How QTick computes its numbers
QTick puts 51 metrics on a stock dossier. Each one names the real method, then translates it — what it tells you, how it is calculated, and where it breaks down. No metric is a buy or sell trigger. This page collects the methods behind all of them, grouped the way a careful person actually reads a company.
The order is the product
A first-time investor sees forty numbers and does not know which matter. New buyers fixate on the price target. We deliberately flip that order: the questions that protect your money come first. This is a research order — what to check before committing capital, and why each ranks where it does. It is never a buy trigger.
- Can it survive?Before any other number: can this company go to zero? A great story on a balance sheet that cannot service its debt is a trap.
- Is the reporting honest?Everything else is built on the company's filings. If those are manipulated, the rest of the page is fiction.
- What's the worst case if you're wrong?You will be wrong sometimes. The downside sets your position size — upside only means something measured against it.
- Is it a good business?Durable businesses recover from mistakes; weak ones get punished for them. Margins, returns on capital, cash generation.
- Is the price sane?The best company in the world is a poor position at the wrong price. Valuation, never in isolation from quality.
- What's the setup and timing?Context for entry — not a trigger. The most overrated layer for a long-term holder, never the first thing to check.
- Who else is positioned, and what's coming?Divergence from the crowd is where edge lives — and an earnings date next week changes the whole risk picture.
survive → honest → downside → quality → price → timing → crowd
Every metric, by category
Credit & distressA falling DTD (especially below 2) tightens the case that structural stress is building — set it next to the accounting gauges (Altman Z, forensic flags) to triangulate.Covers 3 metricsRisk & tailsBeta tells you how much of a stock's price noise comes from broad market swings versus company-specific events.Covers 8 metricsOptions & dealer positioningA high implied move tells you the options market is paying up for protection or leverage into the nearest expiry — common ahead of earnings, a regulatory date, or a macro print, or when a name is in play.Covers 5 metricsTrend & technicalsRSI-14 tells you how stretched the tape is, not whether the fundamentals changed.Covers 11 metricsOur signal & track recordA positive net adds corroborating structure to a bullish thesis: several independent data streams point the same direction, not just one.Covers 4 metricsOdds & the avoid spineThe split bar tells you whether similar names — same red-flag count — historically closed higher or lower 12 months out.Covers 4 metricsOwnership & flowA high score tells you that multiple insiders — people with line-of-sight to the business — put their own cash in simultaneously and recently.Covers 3 metricsShare supply & dilutionA rising count means the company pays for things by creating new shares — each share you hold owns a shrinking slice of the business.Covers 5 metricsEarnings personalityStrengthens a pre-earnings thesis when pBeatNext sits above the pooled base rate and cohort_multiple (cell rate / pooled rate, populated only on the persistent-skill path) is meaningfully above 1.0; weakens it when pBeatNext sits below the pooled rate.Covers 2 metricsValuation & qualityA low PEG tightens the valuation case — you're paying less P/E per unit of growth, which is the core of a growth-at-a-reasonable-price argument.Covers 4 metricsFair Value / DCFA large gap to the price is a prompt to ask *why* — cheap for a reason, or genuinely mispriced? It's an input to your own view, never a trigger; the spread between the three methods shows how shaky the estimate is.Covers 1 metricForensicA low score forces you to discount the bull case: the financials themselves may not be trustworthy, so thesis strength depends on which test failed.Covers 1 metric