The universe rule
The models never choose what they are allowed to call. A perfect record on hand-picked names is worthless, so membership in the universe — the fixed list of instruments the models screen each week — is computed from public data by a rule anyone can run, committed to the public repository before it takes effect. This page states the rule in full.
01 The rule at a glance
The universe is 119 instruments: 100 common stocks admitted by the rule below, plus 19 exchange-traded funds fixed in the rules. The rules are V1, effective 11 August 2026 — the date of the initial adoption refresh. Membership is recomputed quarterly, on the first of January, April, July and October; between refreshes it does not change.
02 Common stocks
Eligible instruments are US-listed common stocks. Share classes such as BRK.B are ordinary common stock and are kept; preferred shares, warrants, units, and rights are not common stock and are excluded.
Eligible stocks are ranked by median daily dollar volume — the median of close × volume per session — over the trailing 90 calendar days, requiring at least 45 sessions of data in that window. The last close must be above $5, and market capitalisation must be above $10B. The top 100 by that ranking are the universe's stocks, ranked 1–100.
03 The fixed ETF list
Nineteen ETFs, frozen in the rules:
- Index — SPY, QQQ, IWM, DIA
- Sector (SPDR) — XLK, XLF, XLE, XLV, XLI, XLY, XLP, XLU, XLB, XLRE, XLC
- Macro — GLD, TLT
- International, traded in US hours — EEM, FXI
Their dollar-volume statistics are recomputed at every refresh, but membership never changes under V1: changing this list is a versioned rules change, not a quarterly refresh.
04 Excluded from V1
Stated as discipline, not oversight:
- Leveraged and inverse ETFs — a TQQQ call is a QQQ call with borrowed conviction.
- Crypto and crypto ETFs — round-the-clock sessions break Friday-close scoring.
- Non-US listings and FX — wrong sessions, wrong benchmark.
05 The computable pipeline
Membership is decided by four steps anyone can run from public data:
- Candidate pool. Every symbol in NASDAQ Trader's public directories of US listings, filtered to common stock — no test issues, no ETFs, no preferreds, warrants, units, or rights.
- Dollar volume. For each candidate, the median daily dollar volume over the trailing 90 calendar days, requiring at least 45 sessions of data in the window; the last close must be above $5.
- Market-cap check. The top 140 by median dollar volume advance to a market-capitalisation check requiring above $10B.
- Final universe. The top 100 survivors by median dollar volume, ranked 1–100.
06 Refresh cadence and change notice
The universe is recomputed on the first of January, April, July and October. Every refresh is exactly one commit to the public repository, recording the date and the added and removed tickers — the file's git history is the complete history of universe changes.
Per §11 of PROTOCOL.md, a universe change takes effect no earlier than one full cycle after the commit that introduces it, and every weekly manifest pins the universe file's hash — so a silent swap between weeks is detectable by any verifier.
07 One benchmark
SPY, for everything. The user-level question is always "did following this beat holding the index."
08 Check it yourself
The universe in force, its refresh history, and the change-notice guarantees are all public:
- Repository — github.com/YermekIbrayev/tensorswing-record
- universe.json — the universe in force; its git history is the full refresh log. Read it.
- PROTOCOL.md §11 — the normative change-notice rule; where any implementation disagrees with it, it governs. Read it.
How the record itself is sealed, labeled, and spot-checked is the subject of the methodology page.