Stock alert glossary

What we scan for

Low float

A stock with a small number of shares actually available to trade.

Float is not the same as shares outstanding. It is the portion that is genuinely tradeable once insider and restricted stock is set aside. When that number is small, ordinary buying pressure has nowhere to go, so the price can travel much further on much less volume than a large company would. That sensitivity is why low float names move fast, and it is also why they are dangerous: the same mechanism works just as well downward.

Float

The count of a company's shares that are free to change hands.

Shares held by founders, insiders and locked up early investors are excluded. A company can carry a large market value and still have a tiny float. Float is the one measurement that most reliably separates the names that can run from the names that cannot.

Small Cap book

The faster of the two books, built on tiny, beaten down stocks.

It holds smaller, more volatile companies, never past the close of the 10th session after the buy, and accepts that many positions will not work out. One rule, the Doubler DNA, covers both its entry and its exit.

Large Cap book

The slower book, built on well known companies during a steep fall.

It buys established companies worth $2 billion or more while they are being sold off far harder than normal, rather than small companies breaking out. Its entry and its exit come from a single rule, and every buy alert states the exit. It is a co-lead book, not a junior version of the other one.

Doubler DNA

The Small Cap book's rule: two fixed doors, judged on the live tape.

Door one, a beaten down penny: a price under 20 cents, a market cap under $20M, a daily swing (ATR) of 20% or more of the price, under $500,000 traded a day over the last 20 sessions, and 20% or more under its 20 day average. Door two, a hot day for small caps: 20 or more listed stocks up 20% today on a million shares, and the stock under $1.50, with under 100M shares, a share count up less than 100% in six months, and not listed on Nasdaq. A stock passes a door only when every test is true. The doors were drawn from what the tiny stocks that doubled in the summer of 2026 looked like before they moved.

The 3:30pm buy

The moment the Small Cap book buys.

At 3:30pm ET, or ten minutes before the bell on a half day, the stocks passing a door are bought at once, at the price they passed at, in regular trading, and the alert goes out with that price. The book makes at least 2 buys a week: on the week's last session the nearest misses, the stocks that met all but one test of a door, fill the gap.

Re-ignition

A second run in a name that already ran once.

Same company, same float, fresh catalyst. It is worth watching because the conditions that allowed the first move have not gone away.

OTC and Pink sheets

Off-exchange venues this service never trades.

Stocks quoted over the counter rather than on a major exchange are excluded permanently, with no exceptions. Many cannot realistically be bought and sold at the price shown, and an alert nobody can act on is not a track record. Applying this rule cut the scanned universe roughly in half. That reduction is the rule working, not a fault in it.

How a position is opened

Alert

The message sent when a book buys, and again when it sells.

An alert names the stock, the price the book paid, the stop and the exit rule. It is a notification, not an instruction. Nothing here tells anyone to buy or sell.

Alert price

The price at the exact moment the alert went out.

It is recorded once and never revised afterwards. It is the honest starting point for measuring whatever followed, because it is the first price a subscriber could possibly have acted on.

The Small Cap rule

The Doubler DNA: one rule covering both the entry and the exit.

A stock that passes a door is bought at 3:30pm ET. Half the shares sell at +50% and the rest at +100%. The stop is 35% under the buy on the whole position until the first half sells; from the next session the stop on the rest is the buy price. Whatever is left sells at the official close of the 10th session after the buy. Each buy stakes 8% of the book, with at most 13 positions open. Entry and exit are two halves of one rule, not two rules with two names.

The Large Cap rule

One rule covering both the entry and the exit.

It buys a well known stock worth $2 billion or more at a five minute close, when a steep fall has taken the price well under its short term averages. The part of the rule that bought it sets the exit, and the buy alert states it: a target and a stop with a sale on a set session, a tight stop with a later timed sale, or a sale at the next session's open. Entry and exit are two halves of one rule, not two rules that happen to sit side by side.

Entry price and basis

What was actually paid, which is what every return is measured from.

Basis is the cost a position is measured against: in the Small Cap book, the price paid at 3:30pm. Returns are always calculated from basis, never from a more flattering number picked afterwards.

Stake

How much of the book one trade puts to work.

The Small Cap book stakes 8% of its whole equity on each buy, never more than its cash, with at most 13 positions open; a full book waits for a sale. The Large Cap book spreads its capital across a fixed number of slots.

How a position is closed

Stop

The price at which a position is sold to cap a loss.

In the Small Cap book it sits 35% under the buy until the first half sells, then at the buy price. In the Large Cap book each buy alert states its own stop, where the part of the rule that bought it has one. It is important to be clear about what a stop is and is not. It is a resting order, not a guaranteed fill. A stock that gaps or moves violently can trade straight through the level, and positions in these books have done exactly that many times. A stop limits intent. It does not limit outcome.

The two targets

The resting sell orders at +50% and +100% that bank a Small Cap trade in two halves.

Placed with the buy, beside the stop. Half the shares sell at +50% and the rest at +100%. Once the first half has sold, the stop on the rest moves up to the buy price from the next session, though a gap can still open below it. They are the reason a Doubler DNA trade never has to be watched: the orders do the selling.

The 10th session

The last day a Small Cap trade may be held.

The buy day does not count. If any shares are still held at the official close of the 10th session after the buy, they are sold at that close, whatever the price.

Peak

The highest price a position reached while it was held.

Recorded to show how far a move actually travelled. A peak is a measurement, not a result, and nobody is credited with having sold at it.

Post-exit peak

A higher price reached after the position had already been closed.

Shown on purpose rather than hidden. If a stock kept climbing after the exit, the record says so plainly. Leaving it out would make the exit rule look better than it is.

Hold days

How long a position was actually held, entry to exit.

Reported because a return means very little without the time it took to earn it. The same percentage is a different achievement over three days than over three months.

Drawdown

How far a position or a book fell from its own high point.

It answers the question a headline return hides: how uncomfortable was the ride. A book can finish well ahead and still have been deeply underwater on the way there.

Reading a track record

Win rate

The share of closed positions that made money.

A high win rate is not the goal and a low one is not a failure. What matters is win rate together with average size. A book can win well under half the time and still do well, provided the winners are much larger than the losers. Quoted on its own, win rate is one of the easiest numbers in this industry to mislead with.

Doubler

A position that at least doubled from its basis while it was held.

It has to be held through the double to count. A stock that doubled after the exit does not qualify.

Open position

A position still held, with no final result yet.

An open position shows a mark, which is what it is worth right now. A mark is not a result and never enters a closed-trade average. Mixing the two is the most common way a published track record flatters itself.

Closed position

A finished position, with a fixed and final result.

Once closed, the result is frozen and is never recalculated later. Going back to re-derive old outcomes was built here, run, and then deliberately rejected: a record that can be rewritten afterwards is not a record.

Survivorship bias

Judging a strategy only by the trades that worked.

It is the standard trick of this industry: publish the winners, quietly drop everything else. The complete record here, including the positions that went nowhere and the ones that lost money, is public on the track record page.

Rotation book and flat book

Two different ways of measuring the same set of trades.

A flat book puts the same amount into every position. A rotation book reuses capital as positions close, so money freed by one trade funds the next. They answer different questions and produce different figures, so any comparison has to state which one it is using.

Paper trade

A position tracked and published but not traded with real money.

Where a book is on paper, the site labels it. It is stated rather than implied, because the difference matters to anyone reading the numbers.

Market terms worth knowing

Halt

A temporary freeze on trading in a single stock.

An exchange can pause a stock when it moves too far too fast, or when news is pending. Nothing trades during a halt. When it lifts, the price can reopen a long way from where it stopped, which is one of the ways a stop order fails to protect a position.

Gap

A jump between one session's close and the next session's open.

No trading happens in the space between. An order resting inside a gap does not fill at its price, it fills at the open. This is the main mechanical reason a stop can be exceeded rather than respected.

Short interest

The number of shares currently sold short.

When short interest is high against a small float, rising prices can force short sellers to buy back, which adds fuel to a move. High short interest raises volatility in both directions. It is not by itself a reason to buy anything.

Moving average

The average price over a recent window, recalculated each day.

It smooths daily noise so a trend is easier to read. Both books read them: the Small Cap book's first door wants the price well under its 20 day average, and the Large Cap rule buys when a fall has taken the price well under its short term averages.

Catalyst

The news or activity that starts a move.

Earnings, a contract, a filing, an approval, or sometimes nothing identifiable at all. The books react to price and volume behaviour rather than trying to guess which headline will land.

Why these definitions are worded this way

Two things are done on purpose here. There are no results, and there are no claims about how any of this has performed. A result written into a definition freezes on the day it is typed and then quietly goes stale, so every live figure stays on the track record instead, including the positions that lost money. The numbers in the rule terms are read from the code that trades the rule, so they change the day the rule does. The rule definitions describe what the rules actually do, including the parts that are unflattering, such as a stop being a resting order rather than a guaranteed fill.

Nothing on this page is financial advice. Low float and micro-cap stocks are among the most volatile securities in the market. Total loss is possible and past performance does not predict future results. Full risk disclosure.