A consistent way to compare stocks.

Investment Bastion uses a proprietary scoring system for equity research and portfolio construction. Every company is rated by the same rules, so thousands of stocks from different countries and sectors can be compared directly.

How does our method work?

Three steps:

1. We collect metrics. These are the measures that matter when evaluating a company: valuation multiples, revenue and earnings growth forecasts, dividend yield, share price performance. The database currently holds more than 70 metrics, and we keep adding to it.

2. We score each metric from 1 to 10. Each company's value is compared with every other company to see what share of companies it beats. This is called a percentile. Dividing it by 10 and rounding gives the score. Example: analysts expect Nvidia's revenue to grow 61% a year over the next three years. That beats 97% of companies. 97 divided by 10 gives 9.7, which rounds to a score of 10.

3. We build the strategy rating. For each strategy, we choose which metrics to use and how much each one weighs. For example, in the Growth strategy, the 3-year revenue growth forecast carries a 30% weight, and next year's earnings per share (EPS) growth carries 10%. The weighted scores add up to a single strategy score. We then compare that score with every other company and see what share of companies it beats. The result is the final strategy rating. A rating of 99 means the same thing in every strategy: the company beats 99% of all companies on that strategy.

Single-factor strategies

Bastion currently runs five single-factor ratings of its own design. Each one measures a single trait of a business, such as growth or quality. Pick a strategy below to see its metric weights and who it is built for.

Multi-factor strategies

Multi-factor ratings combine several traits into one score. Quality Compounders, for example, looks for companies that are both highly profitable and growing fast. Growth Rockets picks fast-growing companies whose shares the market is already buying. Smart Value looks for cheap stocks that have started to rise, which filters out value traps. GEAR+, Bastion's flagship model, blends growth, efficiency, valuation, momentum, and resilience into a single rating.

Example: Nvidia across every strategy

Here is one company run through all nine ratings. Each card shows which metrics a strategy uses, how much each one weighs, and how Nvidia scores on it.

Why scoring instead of traditional valuation

Investors usually judge a stock's potential with one of three methods: discounted cash flow models, valuation multiples or chart analysis. Each one has serious flaws that weaken investment performance.

A discounted cash flow (DCF) model gives a precise answer to a guess. It forecasts a company's cash flows years ahead and discounts them back to today. The result looks exact, down to the cent of a target price, but it rests on a few subjective assumptions. Raise the long-term growth rate from 2% to 3%, and a stock with 10% downside suddenly shows 20% upside. That makes DCF easy to bend: an analyst can reach almost any target price by moving one input. In the end, a DCF often reflects the analyst's assumptions more than it gives an objective valuation.

Valuation multiples look at one number at a time. They compare companies on ratios like P/E, EV/EBITDA or dividend yield. The method is fast and easy to implement, but each ratio shows only one side of the business. A stock at 6x earnings looks cheap, but the growth forecasts often reveal that the discount reflects an expected stagnation of the business. And there is no simple way to combine a multiple with margins or debt in one metric. You end up building complex screeners with dozens of filters, where every filter counts the same and a stock either passes or fails. Individual multiples without a systematic assessment are too superficial and don't show the full picture.

Charts ignore the business behind the price. Technical analysis studies only past price and volume, searching for trends, support levels and patterns. The signals look clear on a chart, but reading them depends on the eye of the person drawing the lines. Two traders can look at the same chart and see a breakout and a false breakout. Investing based only on charts is subjective, unsystematic and in most cases leads to disappointment.

Scoring keeps what works in these methods and removes the weak spots:

1. Same rules for every company. Ratings are built from reported financials, market data and consensus forecasts. Nobody adjusts an input to get the answer they want.

2. Many metrics, weighted by importance. Each strategy combines several metrics with fixed weights, so a stock with falling earnings can't rank high on a low P/E alone.

3. Thousands of companies at once. One set of rules covers every stock across countries and sectors, and ratings update as new data comes in.

4. Less room for emotion. A rating changes when the numbers change, not when the headlines do.

5. Fully transparent. The metrics and weights behind every strategy are published, so you can see exactly why a stock scores high or low.

How to use ratings

No method is perfect, and scoring has limits too. Ratings rely partly on analyst forecasts, and forecasts can be wrong: in 2020 Intel had a high GEAR+ rating, before it lost ground to Nvidia in AI chips and to Apple's own processors. Some risks never show up in financial data, such as lawsuits, regulation or governance problems. And some sectors, like banks or commodity producers, can look cheaper and more efficient than they really are.

That is why a rating works best as a first filter. It narrows thousands of stocks down to a short list worth studying and shows exactly why each one made the cut. The final decision still needs a look at the business, its risks and the wider market. Nothing stops you from running a DCF on the ten names that scored best.

To see which stocks rank highest on each strategy right now, open the Radar.