Show HN: A free ESG stock screener that publishes its losses and methodology | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A free ESG stock screener that publishes its losses and methodology

jumpstartsignal.com

30 pointsirldexter25 comments

Hey HN, JSS(JumpstartSignal) is a free, ESG-filtered daily stock screener. I built it after some really badly-timed quantum computing stock buys, so I felt I needed to learn more about systematic, longer-horizon approaches and the underlying technicals instead of chasing themes. Three things about it that might be of interest:

1. Methodology is fully documented at https://jumpstartsignal.com/how-it-works/ 5-stage pipeline, 54 signals tested individually plus 1,836 combinations evaluated, walk-forward validation across 25 hold periods. Nothing hand-tuned to a single backtest window.

2. Many wins, misses, and losses are published as case studies e.g. https://jumpstartsignal.com/case-studies/nvda/ walks through the 32 times the system flagged NVDA starting at $5.44 in 2018. https://jumpstartsignal.com/case-studies/sedg/ shows a -49% loss, and https://jumpstartsignal.com/case-studies/tsla/ explains why the system never flagged Tesla (it passed Stages 1 and 2 on 207 days but only peaked at 20/100 in scoring vs the 70 needed for OPPORTUNITY tier). https://jumpstartsignal.com/results/ also shows the 10 best entries alongside the 10 worst.

3. A genetic algorithm picked the signal weights, but constrained to maintain alpha across multiple market regimes (otherwise it overfits to a single bull market). The constraint dropped some "best in backtest" configurations that only worked 2018-2021.

Topline: 2012-2025 backtest at SPOTLIGHT + OPPORTUNITY tier produced +163% alpha vs SPY (results page has the per-trade breakdown).

Daily watchlist emailed free; reports + results + case studies are publicly browsable without signup.

Happy to take questions about methodology, what the system gets wrong, or why specific tickers landed where they did.

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I run a free comparison site in a different vertical, and the "publishes its losses" line is what made me click. Methodology page on a niche aggregator earns its keep two ways: readers can check you didn't just rank things by vibes, and it's about the only piece of content that holds up once AI summaries start chewing through your other pages. Question I keep coming back to though: how often do you actually update the methodology vs quietly nudge it? The discipline of versioning a formula is harder than writing it, because when a result comes out wrong the temptation to move the threshold instead is huge.

Hi, Donal from JSS here. We're on R27, revision 27 of the signal weights and features. Each revision gets snapshotted as a "golden" version in config, run through a full backtest, and the results pages pull dynamically from that snapshot, so the numbers are always anchored to a specific revision.

The round numbering is partly for exactly the reason you named: it forces a name onto every change. When a result comes out wrong, the temptation to quietly shift a threshold is real, and having to call it R28 and re-run the full validation raises the cost of doing that on a whim.

Perhaps a changelog would close the loop though? Right now, R27 is visible in config and referenced in the metrics, but there's no page that says "R27 changed X because Y, here's what the backtest/walk-forward showed before and after." That's the missing accountability layer, and probably more useful to a skeptical reader than any amount of methodology prose.

Added a changelog as per my previous comment/response https://jumpstartsignal.com/changelog/ Thanks for the feedback, makes sense!

Why limit your investments to ESG stocks only? If the purpose of your investment is to get maximum returns, you shouldn't do that.

Is ESG Investing Losing Its Shine? ESG Stocks Continue To Underperform The S&P 500: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/esg-investing-losing-shine-es...

So, you kind of hit the nail on the head with "if" and "purpose". So, this is not an ESG fund (per your link) and more about baked-in filtering/excluding certain parts of the investable universe (with additional criteria), for an SRI (Socially Responsible Investing) approach. At the end of the day, some people simply don't want to profit or invest in certain industries, regardless of the return differential. I would say that's really a personal call, not a financial mistake.

A question I have: do you have a background in capital markets?

Because what it looks like is you asked Claude to create a stock picking newsletter based on signals that retail commonly thinks are bleeding edge but institutions have been using for two decades and probably don’t give much edge anymore (AI analysis of news sentiment…)

And you backtested from 2012-2025, one of the longest bull runs in history. Of course your strategy of “buy NVDA” will win in that window.

Which makes me wonder: have you ever worked at a hedge fund?

I have to say I’m tempted to subscribe and have Claude manage an imaginary portfolio based on your recommendations and publish that. Because to be frank, I’m fairly confident your recs won’t generate alpha.

No hedge fund background, fair cop. I'm a software developer who got frustrated with discretionary noise and built something rules-based.

On the bull run, alpha here is measured against SPY, which ran the same period. The claim is relative outperformance, not that we picked a rising tide. The window also includes 2020 and 2022, not great for momentum strategies. Signals that showed near-zero predictive value in statistical validation are zeroed out of the scoring.

Paper trading is already running against live signals. The daily reports are public and free, no subscription needed to check. Methodology is at https://jumpstartsignal.com/how-it-works/ if you want the detail on what's actually being validated.

Grok is that you?

Nope.

Those emojis on there take away from any seriousness you are trying to project and smells of AI generated text.

Hmmm, only did one ascii emoji in a different response. An old habit from the early days. Point noted.

One last question - as a percentage of your net worth, how much of your own money have you put into the stock picks generated through this analysis?

I have a feeling I know the answer, but wanted to check.

Well, it's early, so there's only been 2 actionable signals so far; 1 unique ticker SPOTLIGHT and 1 OPPORTUNITY (MONITOR is just a watchlist flag i.e. continue to MONITOR). Am putting in 1K per SPOT/OPP so far. I also maintain ETF and ETC positions (and have good/bad performing stocks since before JSS). So yes, I am putting my money where my mouth is. I have another 10K ready to deploy specifically to this, and other underperforming sources to draw from based on performance.

The question was percentage of net worth :)

That will tell me how confident you are.

$10k out of $500k would say you’re toying around.

$10k of $20k seems like you believe it works.

Unless you know exactly why paper trading sims are so hard to backrest in practice, it’s silly to make arguments on why your paper trading sim works.

It’s insanely easy to make a trading algo profitable on historical data.

Overfitting on historical data is a real risk and defo a concern (there's been lots of learnings lately). The backtest wasn't naive. Fundamentals used filing dates not period-end dates to avoid look-ahead + scoring was validated out-of-sample using walk-forward testing rather than just optimised in-sample (GA used 5 temporal folds and walk-forward used 25 rolling out-of-sample windows).

- i am going to assume you have experience working at a fintech firm or a hedge funds firm from your post - why not share your methodology

Hiya, https://jumpstartsignal.com/how-it-works/ outlines the methodology + more additional interesting info in https://jumpstartsignal.com/changelog/ and https://jumpstartsignal.com/results/

https://jumpstartsignal.com/reports/2026/04/24/

> No growth met the screening criteria on this date.

Our current economy in a nutshell, lol

That's the pipeline being honest :) no forced picks on a slow day.

I have a bunch of agents coordinating and managing my portfolio. https://buzzie-ai.github.io/trader-journal/

ESG is just giving up returns for a good feeling, isn't it?

Stock picking is just folly for individual investors, isn't it?

Anyone claiming they can consistently beat any large index is just delusional, aren't they?

On ESG/SRI: fair, excluding sectors comes at a cost, and we make that trade-off knowingly.

On stock picking: the system is rules-based and mechanical, not discretionary. The "folly" argument applies most strongly to human judgment calls, which this attempts to remove. I literally wanted to reduce bias and get a better vantage point.

On beating the index: 14 years of backtested data with walk-forward validation suggest it's possible for this specific strategy. Whether it holds going forward, nobody knows. We publish the ten best and worst precisely because we're not claiming certainty.

As Matt Levine often points out, there are two possible cases for ESG

1/ This will bring worse returns, but I'm willing to accept the loss in order to forward values I support

2/ This will bring better returns, since the market underrates risks from bad ESG companies (e.g. the long-term return on capital for coal companies will be worse than the market expects)

People marketing ESG funds (or anti-ESG, same rule applies) usually emphasise the second.

> Anyone claiming they can consistently beat any large index is just delusional, aren't they?

This is obviously not true. RenTech would like a word.

Site screams jank and hijacks browsing away. 0/10, def slop daddy slop.

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