Grading Standards

Every public claim Helios makes is graded by machine against rules committed in advance. Calls are timestamped at issue, graded nightly, and published with wins and misses alike. Nothing is edited, nothing is deleted. These standards were written before the results existed; changes to them are dated and disclosed.

What gets graded, and how

• The morning signal — issued premarket with an entry-time price anchor; graded at the close against that anchor. A close beyond the anchor in the called direction is a win; within ±0.05% is a push, excluded from win rates. If issuance is ever delayed, the signal is graded from its actual capture price — anchors are never backdated.
• The Day Card — one call per symbol, fixed at 10:00 ET, unable to change intraday; graded at the close against its 10:00 price under the same push rule.
• Re-entry slots (10:30, 12:00, 13:30, 15:00 ET) — each graded from its own slot price. Anchor time is part of the signal.
• The traded mirror — published signals are additionally executed in a broker-connected paper account under fixed rules with broker timestamps. Sizing: ten contracts per signal since September 3, 2026; one contract before — sizing changes are dated here. Execution basis: since September 9, 2026 entries follow the committed day call and are held on day-scale exits (call flip, thesis stop, same-day flatten — no overnight positions); from August 25 to September 9, 2026 the account mirrored the engine’s own trade lifecycle. Basis changes are dated here. Amended September 15, 2026: one entry per symbol per day; deep in-the-money contracts (delta ≈ 0.9) so results track the graded call rather than amplify it; size reduces mechanically from ten contracts to three while the Day Card’s trailing-10 record is below 50%. The September 8–14 drawdown traced primarily to executor design (repeated re-entries, at-the-money convexity), not signal failure, and is corrected as of this date. One-day discretionary override, September 15, 2026: by founder decision, entries and exits mirrored the engine lifecycle at fifteen contracts for this session only. Dated here like every basis change. P&L is published as recorded. Paper results are not real-money returns and are labeled as such.
• Retired: the dwelled-wave cell (September 14, 2026) — the backtested 30-minute wave-continuation cell (87% in the June–August study) failed its pre-registered forward court: 29.9% across 335 forward-graded emissions against a 75% bar. Per the rules above, it is retired from measured claims; the wave lights remain as witness displays with no percentage. Backtests are hypotheses. The forward court is the record.
• Platform probation (September 15 – October 13, 2026) — following the September drawdown, the platform itself now stands a pre-registered trial: the morning signal must hold at or above 58%; the Day Card receives a regime gate and must stop its losses in reversal tape or retire at its published 55% bar; the simulated account under the amended execution basis must finish the window at break-even or better; and the business must add one paying member or a concrete institutional engagement. If the platform fails its own court, it winds down with this record published to the last day. If it passes, September was the origin story. Judged here, like everything else we publish.
• Display change: live structure state, executed-signal strip, exact exits (September 23, 2026) — on days with no committed call, the card headline now reports the measured structure state (for example, trading below the zero-gamma flip line), labeled explicitly as a state and not a graded direction call; every card carries the mirror’s executed entries and exits for the day exactly as filled; and playbook lines print entry, target, stop, and time stop. No new accuracy claims accompany these changes.
• Retired: the 1-Hour Engine (September 24, 2026) — the intraday hour-scale engine failed its trial: 50.3% across 1,088 graded signals, with no conditioning (day-call alignment, conviction band, symbol, hour of day, flip filtering) clearing the pre-registration bar. It is removed from the card. Its capture continues silently, and the hour horizon remains unstaffed until a successor passes a pre-registered forward court.
• Published and benched: the Qualified Signal gate (September 24, 2026) — the intraday entry gate (backtested 57–62% in August) recorded 47.2% across 161 forward-scored fires and is benched. Its Telegram entry alerts have been paused since August 18, 2026. The capture continues, and any return requires a new pre-registered forward court.
• Published: the Trend Engine (September 28, 2026) — a per-symbol direction organ for the next hour and the close, standing only in cells that passed their own courts, begins publishing to member surfaces as forward-graded and unproven: no accuracy number appears anywhere until its pre-registered bar clears (ten forward sessions, both halves). Direction, cell and status only.
• Retired: the pull-reversion cells and the confirmed-dwell light (September 28, 2026) — at scale, the stretch-below reversion cell graded 60% over 400 forward windows (below its 70% bar), the stretch-above fade graded 34.5%, and the confirmed-dwell light 36.6%: the card’s early sample percentages (81.5%, 66%, 62.5%) did not survive and have been removed. The dip-side light remains as an unlabelled witness while its court continues.
• Correction to the 1-Hour Engine retirement (September 28, 2026) — the figure in that entry (50.3% across 1,088 signals) describes the raw ride stream the audit graded; the retired display line showed the routed instrument, whose own live record is published in the courts feed and remains below promotion. The removal stands; the attribution is corrected here.
• Display and method changes (September 28, 2026) — (1) the Investor view now leads with dealer structure, then the day, then the hour and the close, then narration; (2) the surfer chart shows a labeled empty frame before the first session candles instead of nothing; (3) level orders on the Market Day card trigger at the nearest wall, treat the flip line as the invalidation and target the first structural level in the way — the prior logic could aim through a wall; (4) the trend strip is the same five-organ ladder the chart draws: filled marks a graded record, hollow a forward court, gray no call; the retired wave lights and the dwell counter are gone; (5) a magnet more than 1.5% from spot is shown as a far structural level and switches the pull cells off; (6) the card headline states the session — closed, premarket or regular hours; (7) the AI narration is generated on input change within 08:30–16:15 ET and frozen otherwise, narrates only the day call, the trend engine (in court) and the card's own orders, and no longer references retired instruments. None of these changes alters how any call is graded.
• Display change: regime dwell and the flip-line state (September 28, 2026) — the regime word on the signals page now changes only after the new sign has held three minutes or spot is more than 0.15% from the zero-gamma line; within 0.10% of the line the card reports AT THE FLIP LINE instead. On September 28 the raw sign flipped 30 times while SPY sat on its line; the underlying data are unchanged and grading is unaffected. Same day: a zero-gamma print more than 1.5% from spot is held to the last good value on display; the trend engine's flip text never shows a rate before its court closes; the executed exit is stated as the 15:05 ET flatten (the broker cutoff for same-day expiry, which has always been the mirror's rule); chart horizon markers that would overlap at the right edge are omitted from the chart and remain on the strip.
• API and display changes (September 28, 2026, evening) — (1) /v1/wave_state is retired: its direction graded anti-predictive in its forward court (SPY UP waves 24–32% right at +60; dwell ladder 29.9%); the endpoint keeps its shape for integrators and now carries a status field saying so; (2) the conviction score and its badge are withdrawn from every tier, the score having graded anti-predictive; (3) the trend strip names the day's character from the phase engine (TREND / CHOP / EXHAUSTION / TURN) as a state, not a call; (4) the structure band shows the age of the dealer-structure read and marks it stale past two minutes; (5) the Tier 3 feature list no longer names an IV matrix, which the feed does not serve, and lists the implied move derived from the quoted chain instead. Grading is unaffected by all five.
• Published: the gate verdicts, the crash lane and the flow-gamma gate (September 28, 2026, evening; first live payload September 29, 09:30 ET) — the signals page now shows which side the bot's own router refuses and the gate's name in words, a red banner while the crash lane is active, and the reason when the trend engine's next-hour read is NONE because of the flow-gamma gate. These are states from the machine that trades, not predictions, and carry no accuracy figure.
• Display changes (September 29, 2026) — (1) a trend-engine read that the engine itself rates below its LEAN tier is shown as no read; (2) the engine's cell names appear in member language, and the bot-side 10:30 rule is never called the day call; (3) on a day without a committed morning call the top box lists the organs by proof level — the graded Day Card, then positioning and the engine in court — and says so when they disagree; (4) level orders made meaningless by a wall more than 1.5% away, or by a ceiling that sits below the flip line, are not printed; (5) a prompt asks open pages to reload after a release. September 29 was the first day on which the graded Day Card and the positioning read disagreed: the Day Card lost on SPY by 0.07% and pushed on QQQ, and the engine's own close reads from late morning closed against it. Both are recorded.
• Display guard (September 29, 2026) — outside regular hours, when the feed carries no live quote and its price disagrees with the last session bar, the cards take their price from the bar. On September 29 the after-hours SPY price in the feed read 766.83 against a last bar of 764.90. Grading uses the official close and is unaffected.
• Display change: Market Day v5 (September 29, 2026, night) — the trend strip now carries five named organs: LEVEL (the live level order when price is within reach), 60M (the trend engine's scalp-horizon read, in court), DAY (the graded 08:45 call or the 10:00 Day Card), CLOSE (the engine's ride read, in court) and 15:55 (the closing read, in court from September 30). The 10- and 30-minute rungs are gone: no organ holds a court at those horizons. The three-clocks box is merged into the strip. A session ribbon names which organ speaks in each part of the day, per symbol. The live level order is drawn on the chart with its entry, target and stop. Grading is unchanged.
• Rendering rule (September 30, 2026) — the trend engine's cell names are internal and no longer appear on member surfaces; each rung shows direction, tier and one fixed sentence. SPY's 60-minute rung gains two afternoon cells from September 30 and its court count restarts that day. Bars: CLOSE October 9; 60M QQQ October 12, SPY October 13; the closing read from September 30. Nothing changes on the member surface before a bar clears in writing.
• Scalp line (September 30, 2026) — under the trend strip one line states the scalp: the live level order (entry, target, stop, 45 minutes) and whether the trend engine's 60-minute read agrees, reads against it, or is silent. The LEVEL rung is an order, shown as such, and is dark outside regular hours. The two close rungs are named INTO CLOSE (the engine's ride read, from 10:10) and LAST HOUR (the closing read, 14:15–15:45), because they are different reads with different courts.
• Chart: the engine's reads along the day (September 30, 2026) — the surfer chart shades every minute the trend engine held a 60-minute read (faint for LEAN, deeper for STRONG, red or green by direction), marks where each read began, and draws its ride read into the close as a strip along the top, so a member can map the day's signals against the tape. Playbook orders that run against a live 60-minute read are withheld and the card says so. Direction and tier only; the reads remain in court.
• After hours: the engine's own grades (from September 30, 2026) — outside the session the engine rungs show the last session's reads as the engine graded them itself at 16:05: the most recent 60-minute read and the day's tally of reads, the close pick, and the three closing reads at 14:30, 15:00 and 15:30. These are single-session grades from the engine's ledger, direction and right or wrong only. The session is the unit; a day's reads are correlated 5-minute reads, not trades, and no rate is claimed before the bars.
• The board (October 1, 2026) — the trend strip is replaced by a board: one row per decision in the order of the day (the graded day call, the hour read, the ride read into the close, the closing read, the ladder lean, the level order), each with its direction, since when, and a proof badge: GRADED is a live public record; REPLAY is the hour's hit rate on 56 replay sessions and is labeled as replay, not forward; IN COURT is a forward court with no claim yet; STATE is a condition, not a call; NOT GRADED has no court. The hour read is the bot's own verdict with its hour mask: LEAN reads count only in the graded hours (QQQ 12:00–13:59 and 15:00–15:45, SPY 14:00–15:45 ET), STRONG at any hour between 11:30 and 16:00. The 60-minute rung's forward count restarts October 1 at the graded hours; tenth session October 14. The ladder lean is a dry organ since October 1 and carries no claim. When reads disagree: the close read over the hour read over the raw pick; the day call filters, it does not trigger.
• The now box and the clock (October 1, 2026) — the top box of the Market Day card now carries the trade that is on: its start time, its hold rule, when it ends, how long it has run and how far the underlying has moved since entry. When nothing is on it says so and names the next window; after the bell it shows the last trade of the day. The playbook became the rest of the day in clock order, fixed events only; the conditional level orders stay under it; finished trades move to a Done today ledger that states why each ended. A reversal line appears when the engine reads STRONG against an open trade; the graded hold rule remains the instruction until the exit court reports. The horizontal trend strip returned on member request and repeated lines were removed.
• Hold per hour (October 1, 2026) — an hour-read trade card now takes its hold from the desk's replay table for the hour of the read (57 sessions, hit rate at 45, 60, 90 minutes and at the close): 60 minutes by default, a different hold only when the table beats 60 by at least three points, never 120. Tonight that means SPY reads at 14:00 hold to the close, reads at 15:00 on both symbols hold 45 minutes, QQQ reads at 12:00 hold 90. The card states the hold and the sell time; the replay number itself stays on the 60M light, labeled replay. The forward court grades what the card showed.
• The ranked signal (October 5, 2026) — the desk now publishes one ranked object per symbol: the structure side (which side of the zero-gamma line, with the bot's own fills record), the Day Card with its record, the close read, and the 60-minute read as a witness, plus a headline built by a stated rule. When no trade card is on, the top box leads with that headline and names its organ and record; it is a side, not a trade card, and no hold or stop is graded for it yet. Its forward record is logged from today. A Day Card trade card fires only when the machine side at 10:01 does not oppose it. The DAY light now quotes the public Day Card ledger, with pushes. The commentary reads the same object and no longer sees the legacy entry, target and stop fields.
• The card audit (October 6, 2026) — every card on the member pages was checked against its record. Cards whose organ has no court, or a failed one, went dark: the wave count, the dealer-hedging panel and chart strip, the multi-timeframe confluence, the hedge forecast and its event pill, the risk parameters, the AI preflight, the AI ticket explainer (it explained the legacy ticket, not the ranked signal), the free trade teaser (built from the same legacy ticket), the chart corner box and its entry, target and stop lines (same legacy ticket, plus a council percent), the /chart header pill (same), the 15-minute bias cell and the gradient confidence percent. The regime card keeps the detected regime and now names the structure side instead of the bot side; its playbook, which had no court, is gone. The free card shows the public Day Card ledger and the machine side instead of a day-bias confidence percent. The morning email no longer prints a model confidence percent. Nothing dark is deleted: each returns when its ten-session court passes.
• Products in trial — graded on the same discipline but held off member surfaces until their forward record clears pre-set gates.

Statistical standards

Win rates are always published with sample size. Exact binomial p-values against the 50% coin are computed in our periodic audits. Young records are called young. No subset of results is ever presented as the record.

Pre-registered retirement rules

For each headline product we wrote down, in advance, the conditions under which we retire it: the morning signal is demoted if, at 30 day-level calls, its p-value is at or above 0.05 and its win rate is below 55%. The Day Card faces the same test at 60 graded calls. If a product fails its test, the retirement is published in the same channels its wins were.

Voids and incidents

When events outside the market break a grading window — an outage, a data failure — the affected entries are voided and disclosed, never re-graded against a different window. On the record: the August 31, 2026 provider outage voided two overnight entries rather than grade a four-night hold as a one-night call.

Corrections

Grading code changes apply forward. Any retroactive recomputation is disclosed. The record page states its current scoring basis.

What is not claimed

No performance promises. Educational only; not financial advice. The construction of the signals is proprietary and is not disclosed — grading is fully transparent, methodology is not. That trade is deliberate, and it is the whole point: you do not have to trust how we decide, because you can verify how we score.

Verification

The public record is served from the same database that grades it. Receipts post automatically at 16:10 ET to public channels. Historical entries remain retrievable. The live record: helios.markets/track-record.