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Alpha Metrics Guide

MarketAlpha includes a powerful set of proprietary scoring metrics that help you evaluate ticker quality, trend direction, trade structure, and setup readiness — all in real time. These include:

  • Alpha Ratings: Composite and individual scores ranking each ticker across fundamentals, technicals, liquidity, and group leadership.
  • AI Strategy Metrics: Real-time signals that confirm direction, calculate risk/reward, measure structure, and estimate time-to-target.

These metrics appear throughout the platform — as columns in screeners, filters in profiles, and overlays in Alpha Charts.

They provide a consistent way to evaluate whether a ticker is:

  • Fundamentally strong
  • Technically sound
  • Structurally ready for entry
  • Confirmed by AI models
  • Well-positioned within its group or theme

Below is a high-level introduction to each metric type.

Alpha Ratings: Core Quality Metrics​

Alpha Ratings summarize a ticker’s fundamental and technical quality into easy-to-use numeric scores. Many ratings range from 1 to 99, where 99 represents the strongest relative performance.

Core ratings include:

  • MarketAlpha Rating: Composite score across all core metrics
  • EPS, Sales, Profit Ratings: Evaluate recurring growth and profitability
  • Accumulation/Distribution Score: Detects institutional accumulation or selling
  • Fundamentals Rating: Letter grade from A–F covering valuation and balance sheet strength
  • Industry/Theme Ratings: Measures group strength over 1 Day and 1 Year

These scores help surface consistent outperformers, breakout candidates, institutional magnets, and fast-moving leaders. They are commonly used in profile filters such as:

  • EPS Rating ≥ 85
  • Industry Rating 1 Day ≥ 90
  • Acc/Dis Score ≥ 2

For full details on how each rating works and is calculated, see Alpha Ratings

Liquidity, Relative Strength, and Market Attention​

Some Alpha Ratings are more focused on execution quality, trading activity, and leadership versus the broader market. These are especially useful when you want to surface names that are active, scalable, and already attracting attention.

These ratings include:

  • Liquidity Rating: Gauges execution quality and scalability
  • Relative Strength Ratings: Measures performance leadership versus the entire market
  • Dollar Volume Rank: Ranks tickers to show where market attention is concentrated (1 is best)

These metrics are especially useful for identifying stocks that can move cleanly, hold trend strength, and support efficient entries and exits. They are often used in filters such as:

  • Liquidity Rating ≥ 70
  • Relative Strength 1 Day ≥ 90
  • Dollar Volume Rank ≤ 50

Together, they help bring the most tradable and actively leading tickers to the top of the screener.

Understanding Risk/Reward​

Risk/Reward is a core part of how MarketAlpha evaluates the quality of any trade setup. It compares the potential upside to the defined downside — based on real support, resistance, and chart structure — and helps ensure that each trade idea is mathematically favorable.

  • For Long setups, reward is the distance from entry to the next resistance, and risk is the distance to nearby support.
  • For Short setups, reward is the distance from entry to the next support, and risk is the distance to nearby resistance.

For example, a Risk/Reward of 3.0 means you're risking $1 to potentially gain $3 — a key threshold used in many filters and profiles.

For detailed logic and real-world examples, see Risk/Reward Strategy Logic

AI Strategy Metrics: Real-Time Setup Scoring​

AI Strategy Metrics track how well a setup aligns with a directional bias, structural quality, and reward potential — all based on real-time data. The system assigns a Long or Short bias, then uses supporting metrics to evaluate strength and tradability.

Key metrics include:

  • Alpha Strategy: Long or Short directional signal with model confidence
  • Price Action Confirmation: Measures if price movement supports the strategy
  • Risk/Reward: Calculates the reward vs. risk based on selected resistance and support
  • Path to Target: Counts obstacles (support/resistance) to the target
  • Estimated Days to Target: Time estimate to reach projected target
  • Risk/Reward 1st: Early-stage risk/reward based on first nearby zones

You’ll see these in filters such as:

  • AI - Alpha Strategy = Long
  • AI - Risk/Reward ≥ 3
  • AI - Path to Target ≤ 1
  • AI - Price Action Confirmation ≥ 3

Together, these metrics help isolate high-conviction setups with favorable structure, timing, and potential follow-through.

For full explanations of how these real-time signals are generated, see AI-Powered Insights

How They Work Together​

The strongest results often combine Alpha Ratings and AI Strategy Metrics. For example:

  • A ticker with high EPS Rating, strong Liquidity, and a confirmed Long Alpha Strategy is more likely to follow through on a breakout.
  • A setup with Risk/Reward ≥ 3, Path to Target = 1, and strong Price Action Confirmation has a clearly defined trade structure with minimal friction.
  • A profile might require Industry Rating 1 Day ≥ 90 to ensure group-level alignment for momentum trades.

These metrics are central to most built-in screener profiles and are recommended for custom filtering and ranking.

Summary​

By learning to interpret these scores, you can dramatically reduce research time and quickly focus on the highest-quality setups — whether based on fundamentals, technicals, AI models, or a combination of all three.