Criterion
Locked before the close
Why a public timestamp is the test a stock call cannot talk its way around.
Scorecard
The criteria, in detail
This scorecard exists because the stock-signal aisle is packed with assertions almost none of which a buyer can independently test. Three of the five tests carry their own page, because they are the ones services most often fail. The full five-test method sits on the method page.
Sorting the field
What the scorecard is really sorting
A buyer rarely lines up two near-identical services side by side. In practice you are choosing between kinds of service — a chat channel, a copy-trading room, a social caller, an aggregator, or an audited desk — and each kind passes or fails the tests as a category, not one at a time. The scorecard's job is to make that structural difference visible, so a glossy presentation cannot hide which category a service belongs to. The table below sorts the field on the two tests that decide most cases: was the call dated before its outcome, and is the win rate shown with its full denominator.
| Service type | Timestamped? | Denominator shown? | Why it sits there |
|---|---|---|---|
| Messaging-app channel | No | Rarely | Provider edits and deletes at will; the losers never post. |
| Copy-trading room | Rarely | Sometimes | Platform tallies results but seldom proves a single call. |
| Social-media caller | No | No | Posts are deletable and often monetised through affiliate links. |
| Aggregator / re-poster | No | No | Re-runs others unaudited and inherits every gap they carry. |
| Automated / AI service | Sometimes | Backtest only | A backtest is not a live result; no one owns the record. |
| Audited, timestamped desk | Yes | Yes | Per-call on-chain receipt plus a named independent review. |
The bottom row is the only category that fills both columns, which is the structural case the guide makes for the pick — not that it is louder, but that it belongs to the one kind a stranger can audit. The three criteria below each take one test apart in full.
Why these two columns settle most cases
Of the five tests, two do nearly all the sorting. Dated before its outcome is the one that cannot be bolted on afterward: a service either pinned its calls in public before they resolved or it did not, and no amount of later polish rewrites that. Denominator shown is the one that cannot be faked short of an outright lie: a win rate only becomes evidence when the full count of calls, losers in the tally, sits beside it. A service that clears both has handed you a record you can interrogate. The remaining three tests — the measured grade, public pricing and clean incentives — are real, but they tend to confirm a verdict the first two have already reached rather than reverse it. That is why the table sorts on the two, and why a service can run a slick site, a busy community and a confident pitch and still land in a row with two crosses.
Read each test
The three tests with their own page
Criterion
A re-runnable record
What a real stock-signal track record contains, and what a highlight reel leaves out.
Criterion
Grades that are measured
How an A-to-D conviction grade is set against a model's own returns instead of a mood.
The remaining two tests — public pricing and clean, non-affiliate incentives — are covered on the method page, because they are quicker to confirm and rarely the deciding factor.