The Live Flow score, step by step

Every stock on Live Flow carries a score from 0 to 99. It answers one question: compared with the other stocks moving the same way today, how convincing is this move? Knowing exactly how it is built tells you when to lean on it and when to ignore it.

Step 1: split the market in two

Stocks at or above yesterday's close go to the bullish side, the rest to the bearish side (lesson 2). Each side is scored separately. A bullish 80 and a bearish 80 are both "strong", in opposite directions.

Step 2: measure six things

#	Measure	How it is worked out	Bullish side rewards	Bearish side rewards
1	Size of the move	% change from yesterday's close	Bigger gain	Bigger fall
2	Range position	Where price sits between today's low (0) and high (1)	Near the high	Near the low
3	Distance from VWAP	% between price and today's VWAP	Far above	Far below
4	Time vs VWAP	Share of today's 5-minute bars that closed above the VWAP at that time	Mostly above	Mostly below
5	Buy/sell estimate	Estimated buy share of today's volume	More buying	More selling
6	Late drift	% change over roughly the last 30 minutes (six 5-minute bars)	Still rising	Still falling

VWAP gets lesson 5 and the buy/sell estimate lesson 6.

Step 3: rank, average, scale

For each measure, every stock gets a percentile rank within its side: 0 for the weakest, 1 for the strongest, ties sharing a rank. The score is the average of the six ranks, multiplied by 99 and rounded.

Step 4: rank, P and dots

After scoring, each side is sorted by score (bigger % move first when scores tie). That gives:

• #rank/of: the stock's place on its side, e.g. #4/131.
• P: its percentile on its side; P90 means it is ahead of about 90% of that side.
• Conviction dots: the score divided by 20 and rounded, kept between 1 and 5. So 0–29 shows 1 dot, 30–50 shows 2, 51–69 shows 3, 70–90 shows 4 and 91–99 shows 5 (exact halves round to the even number, which is why 50 shows two dots and 90 shows four).

What the score is, and what it is not

It is relative. Because it is built from ranks, it always compares a stock with today's crowd on its own side. On a day when nearly everything rallies, a stock up 3% can score 40 simply because many others look better. On a quiet day, a smaller move can score highly.

It describes the day so far. Every input is about what has already happened since 09:15. Nothing in it predicts the next move.

It can be high exactly when a stock is stretched. Distance from VWAP and size of the move both raise the score, and they are also what makes a pullback more likely. That is why the score should always be read together with the zone, the stop level and the reward-to-risk in the stock's chart, opened by clicking its card (lessons 7, 9 and 10).

Early scores are thin. In the first half hour there are only a few 5-minute bars, so time-vs-VWAP and late drift are based on very little. Many traders give early scores less weight.