the S&P 500, and what analysts think. Chart readings, price and news are shown as information only. It isn't a forecast of returns.
The overall market is in a downtrend · market below its 200-day: — When the S&P 500 is below its 200-day average price. Big drops have been more common in these stretches, so the app shows a banner. It doesn't change any score or verdict — no guard we tested beat simply holding. It's a reason to check your sizes, not to sell everything.

Valuation

Price vs. earnings · P/E: — Price-to-earnings ratio: how many dollars you pay for each $1 of yearly profit. Higher = more expensive. "Forward" P/E uses next year's expected profit.
Price vs. growth · PEG: — P/E divided by the expected profit growth rate. Around 1 is often called fair; well above 2 means you're paying a lot for the growth.
Price vs. sales · P/S: — Price-to-sales: company value divided by a year of revenue. Useful when a company has no profit yet.
Profit per share · EPS: — Earnings per share: the company's profit divided by its number of shares.
Company size · market cap: — The total value of all a company's shares (share price × number of shares).
Yearly cash payout · dividend yield: — The yearly dividend as a percent of the share price — the cash return you get just for holding it.
Cash left over · free cash flow: — Cash the business generates after paying for its operations and investments. Negative means it's burning cash.

Analysts & news

What Wall Street analysts think overall · analyst consensus: — The average of analysts' ratings, from Strong Buy to Sell.
Where analysts think the price is headed · price target: — The price analysts expect in about a year. We show the middle (median) target. In our tests, big target gaps haven't predicted returns.
Analysts changing their rating · upgrades / downgrades: — An analyst raising (upgrade) or lowering (downgrade) their rating on the stock.
Analysts changing their profit forecasts · estimate revisions: — When analysts raise or cut the profit they expect a company to make. Rising estimates mean the outlook is improving.
Quarterly results · earnings report: — The company's quarterly announcement of sales and profit. Stocks often move sharply that day, in either direction.
Executives buying their own stock · insider buying: — Company officers or directors buying shares with their own money, reported to the SEC.
Big funds' holdings · institutional ownership: — How much of the stock is owned by funds, pensions and other large investors.
Bets against the stock · short interest: — The share of the stock that investors have borrowed and sold, betting the price will fall.

Risk & sizing

The price where you'd get out · stop-loss: — A price you set in advance; if the stock falls to it, you sell. It's insurance: in our test it cut the worst losses but cost about 9–15 points of return a year. Once hit, it sells at the next available price, which can be lower.
An exit that rises with the price · trailing stop: — A stop-loss that moves up as the stock rises (e.g. always 22% below the highest price since you bought). Narrower than about 20% mostly sold on ordinary dips in our test.
Typical daily move · ATR: — Average True Range: how much the price normally moves in a day, as a percent. Used to tell calm stocks from jumpy ones.
How much to put in · position size: — How many dollars to invest in one stock, sized so a realistic bad year (about a 30–50% drop, more for jumpier stocks) costs only a small, fixed share of your portfolio.
How much it swings vs. the market · beta: — 1.0 = moves about as much as the S&P 500. 1.5 = swings about 50% more; 0.5 = about half as much.
How much it swings · volatility: — How big the price's ups and downs usually are. More volatile = bigger moves both ways.
Drop from the high · drawdown: — How far a stock or portfolio has fallen from its highest point.
Too much in one stock · concentration: — When one holding is a big share of your portfolio, so a single bad stock can do real damage.

Your portfolio & taxes

What you paid · cost basis: — Your average purchase price per share, used to work out gains and losses (and taxes).
Gain or loss on paper · unrealized P&L: — Profit or loss on shares you still own — it becomes "realized" when you sell.
Gain or loss you locked in · realized P&L: — Profit or loss from shares you've actually sold.
The lower tax rate · long-term capital gains: — In the US, gains on shares held more than a year are taxed at a lower rate than shares held a year or less (taxed like income).
The 30-day rebuy rule · wash sale: — If you sell at a loss and buy the same (or nearly the same) investment within 30 days before or after, the IRS doesn't let you count that loss yet.
Selling a loser to cut your tax bill · tax-loss harvesting: — Selling a position at a loss so the loss offsets gains you've taken (or up to $3,000 of income a year).
The 500 biggest US companies · S&P 500: — An index of about 500 large US companies — the standard yardstick. SPY and VOO are funds that track it.
A fund that holds many stocks · ETF / index fund: — One ticker that owns a basket of stocks (like the whole S&P 500), so a single purchase is spread across many companies.

More terms

Today's gain or loss · day P&L: — How much the value of what you own has changed since yesterday's closing prices.
Industry · sector: — The broad industry a company is in, like tech, health care or energy. Stocks in the same sector often rise and fall together.
A fund that buys the whole market · index fund: — A low-cost fund that simply owns every stock in an index (like the S&P 500) instead of picking winners. Most stock pickers don't beat one over time.
Cash set aside for surprises · emergency fund: — Several months of expenses kept in cash or a savings account, so a job loss or big bill doesn't force you to sell investments at a bad time.
How your money is split up · allocation: — The share of your money in each kind of investment — for example, how much in a broad fund versus individual stocks.
Debt minus cash · net debt: — What the company owes minus the cash it holds. Below zero ("net cash") means it has more cash than debt.

Not financial advice

TradeStupid is for information and education only. It isn't a registered investment adviser or broker-dealer, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Algorithms and AI can be wrong, data can be delayed or incorrect, and investing carries the risk of losing money. Do your own research and consider talking to a licensed professional before making investment decisions.