Help & FAQ

Publicly disclosed paid stock promotions (the Section 17(b) disclosures that say who paid whom, for which ticker, and over which window), cross-checked against market price data to measure what happened to the stock next. The full pipeline is on the methodology page.

One promo is disseminated across many newsletters; those rows collapse to ticker+window before any stat is computed.

One promotion is usually emailed by several newsletters at once, so a single campaign shows up as many newsletter rows. We collapse those to one deal (same ticker, same promotion window) before computing any statistic. So our counts and win rates reflect unique deals, not how many mailing lists carried the same campaign, which is why our numbers are lower than raw newsletter mentions. More detail: the dedupe model.

EDGE is our opinion on a 0 to 100 scale, computed from the outcomes of that operator’s disclosed, deduped deals. It blends three things: how far the operator’s median pick runs, whether that run holds or bleeds back after the peak, and a discount for thin samples. A strong score requires results and evidence, and a perfect run on a couple of campaigns cannot outrank a long track record. Hit rate is shown separately, always with its denominator (“of N campaigns”). Scores recompute as deals resolve. We publish the inputs and their direction (not the exact weights) on the methodology page.

An operator needs a minimum number of deduped, rated campaigns before we rank it. Below that floor the operator moves to the collapsed “Unrated / low sample” pool and its stats show “Insufficient data” instead of a percentage. A hit rate computed from one or two campaigns would be noise, so we say so plainly rather than imply false confidence. As more of the operator’s campaigns resolve, the sample crosses the floor and the operator takes a ranked spot with a real EDGE score. See the methodology.

New disclosures are ingested as they are published, and each source shows its own “last checked” time. Price-based figures (peaks, PnL, operator aggregates) are recomputed on a rolling schedule (intraday for active promotions, nightly for aggregates), so they can lag live prices by a short interval. The exact cadence is on the methodology.

Three reasons, all documented: we count unique deals, not newsletter mentions; we only cover disclosed promotions from our tracked sources, so our totals are a floor rather than a census; and price figures come from periodic snapshots that can lag the live market. If you think a specific figure is actually wrong, that is a correction. See below.

No. A paid promotion that discloses its compensation under Section 17(b) is operating within the law, and that disclosure is exactly our data source. paidpromotracker reports what a promotion disclosed and what the price did afterward; it does not allege that any disclosed promotion is illegal. The regulators do, however, treat disclosed compensation as a reason for caution. See the legality explainer on how it works.

If you are an operator, funder, or issuer and believe a data point is wrong, our corrections policy explains what qualifies as a correctable error and how we review it. You can also email [email protected] with the promotion or ticker and what looks wrong.

No. Everything on this site is informational and impersonal. See the disclaimer.