Research Dictionary and Score Guide

Return above a relevant benchmark, or an active exposure chosen through research.

Shows whether active research created value beyond market beta.

Compare the excess return with the extra risk taken to earn it.

Broad market or sector exposure obtained through diversified assets or ETFs.

Provides baseline participation while reducing dependence on single-stock calls.

Check tracking error, fees, concentration and drawdown.

A mature growth asset with proven durability, quality, cash flow and competitive advantage.

Can serve as a long-term compounding core in a portfolio.

Focus on durable compounding rather than a one-off growth burst.

An asset with sound fundamentals, verifiable cash flow and a reasonable margin of safety.

Adds valuation discipline, cash returns or quality-recovery potential.

Assess business quality, capital returns, catalysts and margin of safety together.

A growth asset driven by a durable industry or technological trend.

The industry tailwind may be strong even when company maturity is lower than Core Growth.

Test whether the trend converts into durable profit and free cash flow.

A company showing early signs of quality without a long operating record.

Successful validation can re-rate both earnings quality and valuation.

Track earnings quality, cash flow, execution and credit risk.

A sound business rebuilding quality after cyclical or operating pressure.

Often appears as margins, orders or cash flow begin to recover from a trough.

Separate a durable recovery from a temporary rebound.

The valuation cushion between market price and a reasonable estimate of value.

Reduces the damage from analytical error and valuation volatility.

A good company can still be a poor purchase when the cushion is too thin.

The decline from an asset's prior peak to a subsequent trough.

Shows the lived investment and liquidity stress more directly than volatility alone.

Review maximum drawdown, recovery time and downside capture.

The decision about how much of a portfolio to allocate to one asset.

Even a sound thesis can damage a portfolio when the position is oversized.

Combine upside, confidence, correlation, liquidity and worst-case loss.

The after-tax operating profit a company generates from invested capital.

Shows whether incremental growth creates or destroys value.

Sustained returns above the cost of capital matter more than a one-year peak.

Cash from operations remaining after capital expenditures.

More closely reflects cash available for debt repayment, buybacks and reinvestment than accounting profit.

Track growth, stability, conversion and free-cash-flow margin.

An asset's sensitivity to movements in the broader market.

Helps estimate how portfolio risk may amplify when market sentiment changes.

A high beta means greater sensitivity, not automatically a higher long-term return.

An index of the U.S. dollar against a basket of major currencies.

Influences global financial conditions, commodities and non-U.S. asset valuations.

Watch direction, speed and the relationship with rate differentials.

A nominal bond yield adjusted for expected inflation.

Higher real yields often pressure long-duration, high-valuation assets.

The U.S. 10-year real yield is a common reference point.

Extra compensation investors demand for holding long-duration bonds.

Can lift long-end yields and tighten conditions even without a policy-rate increase.

Separate growth, inflation and term-premium contributions.

The pattern of bond yields across different maturities.

Encodes expectations for growth, inflation, policy and duration risk.

Read steepening, flattening or inversion together with its underlying driver.

The combined effect of rates, credit spreads, equities, currencies and financing access.

Determines the real cost and availability of money for firms and households.

Do not infer conditions from the policy rate alone.

The conversion of foreign-currency receipts into local currency.

Directly changes foreign-currency supply and demand for the local currency.

Export receipts do not automatically become immediate conversions; watch conversion behavior.

Borrowing in a low-rate currency to invest in higher-yielding assets.

Rapid unwinds can tighten global liquidity and amplify volatility.

Monitor the funding currency, volatility and leverage together.

The amount of financing that is available to be borrowed or deployed.

Determines whether money is accessible to markets and the real economy.

Read it together with liquidity velocity.

The speed at which available money moves into spending, investment and risk assets.

Abundant cash has limited effect when it does not circulate.

Track credit growth, transaction activity and risk appetite.

Money moving into or out of a country or currency system.

Affects exchange rates, market liquidity and asset prices.

Separate trade, portfolio and direct-investment flows.

A highly parallel processor that underpins much of AI training and inference.

It is one of the most direct physical carriers of AI-compute demand.

Assess performance, energy efficiency, supply, cost and software ecosystem.

A chip designed for a specific workload rather than general-purpose computing.

Can be more efficient and cheaper than a general GPU for stable workloads.

Review customer scale, design cycles, yields and software compatibility.

Stacked memory that feeds GPUs and AI accelerators at very high bandwidth.

Memory bandwidth is an increasingly important limit on AI-system performance.

Track product generations, yields, customer qualification and supply-demand.

A TSMC advanced-packaging platform that integrates compute dies and HBM.

It is critical to scaling advanced AI chips and can become a capacity bottleneck.

Track expansion, yields, lead times and customer queues.

A manufacturer that fabricates chips designed by other companies.

Determines whether advanced designs can be produced reliably at scale.

Assess process nodes, yields, capacity and packaging capabilities.

A lithography technology essential to manufacturing leading-edge semiconductors.

Shapes the capability and economics of advanced process nodes.

Track tool supply, production ramps and process maturity.

Data rates for high-speed data-center network links.

Larger AI clusters require more bandwidth to keep compute resources utilized.

Track upgrade timing, power consumption and customer qualification.

An architecture that places optical engines close to the switching silicon.

Can reduce power use and increase bandwidth density.

Assess production timing, reliability, serviceability and architecture adoption.

A pluggable optical design that removes or reduces conventional DSP processing.

Offers a lower-power path for high-speed networking.

Review compatibility, reach, reliability and deployment maturity.

A switch that reconfigures direct optical paths between endpoints.

Can improve efficiency and reconfigurability in large AI clusters.

Track architecture adoption, switching performance and deployment scale.

The time required for a project to secure usable electrical power.

A data center cannot host compute or generate revenue before it is powered.

Treat it as both an engineering metric and a financial metric.

Units of power and data-center capacity; one gigawatt equals 1,000 megawatts.

Planned capacity is not the same as deliverable or revenue-producing capacity.

Separate planned, executable, energized and revenue-generating capacity.

Revenue generated per megawatt of operating capacity.

Connects physical capacity to commercial value.

Read it with utilization, pricing, tenant mix and contract quality.

Free cash flow generated per megawatt of capacity.

More closely reflects asset value than headline gigawatts announced.

Use stabilized operating data rather than temporary construction-period readings.

Contracted orders or commitments that have not yet become recognized revenue.

Improves revenue visibility but does not guarantee conversion.

Assess quality, cancellation rights, funding conditions and conversion speed.

The annualized value of recurring subscription revenue at the current run rate.

Measures the stability and predictability of software revenue.

Read it with growth, retention, contract duration and cash flow.

Contracted revenue that has not yet been recognized.

Provides visibility into future revenue, although recognition may span several years.

Track growth, current portion, contract duration and conversion speed.

Revenue retained from existing customers after expansion, contraction and churn.

Measures customer durability and the ability to grow within existing accounts.

Above 100% usually means the existing customer base is expanding overall.

Software delivered continuously through the cloud, typically by subscription.

Often carries recurring revenue and high gross margins, but sales efficiency and retention still matter.

Assess ARR, NRR, CAC, margins and free cash flow together.

A pricing model in which customers pay for actual usage rather than fixed seats.

Common in cloud and AI services, with strong upside but more short-term volatility.

Test whether usage converts into revenue, margin and cash flow.

A heuristic that adds a software company's growth rate and profit margin.

Balances growth speed with profitability discipline.

High growth with very deep losses does not automatically indicate quality.

The sales and marketing cost required to acquire a new customer.

Shapes growth quality, capital efficiency and payback time.

Read it with LTV, gross margin and CAC payback.

The economic value expected from a customer over the full relationship.

Shows whether acquisition spending is worthwhile.

Review LTV/CAC, payback and the assumptions behind the estimate.

AI systems that can plan, use tools and execute multi-step tasks.

May move AI from answering questions to completing work.

Track real task success, cost, controllability and auditability.

The total value of assets deposited in a DeFi or on-chain protocol.

Indicates capital scale and some degree of protocol use.

High TVL does not automatically mean high revenue or strong token value capture.

Locking tokens to support network security or consensus in return for potential rewards.

Affects network security, yield and circulating supply.

Assess real yield, lockups, slashing risk and inflation dilution.

An on-chain token designed to maintain a stable value against a reference asset, often a fiat currency.

Provides core infrastructure for on-chain payments, trading and settlement.

Examine reserves, redemption, distribution, regulation and real usage.

Traditional assets such as bonds, loans or funds represented on-chain.

Connects conventional financial rights with programmable settlement.

Assess legal claims, custody, redemption, settlement and underlying cash flow.

The implied valuation if the entire token supply were circulating.

Highlights valuation pressure from future unlocks and dilution.

Compare it with circulating market cap, unlock schedules and demand.

The number of tokens currently available for market trading.

Directly shapes price formation and supply-demand balance.

Track issuance, burns, staking and unlocks.

The rate at which a protocol creates and distributes new tokens.

High emissions dilute holders but can also subsidize network growth.

Compare emissions with fees, burns and organic demand.

The release of previously restricted tokens into potential circulation.

Can increase tradable supply and potential selling pressure.

Review size, holder mix, cost basis, timing and market depth.

The extent to which network activity creates demand or economic benefit for the token.

A successful network does not automatically produce a successful token.

Assess fees, burns, staking, collateral use, security demand and supply.

A transaction model where users specify an outcome and solvers find an execution path.

Reduces the operational burden of cross-chain and complex transactions.

Track real volume, execution quality, fees, reliability and concentration risk.

Trading, lending, settlement and asset issuance conducted on blockchain rails.

Can increase programmability, transparency and automation.

Assess regulation, liquidity, security and real-economy use.

Sequential clinical stages that expand patient numbers and evidence before approval.

Later stages are usually costlier and stronger evidence, but still carry failure risk.

Do not extrapolate early data directly into commercial approval.

Time from randomization or treatment start until death from any cause.

One of the most important hard endpoints in oncology.

Review statistical significance, absolute benefit and clinical meaning.

Time during which a patient remains alive without disease progression.

Can reveal drug activity earlier than overall survival.

An improvement in PFS does not guarantee an improvement in OS.

The share of patients whose tumors shrink by a predefined amount.

Shows drug activity but does not fully capture long-term benefit.

Read it with response duration, PFS, OS and safety.

Licensing, partnering or co-development used to commercialize a drug pipeline.

Helps expand market access and share development risk.

Review upfront cash, milestones, royalties, rights and partner quality.

A one-time payment made when a licensing or partnership agreement is signed.

Validates part of a deal's value but is generally non-recurring.

Do not treat an upfront payment as recurring revenue.

A payment triggered by a specified development, regulatory or sales achievement.

Links partnership value to future execution.

Assess conditions, probability, timing and accounting treatment.

A company's portfolio of drug candidates, indications and development platforms.

Determines long-term optionality and funding needs.

Review stage, differentiation, clinical risk and cash runway.

A regulatory submission seeking permission to begin human clinical trials.

Marks the transition from preclinical work to human testing.

Permission to start a trial does not establish efficacy or approval.

A regulatory application seeking approval to market a new drug.

A critical milestone before commercialization.

Assess the decision, label, post-approval conditions and competition.

An outsourced provider spanning pharmaceutical research, development and manufacturing.

Acts as biotech infrastructure without taking the full binary risk of one drug.

Track orders, customer concentration, utilization and margins.

A contract setting the price, duration and delivery terms for electricity.

Can secure power supply and cost while shaping cash-flow quality.

Review duration, pricing, counterparty credit, guarantees and delivery terms.

The process of qualifying for and connecting a project to the power grid.

Land or equipment alone does not guarantee access to sufficient power.

Track queue position, permits, engineering progress, cost and funding.

Local generation or storage located on the customer's side of the utility meter.

Can reduce dependence on the grid and shorten time-to-power.

Check for new constraints in fuel, emissions, equipment, permits and reliability.

Land with credible access to power for data-center development.

Scarcer than ordinary land in grid-constrained markets.

Powered does not automatically mean permitted, contracted or revenue-generating.

Capacity with permits, power, contracts and a credible path to operation.

Is closer to a revenue-producing asset than headline planned gigawatts.

Verify each prerequisite and the expected in-service date.

Capacity that has received power and can move into operation.

Marks a critical transition from construction to potential revenue.

Still verify utilization, tenants, rent commencement and operating stability.

The combined quality of contract duration, counterparty credit, guarantees, commencement and cancellation terms.

Determines how reliable future cash flows may be.

Do not judge a contract by headline value alone.

The extra yield a corporate borrower pays above a risk-free benchmark.

Represents the market's required compensation for credit risk.

Rapid widening usually signals rising financing stress or risk aversion.

Operating profit or EBITDA divided by interest expense.

Measures a borrower's ability to service debt costs.

Lower coverage means greater sensitivity to rates, earnings pressure and refinancing.

A concentration of debt maturities within a relatively short period.

Can force costly refinancing, asset sales or credit events.

Review maturity timing, rate resets and capital-market access.

Direct lending provided outside public bond markets, often by non-bank investors.

Expands funding access but generally offers less transparency and liquidity.

Assess covenants, collateral, leverage, valuation and liquidity.

A decline in the valuation multiple investors are willing to pay, even without lower earnings.

Can be triggered by rates, risk appetite or lower growth expectations.

Separate valuation normalization from genuine fundamental damage.

The rapid unwinding of crowded market positions.

Can cause sharp price moves even when fundamentals have not changed.

Use flows, volume, volatility and positioning data together.

A recurring update to the evidence, view and next checkpoints for a research series.

Supports continuous tracking without letting every headline reset the framework.

Start with what changed and whether it strengthened, weakened or maintained the prior view.

Ongoing monitoring of a repeatable set of indicators for direction and inflection points.

Places one-off events within a longer evidence series.

Track direction, speed, breadth and reversal conditions.

A focused update issued when new evidence materially strengthens, weakens or overturns an existing thesis.

Preserves how a thesis evolves without creating another weekly issue.

Focus on the prior thesis, new evidence and updated view.

A standalone update triggered by a major contract, policy, financing, engineering milestone or industry inflection.

The event is more likely than ordinary news to change an industry or asset view.

Check the trigger evidence, transmission path and next validation point.

A rapid, structured review of a sudden event that may materially change the risk boundary.

Prioritizes what happened, what is confirmed and what remains unknown.

Separate facts, inference, scenarios and action boundaries.

A recurring comparison of Core Growth, Core Value and active research opportunities under one framework.

Clarifies current research priorities and potential portfolio roles.

It is research prioritization, not a personalized trading instruction.

A series using real companies and industry events to explain emerging technologies, business models and long-term change.

Connects early signals with verifiable commercial evidence.

Separate capability, engineering delivery, adoption, revenue and cash flow.