Methodology
No black boxes, no jargon walls, no vibes dressed up as conviction. This page is the whole method — how a stock becomes a pick, how the Gladiator Score is built, and the seven disciplines every pick must survive before it reaches you.
The route every stock takes
Every company we cover walks the same road, in the same order, with no shortcuts for management teams we like or stories we find exciting.
Research.
The same disciplined checklist, every time: is this a good business, is the price defensible, what is the market telling us, and who survives a bad year. The checklist is public because it does not need to be secret to be hard.
The argument.
Every pick is written up with its bull case and its bear case, weighted. A pick without a credible case against it is a pick that has not been tested — so we do not publish those.
The score.
The evidence lands as a Gladiator Score — our conviction, 0 to 100 — published before the outcome is known and never edited afterwards. If an analyst overrules the model, the override note is published with the pick.
The record.
Every call joins the public track record with its date, score and outcome. Wins and losses. No selective memory, no quiet deletions. That page is the reason to trust this one.
The seven pillars
Each pillar gets its own page: what we examine, why it matters, and — because any honest method must include this — what would change our mind.
Fundamentals quality
Is this actually a good business? Profit is an opinion; cash is a fact. We start where the truth lives.
Read the pillar →Valuation discipline
A good business is not automatically a good price. Every price is a forecast in disguise — we work out what today's price assumes, then decide whether we would sign our name to it.
Read the pillar →Momentum in context
We do not chase charts and we do not ignore them. Momentum is evidence about what other investors are learning — useful, but only in context.
Read the pillar →Balance-sheet risk
Returns get the headlines; survival is the precondition. Debt is famously patient, right up until the quarter it isn't.
Read the pillar →The bear case requirement
If we cannot write a credible argument against a pick, the pick does not publish. Research without an opposing case is advertising.
Read the pillar →Scoring and publication
How the evidence becomes one number, why that number is fixed the moment it publishes, and what happens when an analyst disagrees with the model.
Read the pillar →The record and accountability
Every call, forever, with its outcome. A record you cannot audit is marketing — ours is evidence.
Read the pillar →What moves the score — and what never does
The score moves on evidence: results quality, valuation, momentum, balance-sheet risk — tested against the bear case. It never moves on popularity, coverage fees (we accept none), or how a call would make our record look.
- Published before the outcome is known
- Never edited after publication
- Analyst overrides are disclosed
- Every outcome joins the public record
When new evidence changes our conviction, we publish a new note with a new score. The original stays exactly where it was. The score is not static across time — it is honest across time.
Gladiator Score
High conviction
our conviction rating, 0–100
Every pick on this site has survived both of them: the argument for, and the argument against, weighed in writing before anything publishes. You will meet them again on the pillar pages — one of them is always asking the harder question.
Judge the method by its record.
General information only — not personal financial advice. Research is provided to wholesale clients within the meaning of ss 708 and 761G of the Corporations Act.