A Scanner That Keeps Its Losers on the Page

Christian Piyatilaka, building from Melbourne, runs Tapeline — a scanner that scores liquid US stocks and ETFs on six published factors with fixed weights: trend, relative strength, fundamentals, "smart money", macro and momentum. What makes it worth a look isn't the score so much as the openness around it. The weights are published rather than hidden, and the daily top-ten picks are logged with their original reasoning, then marked to the next session's actual return and to alpha versus the S&P — with the losers left visible and unedited.

In a corner of finance where track records are usually curated after the fact, a public scorecard that keeps its misses on the page is a small act of discipline. His walkthroughs — a ten-minute read of the score on a single name, or what "smart money" actually means inside the model — double as plain-English explainers of how a multi-factor read is built.

The core idea Most "systems" show you the wins and quietly drop the rest. Tapeline does the opposite: fixed, published factor weights and a running scorecard that leaves the losing picks where anyone can see them. The interesting part isn't the score, it's the willingness to be marked to reality every session.

Where it fits

It sits close to our own interest in relative strength and market structure — the same instinct to make a method legible rather than ask for trust. We point to it as a transparent piece of process, not a tool we're recommending you act on. Worth your time if you like seeing the engine, not just the output.