Which kind of trader this desk serves

People arrive here from every corner of the market. This page says plainly which styles the desk fits, which it partly fits, and which it does not fit at all. Each style gets one entry with the same three parts.

At a glance

• What the desk is. A nightly read on about 1,000 US stocks, published after the close each weekday evening.
• What it ranks. Each stock is placed against the others at three time frames: 45, 20 and 10 trading days.
• What it publishes. A short list of names each evening, with the reasoning behind each one, in Trade Cards.
• What else it holds. Options market data, a Market Radar, price charts, a sector view, and a signal on market conditions.
• What it never holds. Anything intraday, order flow, an execution link, a download link for machines, crypto, currencies, commodities or futures.
• What it states. The desk states its view of a name: whether it is bullish or bearish, over which horizon, and the levels to watch. It publishes no return figures.
• Key difference. A style that works on a daily close is served here. A style that needs the live tape is not.

How to read each entry

Every entry below has the same shape, so you can scan for your own style.

• What you get. The panes on this desk that carry something for that style.
• What is missing. The thing the desk does not hold, and the reason.
• Verdict. One of three words: well served, partly served, or not served.

The verdict is about fit, never about whether the style itself works.

By how long you hold

• Scalping. Scalping means taking many small trades inside a single day. You get nothing on this desk that helps. There is no live price, no order book and no intraday bar, because the capture runs once a night. Verdict: not served.
• Day trading. This means opening and closing inside the same trading day. The current model's shortest time frame is 10 trading days, so there is no one day reading any more. The desk is an evening read on closing data, not a live tape. Verdict: not served.
• Swing trading. This means holding for a few days to a few weeks. You get the whole desk: the ranks at the shorter time frames, Signal History, Read-out, Earnings Radar, and the nightly signals in Trade Cards. Nothing important is missing at this holding length. Verdict: well served.
• Position trading. This means holding for months at a time. You get the longer time frames, out to about six months, plus Book History for how the published list has changed. What is missing is company valuation work. Verdict: well served.

By how you analyse

• Fundamental analysis. This means judging a company by its business and its accounts. You get Public Filings, Company Events and Earnings Radar, plus price to earnings and market value columns on Market Scan. What is missing is the financial statements themselves. The desk holds no revenue, margin, debt or cash flow figures, and no ratios beyond those two columns. Verdict: partly served.
• Technical analysis. This means reading price and volume history. You get Price Chart with daily, weekly and monthly bars out to five years, three moving averages, volume, and Chart Grid for many names at once. What is missing is a drawing tool, an indicator library and any intraday bar. Verdict: partly served.
• Price action trading. This means reading raw price bars with few indicators. You get the same daily, weekly and monthly bars on Price Chart, and Market Map for the day's moves across the market. What is missing is the intraday candle most price action work is done on. Verdict: partly served.
• Momentum trading. This means buying what has been moving and selling what has not. The nightly ranking is built to sort names against each other, and Market Scan, Star Field and Since Yesterday all show where names have moved. What is missing is any statement about whether a move continues. Verdict: well served.
• Contrarian trading. This means going the other way to the crowd. You get Bearish List, the names ranked nearest the bottom. Short Volume shows how much selling was marked short. Market Mood shows how nervous the market is. What is missing is a crowd positioning measure of any kind. Verdict: partly served.
• News based trading. This means acting on announcements. You get Headlines, Company Events for recent filings, Earnings Radar for report dates, and Release Calendar for economic releases. What is missing is speed. Headlines carry a title and a time only, and the ranking is nightly. Verdict: partly served.

By how you build a system

• Algorithmic trading. This means running rules by machine rather than by hand. You can read every rank yourself on Market Scan and Options Screener. What is missing is a machine link. There is no interface for programs, no data download, and no way to route an order. Verdict: partly served.
• Quantitative trading. This means building models on data. You get a nightly cross section of about 1,000 names, three time frames each, and how many trading days a signal has held. What is missing is history you can pull in bulk, and the inputs behind the ranks. Verdict: partly served.
• Arbitrage. This means taking two linked prices that disagree. You get nothing built for it. Pairs, spreads, borrow costs and venue prices are all absent, and the desk captures one price per name per day. Verdict: not served.
• Smart money and institutional flow. This means following what large holders do. You get Public Filings, which reproduces what members of Congress, company insiders and large fund managers disclosed. Every row shows how late that disclosure was. What is missing is live flow. A disclosure can be weeks or months behind the trade. Verdict: partly served.
• Seasonality. This means trading a calendar pattern. You get the Seasonality pane, which prints what each covered name did in each calendar month, with the count of months behind every figure. What is missing is any statement about a coming month. Verdict: partly served.
• Sector rotation. This means moving money between sectors. You get Sector Split for how many names in each sector take part tonight. Breadth Board counts the same thing from closing prices. Market Map groups every name by sector. What is missing is a sector fund, a flow figure and any ranking between sectors. Verdict: partly served.

By which market you trade

• US equities. This means shares in US listed companies. The whole desk is built on them. The nightly scan covers about 1,000 names and the options capture covers about 400 of those. Verdict: well served.
• Commodities. This means oil, metals, grain and the like. The desk holds none of it. There is no commodity price and no futures contract anywhere on the desk. Verdict: not served.
• Currencies. Currency trading is often called FX or foreign exchange. The desk holds no currency pair and no currency chart. Macro Tape carries US economic readings only. Verdict: not served.
• Options and other derivatives. A derivative is a contract whose value comes from something else. You get thirteen options panes over a nightly chain capture, described in Reading The Options Suite, and walked step by step in An options trader's evening. What is missing is intraday quotes, a position builder, and futures of any kind. Verdict: partly served.
• Buy and hold investing. This means owning shares for the long run, sometimes called delivery based buying. You get the six month time frame, Earnings Radar, Public Filings and five years of price history. What is missing is company accounts, dividends and any view on value. Verdict: partly served.

Inside the algorithmic family

These are the specialist trades people mean when they say algo. The short answer is that this desk supplies readings for a person, never a feed for a machine.

• Execution algorithms. These slice a large order through the day, often against the volume weighted or time weighted average price. The desk offers nothing here, because it places no orders and holds no intraday volume. Verdict: not served.
• High frequency market making. This means quoting both sides of a market thousands of times a second. The desk offers nothing here. It has no live feed, no order book and no venue connection. Verdict: not served.
• Statistical arbitrage. This means trading many small model driven bets at once, often in pairs. You can read the nightly cross section by hand on Market Scan. What is missing is bulk history, borrow data and a machine link. Verdict: partly served.
• Machine learning driven trading. This means letting a model learn the patterns. The nightly ranking is itself model output, and Rank Not Return explains how to read it. What is missing is the features, the training data and any way to pull the ranks in bulk. Verdict: partly served.
• Options algorithms. A delta neutral book holds shares against options so that small price moves cancel out. Gamma scalping trades those shares as the price wanders. You get Gamma Map, Strike Table, Expiry Ladder and the volatility panes, all from one nightly capture. What is missing is intraday quotes, per contract delta, theta and vega, and any position tool. Verdict: partly served.
• Microstructure and order flow. This means reading individual orders and prints as they happen. You get Changed Hands, which counts how many option contracts traded in a day, and Short Volume, which shows the share of daily volume marked short. Both are counted once after the close. What is missing is the flow itself, order by order. Verdict: partly served.
• Retail trading bots. These are small programs that place orders for a private trader. The desk has no interface for programs and no order routing, so a bot cannot read it or act on it. Verdict: not served.

Traders who follow gamma exposure

Gamma exposure is often shortened to GEX. It is a way of talking about how much option exposure sits at each price level, and which way that exposure likely pushes dealer hedging.

• Where to look. Open the Gamma Map and choose the Hedging pressure tab. It reads the net hedge change per one percent move, in dollars and in share equivalents, calls minus puts. The same tab marks the gamma flip strike, or strikes, and the call wall and put wall, the largest strikes each way. Strike Table gives the full nightly count behind the same figures. Expiry Ladder groups the same open contracts by date, and Positioning Replay plays recent trading days back.
• The assumption behind the figure. The hedging pressure reading assumes the open calls are held by hedgers and the open puts are sold by them. That is the standard convention GEX work uses, and it is stated plainly rather than left silent.
• What the reading is not. A count taken from last night's option chain, never a live feed. It is never a promise that a price stops or turns at the flip strike or at either wall.
• Verdict. Served, on the standard assumption stated above. What is missing is an intraday feed and any claim about which way one dealer is actually positioned today.

Frequently asked questions

I trade intraday. Is any of this useful? No. The current model's shortest time frame is 10 trading days. Every reading is a daily close, captured after the market shuts. Nothing here updates while you trade.

Can I get the ranks into my own program? No. There is no interface for programs and no download. You read the desk on screen, on the web or on the phone app.

Do you cover crypto, currencies, commodities or futures? No. US listed shares only, plus the listed options on about 400 of them.

I want company accounts. Where are they? They are not here. The desk carries filing dates, report dates, and price to earnings and market value on the scan. It carries no financial statements.

Which style fits this desk best? Swing and position trading, on US shares, using a nightly read. That is what the three time frames and the evening publication were built around.

Related panes

• The Panes, the map of every screen.
• What this desk can and cannot tell you, the limits stated once.
• Rank Not Return, how to read the model panes.
• Reading The Options Suite, how to read the options panes.