Lesson 2 of 8
The figures the software tests
The leverage and coverage figures the nightly job reads, the five answers it gives when it cannot read one, and why a refusal is never a breach.
By Javier Sanz
Founder of ValueScreener. Built Ninety Nine, a securities services provider, and sold it to a tier-one global bank; ran operations and internationalization at Alpaca, the brokerage API.
Who writes thisEditorial processLinkedIn (opens in a new tab)X (opens in a new tab)
In one minute
- The credit figures a rail can be written on include debt to equity, net debt to earnings, operating cash flow to debt, current ratio, quick ratio and interest coverage.
- When a figure cannot be read the rail is not breached. It is left untested, and the reader is told once, without an email.
- A rail on a retired figure is never tested against a number at all, and the surface says so.
Before writing a condition it is worth knowing exactly what the thing evaluating it can read, and what it does when it cannot.
What a rail is tested against, and the answers when it is not
Tested against a number
- Debt to equity, debt to assets, net debt to earnings.
- Operating cash flow to debt, interest coverage.
- Current ratio, quick ratio, cash ratio.
- The margins, the returns, the growth rates, the composite scores.
Not tested, and why
Never a breach
- No value tonight: the rail is skipped and its state is left alone.
- Not meaningful for this filer: unevaluated, and the reader told once.
- The figure was retired: never tested, and the surface says so.
- No value estimate of yours, for a margin rail.
- No price held tonight, for a margin rail.
Only the left column produces a breach. Everything on the right leaves the rail untouched.
The rule behind the right-hand column
A data gap must never fire a false alarm. On a service whose one promise is silence until a reason breaks, a breach email about nothing is the most expensive thing that can happen.
So when a figure has no value for a company on a given night, the rail is skipped entirely and its state is left exactly as it was. Nothing is sent and nothing is recorded as a breach.
Not meaningful is different from missing
Some figures are not meaningful for some filers, and this is checked before any rail is evaluated. A gross margin on a bank, a return on invested capital at a lender, a Piotroski score at an insurer: each is a number that can be computed and should not be, and the research surface refuses to print them.
Until 2026-09-04 the nightly job did not apply that check, and a rail written on one of those figures could send a breach email about a number the product refuses to show one tap away. It now takes the same path as a refusal: the rail is unevaluated, not breached, its state untouched, and the reader is told once, in the inbox, without an email, that they have written a rule which cannot fire at this company.
A retired figure never resolves
Three figures were withdrawn on 2026-09-11: a vendor-supplied discounted cash flow value, the margin measured against it, and a forward price to earnings built on analyst consensus.
A rail written on any of them reads figure retired. It is not tested against a number, it is counted as a refusal rather than as a gap in the night's status, and no email is ever sent for it. That is deliberate: the figure was withdrawn on purpose, so nothing went wrong.
What this means for how you write
Prefer a figure the job can read. Where the figure you actually want cannot be read, write the rail anyway and accept that it will have to be checked by hand, which the fifth lesson of this course does with a maturity date.
What you should not do is substitute a figure that can be read for the one that answers the question. That produces a rail which fires reliably about something you were not asking.
Check yourself
What happens when a figure has no value for a company on a given night?
- The rail is treated as breached until data returns
- The rail is skipped and its state is left exactly as it was, with nothing sent
- The previous value is carried forward
Show the answer
Answer: B.
A data gap must never fire a false alarm. On a service whose promise is silence until a reason breaks, a breach about nothing is the most expensive failure.A reader writes a rail on gross margin at a bank. What happens?
- It is evaluated against the computed figure
- It is unevaluated, and the reader is told once, in the inbox and without an email, that the rule cannot fire there
- It is deleted
Show the answer
Answer: B.
The figure is not meaningful for that filer and the research surface refuses to print it. The rail takes the same path as the refusal.Why does a rail on a retired figure send nothing at all?
- Because the data is temporarily unavailable
- Because the figure was withdrawn on purpose, so it is counted as a refusal rather than as a gap in the night's status
- Because retired figures are recomputed weekly
Show the answer
Answer: B.
Three figures were withdrawn on 2026-09-11. A rail on any of them reads figure retired and is never tested against a number.Sources
- The product's own methodology page, for the computation and the refusal rules behind each figure named above.
- CLAUDE.md and the product's figure register, for the three figures retired on 2026-09-11 and the reason each was withdrawn.
What this leaves out
- This is a heterodox tradition. The mainstream account of the same phenomenon differs, and nothing here is a forecast or a view on any security.
- The list of testable figures is the list at the time of writing. Figures are added and withdrawn, and a rail written today may meet a different answer later, which is what the retired state exists to communicate.
- The three-row table is illustrative of the three states rather than a report about any company's rails.
- Nothing here is advice about any security.