Most market noise lives in the short term. A stock can move 4% in a week on a headline that's forgotten a month later. Zoom out to a quarter and the picture changes: earnings come in, trends play out and valuations start to matter.
That's why Nordlight now has a third horizon. Next to Week and Month, you'll find a Quarter button on Top Stocks, Stocks at Risk, Market Discovery and every ticker page, for both US and European stocks.
What "a quarter" means here
A quarter is 63 trading days, roughly three calendar months and about one full earnings cycle. It's the horizon of the position trader: long enough for a thesis to play out, short enough to stay active.
How the quarterly models work
We forecast a range, not a price target. No model knows where a stock will be in three months, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. Our models estimate the full spread of likely outcomes. On every card you'll see the expected outcome, the range it usually falls in ("usually between a and b"), and a probability: the chance of a gain on Top Stocks, or the chance of a loss of 5% or more on Stocks at Risk.
Every stock is measured against its own volatility. A 10% move means something different for a sleepy utility than for a biotech. The quarterly models learn in units of each stock's own volatility, so a calm stock and a wild one are compared fairly, and the range you see fits the stock you're looking at.
Two parts: the stock and the market. The stock-specific part comes from how the company has traded relative to the rest of the market. The market part is deliberately modest: we use the long-run average return, because forecasting the whole market three months out is something we choose not to pretend we can do. In Europe, the quarterly model also reads valuation data from companies' published annual reports.
Cards pick on the median. For the quarterly cards we rank on the middle of the forecast range, not the average. On a three-month horizon, a few extreme outcomes can inflate an average, and the median keeps the cards focused on the typical result.
Only tradeable names make the cards. The same rules as on every horizon: US stocks above $5, European stocks above €1, no stocks with extreme one-day price jumps, enough daily trading volume, and never the same stock on Top and Risk at once.
How strategic traders can use three horizons
- Look for agreement. A name that looks strong on Week, Month and Quarter tells a different story than one that's strong this week but weak over the quarter.
- Use disagreement as a question. Strong on the quarter but weak this week? That might be noise, or it might be worth a closer look. The horizons won't decide for you, but they show you where to dig.
- Match the horizon to your holding period. If you plan to hold for months, the quarterly view is the most relevant one for you.
Every number on Nordlight is a model estimate, not advice or a guarantee. How each card has actually performed is published, card by card, on the Model validation page inside the portal, including the cards where we haven't measured an edge.
Switch to Quarter and see how your watchlist looks three months out.