Rank Not Return

Last updated 2026-09-25

This is the reading primer that every model-output pane assumes. Read it once and the signals side of the desk makes sense. The options suite is a different kind of pane. It shows plain market data rather than a ranking, and it has its own primer: Reading The Options Suite.

At a glance

Key difference: a rank compares one name to that evening's other names. It never says what a price will do.

The fields the desk does not draw

The models rank tonight's thousand stocks against each other. They do not forecast a return, and they emit a couple of fields that carry no real information on their own. The desk drops them before anything is drawn.

FieldWhy it is never drawn
expected moveThe models rank, they do not forecast a move on the ranking side. The Watchlist and Read-out state the model's own expected size of move instead, from the heads described below.
the model's own confidence outputThis is a different number from the Confidence word shown on screen. The model's raw confidence barely moves across a thousand names, so the desk drops it and derives Confidence from where a name sits in the ranking instead.

So a rank, a chance and a confidence word are what you see. Nothing here is ever drawn as money.

Why only the rank is drawn

The raw scores carry an offset that changes with the horizon. A 45 trading day score and a 20 trading day score are not on the same scale. Plotted directly, comparing them as numbers would be meaningless.

Only the rank, a place from 0 to 100 in that evening's queue, is comparable across horizons. When a pane's axis says "rank", it means this percentile, never a raw score.

The words on screen

Held

Held counts the trading days in a row a name's signal state has run, tonight included. It prints as "Signal held 7 trading days". A name with no signal prints "No signal for at least 14 trading days".

Held is not a position. Nothing is bought, sold or kept in an account, and the count says nothing about a price.

Key difference. Held counts the trading days behind a signal. It never turns that count into a probability of its own; the Chance figure beside a name is measured separately.

Do the two ranks agree

Timeframe Agreement asks a plain question: do the 45 and 20 trading day ranks put a name on the same side tonight. It also states how many trading days running. This is a fact about the readings, stated once. It is never a score added across more horizons than the model serves.

An earlier model scored seven horizons and counted how many pointed the same way, printed as a fraction such as "3 of 7". That count is gone. The current model ranks two horizons that carry a signal, plus the 10 day rank for context. A fraction built from seven no longer describes anything on screen.

Bullish and bearish, the two sides of the book

The model book holds five bullish and five bearish names, equal weight. See Words the desk uses for how the book itself is picked and dated.

What the model panes are, and what's delayed

Some panes take their numbers from Ohey's models. That is the whole signals suite, plus Trade Cards. Each one is a visual of what our models computed.

On the free plan, those same model-output panes show the prior trading day's read. A delayed-data chip names both dates. The panes are:

The options suite is never delayed. It restates public market data rather than the firm's own work. Holding it back would mean withholding someone else's data to sell early access. That is a different and worse thing than delaying Ohey's own output. See Reading The Options Suite and the Plans and Billing guide.

How much to trust the whole thing

Two facts sit under every number on these panes.

Treat a rank as a place to start looking, not an answer. It is what the models computed, on the data they had that evening.

Frequently asked questions

Why is a name ranked where it is? The models read the same measurements for every name in the scan, then rank the whole list from strongest to weakest at each horizon. A name is ranked where it is because of how it compared with the other names that evening, not because of any judgement about the company. Ranks move night to night as that comparison changes. A rank is not a forecast and not a price target.

Does a higher rank mean the stock is more likely to go up? Not in the way people usually mean. A high rank only means the model placed that name near the top tonight, against about a thousand scanned stocks. The Chance figure, measured against any stock, is the desk's own read on how often names ranked like this finished on that side. It is still not a promise about this one name.

What happened to Overall rank? It was an average taken across an earlier model's seven horizons and is gone from every current pane. One exception: the Record page's By reading tab groups older, pre-cutover paper trades by that earlier model's own rank and agreement. Those trades were picked under that model, so regrouping them by the current model's ranks would credit a read it never made. See The Record.

Why is a horizon sometimes shown as a dash instead of a number? That horizon produced no reading for that name that evening. It does not mean the name ranked last. RingMaster never draws "unknown" the way it draws "ranked last", because those are different facts.

Why do I sometimes see yesterday's data instead of today's? On the free plan, every pane built from Ohey's own models shows the prior trading day's read rather than tonight's. Both dates are on the label. The list of those panes is above, under "What the model panes are, and what's delayed". The options suite is not delayed, because it is public market data rather than Ohey's own output.

What happened to "conviction", "certified" and steadiness? All three were retired for the same reason: they read as claims about outcomes when the models only rank. "Conviction" was the label later renamed Overall rank, and it is gone with it. "Certified" was a per-horizon grade that only restated a horizon's own role and was withdrawn in 2026. Steadiness was a word like Rock steady or Drifting. Checked against what happened next it was found unreliable, and it is gone from every pane, replaced by the measured Held count. Older material using any of these words describes the same things under their current names.