Conviction grades explained
A grade should be a calculation, not a mood. Here is what an A-to-D conviction grade means, and why the same letter means a different move on a different clock.
Plenty of services attach confidence words to calls — “strong buy”, “high conviction” — that mean whatever the sender wants on the day. A measured conviction grade is different. It marks where a call sits in its own model's measured returns, with a number behind it, so the label means the same thing every time it is used.
On the worked example used in this primer, every call carries a grade from A, the highest, down to D, the lowest. There is no E grade; the live scale stops at D, which keeps the four steps clearly separated. Crucially, the bar that earns an A is set per model, against that model's own returns — not one house-wide target stretched across very different holding times.
| Model | Holding clock | Grade-A bar |
|---|---|---|
| Day Trade | opened and closed inside one session | around 0.70% per trade |
| Multi Hour | held across part of a day up to two sessions | around 4.50% per trade |
| Swing | held roughly one to four weeks | around 6.00% per trade |
| Investing | held for the long horizon at higher conviction | graded over the long horizon |
A grade A is the top band of a model's own measured returns and D is the lowest band still published. Because the bar is set per clock, an A on a same-session call (near 0.70 percent) and an A on a multi-week call (near 6.00 percent) both read as “top band for this horizon” rather than one absolute target stretched across very different holding times. The live scale stops at D; there is no E grade, so the four steps keep a clear meaning.
Why the bar is set per clock
A same-session move and a multi-week move are not comparable in raw size. A 0.70 percent intraday gain can be an excellent same-session result, while 0.70 percent over a month would be poor. If both were judged against one absolute target, the fast model would always look weak and the slow one would always look strong, and the grade would tell you nothing. Setting the bar against each model's own spread fixes that: an A on a Day Trade call and an A on a Swing call both say “top band for this horizon”, which is the comparison a reader actually needs.
How to use the grade as a beginner
You will rarely be able to take every call in a stream, so the grade is your filter. Concentrate on the A and B calls, where the model's own history says conviction is highest, and you are spending your limited attention and capital where the record is strongest. A stream that grades nothing forces you to take all of it or guess — and guessing is the opposite of the discipline these lessons are trying to build.
Why the grade must be fixed in advance
A grade is only trustworthy if it cannot be revised after the result is known. On the worked example the grade is part of what gets hashed and timestamped when the call is sent, so a C cannot quietly become an A after it happens to win. That is the link between this lesson and the next: a grade is just another field the timestamp protects, and it only means anything on top of a record whose losers are still in the count.
The takeaway: a real grade is calculated against the model's own returns, set per holding clock, capped at D, and fixed before the outcome. A confidence word with none of those properties is decoration.