How we judge a source of levels
A reward-to-risk ratio is only as honest as the entry, stop and target behind it. These five tests ask whether a source's levels can be trusted before you ever divide one distance by another.
The logic is blunt: tally how many of the five tests a source clears outright, and where two sources tie, let the strength of the half-met tests break the deadlock. Nothing here is swayed by commissions and no ranking can be bought. The entire aim is to favour levels you can verify over levels merely asserted — so a plain record open to inspection ranks above a dazzling one offered on trust alone. A ratio computed on numbers that can be edited after the fact is not a ratio; it is a story.
The five tests
1. The levels are actually stated
Entry, stop and target are published as numbers, not gestured at — without all three there is no ratio to compute and nothing to be held to.
2. The grade is measured, not vibed
An A-to-D conviction grade tied to where the setup sits in its engine's own return spread, rather than a mood word that means whatever the sender wants that day.
3. The levels were locked at release
The setup is hashed to a public ledger when it goes out, so neither the stop nor the target can be quietly nudged once the trade moves.
4. The full record is shown
An unbroken sequence that keeps the losing trades in plain sight, with the drawdown printed beside the return — not a trophy cabinet holding only the trades that happened to work.
5. Revenue comes from you, not the click
Income from the subscription, not from broker affiliate kickbacks that reward sign-ups over the quality of the levels.
The same tests, against the field
Applied the same way to each, the tests group sources by kind rather than by name. The matrix below runs the scorecard across the sorts of source a trader actually meets — the chat call-out, the auto-copy room, the social caller, the aggregator — alongside a graded, timestamped desk. The desk earns no louder praise; it is just the single entry where every box ends up ticked.
Read down a column rather than across a row. The test almost nothing clears is locked at release, which is why it carries so much weight: a source can post genuinely good levels and still fail it, because nothing it showed was fixed anywhere a stranger can re-check.
What a conviction grade has to mean
The second test asks for a grade that is calculated, not chosen. On the pick the grade is set per engine, against that engine's own measured returns, so it survives comparison across very different holding times:
| Engine | Horizon | What an A is worth here |
|---|---|---|
| Intraday | minutes inside one session | around 0.70% a trade |
| Multi-Session | a half day out to a couple of sessions | around 4.50% a trade |
| Swing | about a week to a month | around 6.00% a trade |
| Position | long-horizon, higher conviction | long-horizon scoring |
An A sits at the top of an engine's own measured return spread and D at the bottom of what still gets published. The bar moves with the clock, because a strong reward-to-risk read on a minutes-long trade and a strong one on a multi-week trade describe different absolute moves. There is no E grade — it was retired from the live product so the four rungs keep their meaning.
This is also why the four-engine book matters even to a single-clock trader: the fast engine's grade is calibrated against the fast engine's spread, not flattened against a slower engine's far larger moves. Measuring every engine against one blanket threshold would leave each fast setup looking feeble and each slow one looking mighty, which tells you nothing about reward against risk.
Why locking the levels is the decisive test
A target you can move is a ratio you can fake. If a source can shift a stop or extend a target after the trade turns, every reward-to-risk figure it ever showed is suspect. The rare combination that closes that door is an audited, continuous record and a per-setup cryptographic receipt. As of 2026 the only source in this guide clearing all five tests is the #1-ranked provider. How the receipt works, and how to check one yourself, is on the timestamping criterion and the how-to-read guide.