How a week is graded

Who is in the book

Each Wednesday 12:00 PM ET through Sunday 5:00 PM ET cohort has two buckets. Both feed the weekly board. Leaderboards stay separate.

Named watchlist

Accounts we follow. A post joins the rank after it is verified and graded.

Viral doom and hype

Crash, war, sell-the-open, and melt-up posts. Fictional examples stay on the demo board. A verified post is ranked with the accounts we follow.

Collect once, read the tape four times

Collect window

Wednesday 12:00 PM America/New_York through Sunday 5:00 PM America/New_York. The cohort does not grow after Sunday. One call per handle per cohort; a handle can appear in later weeks. The first forward-looking post covering the week that names a direction on a graded print (SPY, QQQ, DIA, SPX, NDX, ES, NQ, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100, or the Dow) counts. An ambiguous direction is excluded. The weeks of September 28, October 5, and October 12 are Substack only (X not searched). For the week of October 19, 2026, Substack covers the whole Wednesday noon to Sunday 5:00 PM ET window. X was checked only from Friday, October 16 at 10:22 AM ET through Sunday, October 18 at 5:00 PM ET. X posts from Wednesday noon through Friday 10:22 AM ET were out of scope and were not searched. For this week, first means the first forward-looking post inside that searched range.

Weekend reference

There is no Sunday cash print. The reference is the prior trading-week close (Friday, or Thursday when Friday is a market holiday) for SPY, QQQ, DIA, and that day's VIX close. Equity index futures are shut from Friday 5:00 PM ET until Sunday 6:00 PM ET, so Sunday 5:00 PM only ends the book. Yahoo adjclose is stored for audit and is not used against the unadjusted open, the Monday noon bar, or the official close.

Monday open — 9:30 AM ET

Monday open is the move from Friday's close to the 9:30 AM ET open for SPY, QQQ, and DIA. Older notes called this the Monday gap. VIX uses Friday's close to Monday's regular-session open.

Monday 12:00 PM ET — weekend-noise grade

The primary score. It asks whether the weekend doom, war panic, sell-the-open calls, and melt-up calls were still there at noon. The print is the open of the Yahoo Finance 5-minute bar stamped 12:00 PM America/New_York. VIX uses the same stamp.

Wed close and Fri close

The same calls, aged against the official regular-session close and VIX at that close. A regular session closes at 4:00 PM ET. An early-close day uses the 1:00 PM ET official close. There is no 4:00 PM bar on those days. The grade waits 45 minutes after the close so Yahoo's daily bar and the VIX print are posted. A daily bar before that buffer is the last trade, not the close. Wednesday at noon still opens the next collect window. That new window is a different board. Wednesday's close still belongs to the cohort that closed the previous Sunday. Friday's close is the last score on the book.

Verified real calls

Demo and paste-intake calls use the same stamps. Monday is the open of the 12:00 PM ET 5-minute bar. Wednesday and Friday are the 4:00 PM ET regular-session close. Paste-intake calls skip the Monday gap.

Missing print

A closed cash session has no open, no Monday noon print, and no official close. The readout stays ungraded. No prior close is copied in to stand for the missing session. A Yahoo VIX bar on an equity holiday is ignored.

Boards show settled grades only

The home tape, weekly rankings, leaderboards, and account scorecards list a call only after a readout has settled. Monday's open, Monday noon, the Wednesday close, and the Friday close are those horizons. Hit rate, STRONG rate, and WEAK rate use settled grades only. While a readout is still scheduled, the calls sit on Not graded yet. That page is not part of the ranking.

How the percentage is built

The board shows one GC Scale percent. Parts add to that percent: direction 50, levels 20, specificity 15, VIX 15.

Direction versus the equity tape

The tape is the equal-weight percent move of SPY, QQQ, and DIA from Friday's regular-session close to the readout print. Each name counts one third. A bullish call is scored on that tape. A bearish call is scored on the inverse. Flat tape is a push. Numbered targets are still checked on the call's own symbol. Selloff calls only score well when the tape is down; melt-up calls only when the tape is up.

• Tape favorable by 2% or more

  50 points

• Tape favorable by 1% up to 2%

  42 points

• Tape favorable by 0.5% up to 1%

  34 points

• Tape favorable by 0.2% up to 0.5%

  26 points

• Tape favorable by 0.08% up to 0.2%

  20 points

• Tape inside a ±0.08% push

  14 points

• Tape adverse by up to 0.2%

  10 points

• Tape adverse by 0.2% up to 0.5%

  6 points

• Tape adverse by 0.5% up to 1%

  3 points

• Tape adverse by 1% or more

  0 points

VIX factor, 15 points

VIX is always in the score. A panic, crash, or selloff call wants VIX higher. A melt-up or complacency call wants VIX lower. A spike hurts a melt-up call. A drop hurts a panic call. The move is Friday's VIX close to the VIX print at the same stamp as the equity readout.

• VIX favorable by 10% or more

  15 points

• VIX favorable by 5% up to 10%

  12 points

• VIX favorable by 2% up to 5%

  9 points

• VIX favorable by 0.5% up to 2%

  6 points

• VIX inside ±0.5%

  3 points

• VIX adverse

  0 points

Levels

A reached target scores 20. A near miss scores less. Support and resistance score when they hold. If a stated invalidation is busted, level points cap at 2. A post with no level keeps a floor of 4.

Specificity

• Named ticker: 5
• Named target: 4
• Named invalidation: 3
• Named support or resistance: 3

A mood with no ticker cannot clear 70, even when the tape agrees.

GC Scale

GC Scale: STRONG 70+, PROVISIONAL 40–69, WEAK under 40, EXIT LIQUIDITY at a graded 0. An ungraded horizon reads Not graded yet.

Weekend Noise Index

The index is the share of the cohort tagged panic, crash, or selloff, shown next to the melt-up share. The board plots that share against the equal-weight Monday gap and Monday noon equity return from Friday's close, and against the VIX change at those stamps. An engagement-weighted panic share is shown beside the count. The index describes the book. It is not a trading signal.

Consensus versus the tape

Bullish and bearish weight uses conviction: high counts 3, medium 2, low 1. A crowd is bullish at 55% or more of that weight, bearish at 45% or less, and split in between. The realized tape uses the equal-weight SPY, QQQ, and DIA move: up at least 0.08% is bullish, down at least 0.08% is bearish, and the middle is flat. Agreement is a description, not a recommendation.

Worked example: Weekend doom

Fictional weekend posts: war panic, sell-the-open, and melt-up calls. Monday, September 7, 2026 was Labor Day, so the gap and the noon grade stay blank. Wednesday and Friday use the official closes. Monday gap and Monday noon are off this board because the cash session did not settle. They are on Not graded yet, not in the ranking.

Open the graded cohort.

• Perma Pump

  meltup SPY

  Reference SPY ($770.19)

  Wed close

  Wed closeSPY($762.40)▼ −1.0%against call

  28%

  WEAK

  Fri close

  Fri closeSPY($764.29)▼ −0.8%against call

  31%

  WEAK

• Doom Scroll

  panic SPY

  Reference SPY ($770.19)

  Wed close

  Wed closeSPY($762.40)▼ −1.0%with call

  88%

  STRONG

  Fri close

  Fri closeSPY($764.29)▼ −0.8%with call

  77%

  STRONG

• Doom Siren

  panic SPY

  Reference SPY ($770.19)

  Wed close

  Wed closeSPY($762.40)▼ −1.0%with call

  88%

  STRONG

  Fri close

  Fri closeSPY($764.29)▼ −0.8%with call

  77%

  STRONG

Where the prints come from

Prints are recorded Yahoo Finance chart data. The seed refuses a missing quote and will not invent a level to fill a hole.

Weekend reference is the prior trading-week close (Friday, or Thursday when Friday is a market holiday) for SPY, QQQ, DIA, and VIX. That close is stored next to Yahoo adjclose for audit. Grades measure against the session close, not a dividend-rewritten adjclose. A holiday has no equity daily bar and stays ungraded.

The series is committed in src/lib/market-history.json and was fetched Monday, October 19 at 3:29 PM ET. VIX is the Yahoo symbol ^VIX. Monday, September 7, 2026 was Labor Day. SPY, QQQ, and DIA have no session that day. A Yahoo VIX daily bar exists for that holiday and is not used as a Monday open or noon print. Wednesday, September 23 and Friday, September 25 are graded on those days' official closes. GradedCalls FinTwit does not scrape X and does not draw a price when a print is missing.

Scores describe how posts lined up with those recorded prints. They are not investment advice. GradedCalls FinTwit is not affiliated with Yahoo Finance. Read the disclaimer.