MarginX: Frequently Asked Questions

Getting Started

What is MarginX?

MarginX is a software research tool and data publisher for self-directed investors. It gives you company fundamentals, a screener, backtesting, and AI-assisted summaries of public filings, so you can run your own research faster. MarginX is not a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, or signal service, and nothing on the platform is investment advice.

Does MarginX tell me what to buy?

No, and it is worth being blunt about it. MarginX does not issue buy or sell recommendations, price targets, or trade signals, and no score on the platform should be read as one. A high DCA Score says a company has looked like a durable business by our rules; it does not say you should own it. We are a software research tool and data publisher, not a registered investment adviser or broker-dealer. The work of deciding is yours.

Can I use MarginX on my phone?

Yes. MarginX works in your phone's browser, with layouts built for a small screen rather than a shrunken desktop page: the screener, company pages, watchlists, alerts and AI chat are all there. It is the same account either way, so you can start research on your laptop and pick it up on your phone. There is no app to install today. A native app is on the way, and your account will carry straight over to it.

How do I get started?

Click 'Sign In' in the navigation bar and create an account with your email or with Google. The Pro plan opens with a 7-day free trial that unlocks the whole platform: the screener, backtests, premium data, and AI research. You add a payment method when you start it, but nothing is charged until the trial ends — cancel before then and you pay nothing. There is no free tier.

Scores

How does the scoring system work?

Scoring happens at two levels, both on a 0 to 100 scale. At the metric level, every one of our 36 fundamental metrics is ranked against every other company in the same quarter, so a score of 80 means the company beat 80% of the universe on that metric. Each metric is scored three ways: its Current value, its Average over the last 20 quarters, and its Trend. At the company level, two headline scores summarise the picture: the DCA Score and the Valuation Score.

What is the DCA Score for?

The DCA Score answers one question: is this a good business? It measures durable competitive advantage, the kind of quality that shows up as steady margins, a sound balance sheet, and real cash generation year after year rather than in one lucky quarter. It checks 21 fundamental rules across three pillars, Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow, and tests each rule twice: on the latest quarter and on the 20-quarter average. A rule scores a full point when both pass, half a point when one passes, nothing when neither does. Rules that do not apply to a company are skipped rather than counted against it. Open any company's DCA Score card and click 'View methodology' for the full rule list.

What is the Valuation Score for?

The Valuation Score answers a different question: is this a good price? A great business bought at the wrong price is still a bad investment, and the DCA Score deliberately says nothing about price. It reads five trading multiples, P/E, P/B, P/EBIT, P/R and PEG, each measured two ways: where it sits today against every other company, and where it sits against the company's own 20-quarter average. Those ten readings are averaged, then adjusted by the company's DCA Score, so a strong business is not marked down for trading at a premium and a weak one gets no credit for being cheap. It is relative value, not a discounted-cash-flow model. MarginX does not publish a fair-value or intrinsic-value estimate. The full breakdown is on every company's Valuation Score card.

Company Research

How many companies does MarginX cover?

MarginX covers more than 49,000 publicly traded companies across 70 countries, including the United States, Europe, Japan, Korea and Greater China, spanning every major sector and industry. How much we can show for a given company depends on how complete its filings are, and coverage keeps expanding as more data lands.

What is not covered?

MarginX covers listed operating companies. It does not cover ETFs, mutual funds, indices, bonds, options, crypto, or private companies. If you search for one you will not find it. Coverage is built around company fundamentals, and those instruments do not have any.

Why does a company have no score?

Scoring needs enough reported history to be meaningful, and not every listed company files enough of it. Where a company's filings are too sparse we show the data we do have and hold back the scores rather than publish a number we do not trust. Smaller and newly listed companies are the usual cases. Coverage improves as more of their history lands.

What data sources does MarginX use?

Company fundamentals, prices and industry classifications are licensed from S&P Global Market Intelligence (Capital IQ). Filings and earnings call transcripts come from the same feed, interest-rate data from the U.S. Treasury, and the scores and rankings are our own calculations on top of that data.

How often is company data updated?

Prices update daily. Fundamentals arrive within days of a new filing, and scores and rankings recalculate automatically every night as the underlying data changes.

Using the platform

What is the screener?

The screener is the whole universe in one table, and it is where most research starts. You filter on any of the 52 metrics or on the scores, add whatever columns you want to see, sort by any of them, and narrow by country, sector or exchange. Anything you build can be saved as a screen, alerted on, or run through the backtest. A saved screen stays live: reopen it and it reruns against current data, so its companies change as the data does. A watchlist is different, a fixed list of companies you picked by hand. Screens answer 'which companies look like this', watchlists answer 'how are my companies doing'. Clicking a company takes you to its page.

What is on a company page?

Everything we hold on one company. At the top, its DCA and Valuation scores with the reasoning behind each. Below that: the stock's return against the S&P 500, its Quarterly Record, its Trading Multiples, its sensitivity to the wider economy, its CAPM figures, and its recent filings, insider trades and calls. Each of those is explained below.

What is the Quarterly Record?

The Quarterly Record is the company's fundamentals over time, laid out by financial statement: Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow, plus a My Scores tab. Every metric appears three ways, and you choose which one the table shows: Current, the latest reported figure; Average, the mean over the last 20 quarters; and Trend, the direction it has been moving. Click a metric to open its full history, compare it against the median for its industry, and add it to a screen or an alert.

What is Macro Sensitivity?

Macro Sensitivity shows which parts of the wider economy this company's numbers have historically moved with, in plain sentences such as 'when the 10-year Treasury yield rises, this company's margins tend to fall'. It is measured by regressing each metric against public economic series, and a relationship is only shown when there are enough quarters behind it to be worth reading. It describes what has happened before, not what will happen next.

What are the CAPM figures?

CAPM is the standard textbook way of asking what return a stock's risk deserves. Beta measures how much the stock moves relative to the market, where 1.0 means it moves with it and above 1.0 means it swings harder. The risk-free rate is the current 10-year U.S. Treasury yield. The SML expected return combines the two into the minimum return the model says an investor should demand for taking on that stock's market risk. It is a reference point, not our estimate of what the stock will do.

What is the backtest?

The backtest takes the screen you have built and asks what would have happened if you had actually run it. It rebuilds your screen quarter by quarter through history, buys whatever passed the filters at that point in time, rebalances as the results change, and reports the return against the S&P 500 along with drawdown and risk statistics. It is a way to see whether the rules you are drawn to have historically held up, not a forecast.

How does the backtest avoid look-ahead bias?

A backtest is worthless if it can see the future, so every quarter is scored only on what was actually known at the time. A company is ranked against the companies that had reported by that quarter's close, using the figures as first filed, and that standing is frozen and never revised when restatements arrive later. Companies that had not yet listed, or that were later delisted, are handled at the quarter they existed in rather than dropped, so the results do not quietly inherit survivorship bias.

AI Features

What AI features are available?

Company-level AI analysis that summarises strengths, weaknesses and outlook; Company Intelligence reports for deeper research; AI summaries of 10-K and 10-Q filings and of earnings call transcripts; and news digests with sentiment. Every AI output is informational only, may be inaccurate, and is not investment advice.

What is the AI chat?

The chat is a research assistant that already knows your data. Ask it in plain language, 'compare Apple and Microsoft on margins' or 'find me profitable companies trading below their own average', and it answers with real tables, charts and screens built from our figures rather than from memory, which you can open and keep working on. It is a faster way in than building a screen by hand, and every answer stands on the same data the rest of the platform uses.

Is my data shared with AI providers?

Only the financial data needed for the analysis is sent to the AI provider. Your personal information, your saved screens and your account details are not. AI processing happens on demand.

Alerts

What types of alerts can I set up?

Two kinds. A Company alert watches a single company: either a metric crossing a number you choose, say Apple's DCA Score crossing 70, or new activity on it, meaning filings, insider trades, calls and events. A Screener alert watches one of your saved screens and tells you when companies enter or leave its top N. Alerts arrive in the app and by email.

Pricing & Plans

What plans are available?

Three tiers. Pro gives you full access to AI analysis, unlimited alerts, backtesting and the whole screener, with 60,000 AI tokens a day. Elite is the same product with a much bigger AI budget — 400,000 tokens a day — for people who run AI research all day. Enterprise covers teams, with organisation management, seat administration, audit logging and enforced MFA. Pro opens with a 7-day free trial. Current prices are on the Pricing page.

How do I cancel or request a refund?

Cancel any time from your Settings page. Cancelling stops auto-renewal and your access runs to the end of the billing period you have paid for. For refunds, email marginx@marginx.biz. Eligibility is governed by our Refund Policy and applicable consumer law.

Security & Privacy

How is my data protected?

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, every database table enforces row-level security so you can only reach your own records, and we run regular security audits. MarginX supports multi-factor authentication, which you can enable in Settings and which Enterprise plans can enforce for every member.

Can I delete my data?

Yes. You can request full deletion of your account and everything attached to it at any time. Deletion is permanent and completed within 30 days, as GDPR requires.