Most stock sites are happy to show you a list of ideas. Far fewer are willing to show you the scoreboard after those ideas have had time to live in the real market.
That is the point of the new Batch Performance feature on GreenDot Stocks. Every weekly screen is now treated as its own dated batch, then tracked forward in the open. Instead of asking readers to trust a process in the abstract, the site can now show how each batch actually performed over time, how it stacked up against the market, and whether the quality and valuation signals were doing the job they were supposed to do.
What The Feature Actually Is
Think of each weekly screen as a cohort.
On the day a batch is imported, GreenDot Stocks records the screen snapshot and the entry price for each stock using that day's last close. From there, the site refreshes current prices weekly and compares the batch with SPY, which serves as the broad-market benchmark. Click any batch date on the performance page and you can drill down into the per-stock results, not just the headline average.
That matters because this is not a polished backtest. It is real-world return tracking after publication. Once a batch exists, it has to earn its reputation in public.
Why The Tracking Lifespan Is Three Years
Every individual batch stays open for three years. During that window, its stock prices and SPY benchmark are updated weekly. After three years, the batch is closed and the numbers are locked.
That is long enough to move beyond the first reaction and into the harder part of investing: earnings delivery, multiple compression or expansion, changing sentiment, and management execution. It is also short enough to keep the archive focused on market environments that still feel relevant.
How The Performance Buckets Work
The feature does more than show one average return figure.
Each batch is split by business quality and by valuation, because those are the two questions the screen is really trying to answer.
The business-quality side uses the Green, Yellow, and Red dot ratings. Those dots are the fast read on business quality inside a batch, built from the traits that matter most over time: recurring revenue, growth potential, economic moat, and management quality.
The valuation side uses the stock's margin of safety at the moment the screen was run. Stocks at 10% or more margin of safety are bucketed as Undervalued. Stocks between negative 10% and positive 10% are Fairly Valued. Stocks at negative 10% or worse are Overvalued.
That turns the performance page into more than a leaderboard. It becomes a way to test whether the screen's quality and valuation signals are actually producing better outcomes. Research from MSCI and AQR's Quality Minus Junk points in the same direction: quality and value have mattered over long stretches. The point here is to keep score in public and learn from the result.
Why Tracking Batch Performance Is Valuable
Batch tracking makes every weekly screen reviewable after the fact. You can see the average batch return, the SPY comparison, the per-stock outcomes, and the way each quality or valuation bucket aged. That helps answer three useful questions.
First, is the process working at all?
Second, where is it working best? If Green-rated businesses consistently hold up better than Yellow or Red names, that tells you the business-quality layer is adding real signal. If Undervalued names consistently beat Fairly Valued and Overvalued names, that tells you price discipline is still earning its keep.
Third, where does the process need improvement? A live archive makes it easier to spot when a rule looks smart on paper but is not showing up in real-world results.
| Performance feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Tracking unit | One weekly screen batch |
| Tracking lifespan | 3 years per batch |
| Update cadence | Weekly |
| Benchmark | SPY |
| Quality buckets | Green, Yellow, Red |
| Valuation buckets | Undervalued, Fairly Valued, Overvalued |
The result is a cleaner feedback loop and a public record of what happened after the screen went live.
If you want to follow each weekly batch as it ages, compare fresh ideas with older cohorts, and get new screen updates in your inbox, check out the GreenDot Stocks screener and subscribe by email so the next update lands in your inbox.