How StockDecks scores a company

The scale and letter grades

Every rating and score runs from −100 to +100. Zero means roughly typical; positive is stronger than typical, negative is weaker. All scores are rounded to whole numbers.

The Fundamental Score is also shown as a letter grade for quick reading:

How a single measure becomes a score

Each underlying measure — operating margin, say — is compared with benchmark points: a value regarded as weak, one regarded as typical, and one regarded as strong. A value at the typical point scores 0; values in between are scored proportionally.

Benchmarks are sector-aware. StockDecks uses sector-specific benchmarks for eleven sectors — Technology, Communication Services, Consumer Cyclical, Consumer Defensive, Healthcare, Financial Services, Energy, Industrials, Utilities, Real Estate and Basic Materials — because what counts as normal differs a lot between industries. A trailing P/E of 32, for example, is typical for a technology company and scores about 0 against the technology benchmark, but the same multiple would be judged expensive against the general benchmark. Where a sector has no specific benchmark for a measure, a general one is used.

Between benchmark points, scores are interpolated in a straight line.

The ends of the scale taper. A value at the strong or weak benchmark scores ±90. Beyond it, each further step the size of the last benchmark interval closes half the remaining gap to ±100 (so about +95, then about +98, and so on), meaning the very strongest and weakest companies can still be told apart and nothing jumps straight to the limit.

A few measures are deliberately capped below the top of the scale — share buybacks can earn at most +70, and dividend yield is scored on a curve that falls away at very high yields (both explained below).

The four fundamentals ratings

Each rating is the equal-weight average of the scores of its measures. A measure with no data available is left out of the average rather than guessed.

Financial Health

• Debt to equity — lower is better. Not scored when a company's equity is negative, because the ratio isn't meaningful there (negative equity often comes from large share buybacks rather than distress).
• Current ratio and quick ratio — short-term liquidity; higher is better.
• Free cash flow to total debt — how comfortably cash generation covers debt.
• Buybacks vs new shares — net share issuance over the last year relative to the company's assets. Issuing new shares (diluting existing holders) is penalised more heavily than buying shares back is rewarded, and buyback credit is capped at +70.

Profitability

• Gross margin, operating margin and net margin.
• Return on equity.
• Gross profit to assets — how much gross profit the company's asset base produces.
• Profit vs cash flow — whether reported profit is backed by operating cash flow. Profits that run well ahead of cash score lower. Scored only for profitable companies.
• Asset turnover is shown for context but is not scored.

Growth

• Revenue growth (year on year).
• Earnings growth (year on year) and earnings growth (latest quarter).

Valuation

Lower multiples and higher cash yield score better.

• Trailing P/E and forward P/E.
• PEG ratio (P/E relative to growth).
• Price to book and price to sales.
• EV/EBITDA.
• Free cash flow yield.

The other ratings

Analyst Upside

The gap between the median analyst price target and the current price. An implied move of −30% scores −90 and +30% scores +90. Shown only when at least three analysts cover the stock, so a single target can't dominate.

Analyst Consensus and Dividend

Two further readings feed the Full Score. Analyst Consensus uses the average broker recommendation on a 1 (strong buy) to 5 (strong sell) scale. Dividend combines yield with payout sustainability: yield is scored on a curve that peaks at around 6% and then falls, because a very high yield often signals that the market doubts the payout; a payout ratio above 100% caps the dividend score at 0.

Trend Signals

Price momentum, read from daily closing prices: the 12-month return (free), plus the 1-month, 1-week and 3-day readings (Premium). Context such as the price versus its 200-day average, position in the 52-week range and the 14-day RSI is shown alongside but not scored. The 3-day reading is displayed but left out of the Full Score, as very short-term moves are mostly noise.

Insider Track

Open-market share purchases and sales by a company's own officers and directors over the last 90 days, from the Form 4 filings they must submit to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Purchases count in full; discretionary sales count at 0.6; sales made under a pre-arranged trading plan (Rule 10b5-1) count at 0.1, because they are scheduled months in advance. The score is the weighted value bought minus the weighted value sold, divided by the total value traded, then scaled into the app's ±90 range. So purely buying reaches +90, while purely discretionary selling reaches only about −54 (0.6 × −90) — deliberately, since insiders sell for many reasons (tax, diversification) but generally buy only when they think the shares are good value. US-listed companies only.

Hype

How much attention a company is attracting right now, from the volume of recent news headlines and Wikipedia page views relative to normal. It is shown as a rating and as a Hype Meter stage — Quiet, Building, Peak or Fading. Hype is not a measure of quality, so it never moves the Full Score.

How the headline scores are built

Fundamental Score (free)

The equal-weight average of Financial Health, Profitability, Growth and Valuation. Shown only when all four ratings are available and the company's sector is known (the sector decides which benchmarks apply).

Full Score (Premium)

The equal-weight average of the four fundamentals ratings together with Analyst Upside, Analyst Consensus, Dividend, the 12-month, 1-month and 1-week Trend Signals, and Insider Track — whichever of those are available for the company. Hype and the 3-day trend are excluded. It appears only when these core readings are all available: the four fundamentals ratings, Analyst Upside, the 12-month trend and the attention reading. Because Analyst Upside needs at least three analysts, a company covered by fewer than three has no Full Score.

Custom Score (Premium)

You choose which ratings to include; the score is the equal-weight average of your chosen set.

Funds and ETFs

Funds get a Composition Score instead, averaging scores for the expense ratio, distribution yield and fund size (assets under management). Company-style fundamentals don't apply to a fund.

When data is missing

StockDecks never fills a gap with an estimate. A measure without data is left out of its rating's average; a rating with no usable measures is not scored; and a headline score whose required inputs aren't all available shows a dash (—) instead of a number. If a data source is briefly unavailable, the last genuine figure is shown rather than a blank card.

How current the data is

Where the data comes from

• Yahoo Finance — prices, financial statements, valuation multiples and analyst data.
• Stooq — a fallback source for prices.
• SEC EDGAR — company filings and insider (Form 4) transactions.
• Google News — headline volume for the attention reading.
• Wikipedia — page-view trends for the attention reading.

What the scores are not

• Not predictions. The scores describe a company as it stands. They are not designed or tested to forecast share prices or returns, and a high score does not mean a price will rise.
• Not investment advice. StockDecks is for education and exploration, and we are not licensed financial advisers. Speak to a qualified adviser about personal decisions.
• Not the only view. The benchmarks are judgements; other reasonable methods would produce different numbers.

Changes to this methodology

• 21 October 2026 — Corrected the debt-to-equity measure, which had been scoring in the wrong direction: low-debt companies scored near −95 and very highly indebted ones near +100. Financial Health moved by up to about 40 points for some companies, and the Fundamental and Full Scores that include it moved accordingly. Scores are recalculated from live data, so earlier figures are replaced rather than kept. Negative-equity companies are now left unscored on this measure. This page was first published on the same date.

Questions or corrections: hello@stockdecks.app