Forensic

Five forensic tests — Altman-Z (bankruptcy distress), Beneish-M (earnings manipulation), debt-to-equity (leverage), Piotroski F-score (profitability quality), and latest-10-K filing red-flag count — each scored clear / watch / critical. Score = (clear + 0.5 × watch) ÷ scored tests × 100. Tests with no data are excluded from the denominator (flag-don't-fake).

A low score forces you to discount the bull case: the financials themselves may not be trustworthy, so thesis strength depends on which test failed. A perfect 100 doesn't make the stock attractive — it just means the accounting foundation is solid enough to build on.

The score maps to a letter grade: 85-100 = A (all or nearly all tests passed clean), 70-84 = B, 55-69 = C (at least one caution worth naming), 40-54 = D, below 40 = F. A D or F means one or more critical flags — Beneish M above -1.78, Altman-Z in distress, or more than two filing anomalies — that demand a closer look before trusting reported earnings.

0–100, mapped to five grade bands (A 85-100, B 70-84, C 55-69, D 40-54, F below 40). 100 = every scored test clear; 0 = every scored test critical (rare). Healthy large-caps tend to land in the 70-95 range, but that band is an observed pattern, not a coded threshold.

All five inputs are annual-filing data — the score can look clean for months after a deterioration begins, and it shows na rather than a red flag when fundamentals data is absent. ---