That is nearly three names in four. On the same scan, the median 90-day Sharpe across those 1,718 stocks was 0.95.
If you have ever been shown a strategy and told its Sharpe ratio is positive, or that it is around 1, those two numbers are the context you were missing. Both describe the middle of an ordinary market.
What the ratio actually measures
The Sharpe ratio is return in excess of a risk-free rate, divided by volatility. It is a rate of exchange, not a score: how much return did this produce for each unit of variability you had to sit through.
Two holdings that end the quarter up the same amount can have very different ratios. The one that drifted up steadily scores well. The one that got there through a sequence of lurches scores badly, because the denominator punishes the lurching. That is the entire idea, and it is a good one.
What the ratio cannot see is the shape of the bad part. Volatility treats a sharp move up and a sharp move down identically, so a number that looks respectable can sit on top of a decline you would not have tolerated in practice.
Why positive is not the same as good
A positive Sharpe ratio sounds like a pass mark. On the day we measured it was simply the normal condition: 72.9% of tracked names had one. Describing a strategy as having a positive Sharpe, in that market, is close to describing it as having participated.
A number is only informative next to the base rate it should be compared against. “Positive” carries almost no information on a day when nearly three quarters of everything is positive.
This is the same mistake as reading an exam score without knowing the distribution. Sixty out of a hundred means one thing when the average is forty and something entirely different when the average is eighty-five. The ratio is fine; the missing comparison is the problem.
The window does most of the work
Ours is a 90-day measurement — one quarter. That is long enough to compute and far too short to distinguish a method from the conditions it ran in. A single favourable stretch produces high ratios almost everywhere, which is precisely what the 72.9% shows.
The uncomfortable consequence is that the shorter the window quoted, the less the number constrains what happens next. A Sharpe of 3 over eight weeks is not a stronger claim than a Sharpe of 1 over five years; it is a weaker one, measured more loosely.
The number that explains the number
On the same scan, 67.4% of the names that have a 200-day EMA were trading above it. That is a broadly rising market, and it is the reason so many Sharpe ratios were positive at once.
Run the identical calculation through a sustained decline and most of the same universe turns negative — no method having changed, no formula having been adjusted. The ratio describes the interaction between a holding and its conditions, and only one of those two things is under anyone’s control.
What to do with that instead
- Ask what the base rate was. A Sharpe ratio without the distribution it sits in is a number without a scale. Ours was a median of 0.95 on the day we measured.
- Ask how long the window was. A quarter describes a quarter. Treat a short-window ratio as a description of a period, not a property of a method.
- Read it alongside drawdown. The ratio says what the variability cost on average; maximum drawdown says how bad the worst stretch actually got. The second is what people abandon a plan during.
- Be suspicious of a ratio quoted without either. No window and no comparison usually means the number was chosen after the fact.
How we measured this
These figures come from our own scan of the equities on the platform on 17 August 2026, computed on daily bars. The Sharpe ratio here annualises the last 90 daily returns, subtracts an assumed 5% annual risk-free rate, and divides by annualised volatility. That 5% is a fixed assumption in our code rather than a live market rate, and a different assumption would shift every figure on this page.
The Sharpe figures cover 1,718 names rather than all 1,729 scanned, because a stock needs roughly a full quarter of history before the calculation returns anything at all — recent listings have no reading. The 200-day EMA figure covers 1,696 for the same kind of reason. Every percentage on this page carries the sample it was drawn from, because a percentage without one is not evidence.
Numbers from a single day describe that day. We publish the date and the sample size so you can weigh them accordingly, rather than treating one scan as a general law.
Frequently asked questions
Is a Sharpe ratio above 1 good?
It depends entirely on what everything else was doing, and over what window. On the day we measured, the median 90-day Sharpe across 1,718 tracked stocks was 0.95 — so a strategy posting 1.0 over the same quarter was performing roughly like the middle of the market, not beating it. A number is only informative next to the base rate it should be compared against, and that base rate moves with conditions.
Why is 90 days too short a window?
Because a quarter contains too few independent observations to separate skill from conditions. Ninety trading days of a broad uptrend produce high Sharpe ratios almost everywhere, which is what our own measurement shows. The ratio is not wrong over a short window; it is simply describing that window, and a window that flattering will not repeat on demand.
What does the Sharpe ratio actually measure?
Return in excess of a risk-free rate, divided by volatility. It answers 'how much return did this produce for each unit of variability endured', not 'how much did this make'. Two holdings with identical returns get very different Sharpe ratios if one arrived smoothly and the other lurched. What it cannot tell you is the shape of the bad stretch — volatility treats an upside spike and a crash alike.
Does a high Sharpe ratio mean low risk?
No. It means returns were high relative to their volatility over the measured window. Volatility is not the same thing as risk of loss: a position can have modest day-to-day variability and still be exposed to a large, sudden decline that simply has not happened yet. Pair the ratio with maximum drawdown, which describes the worst peak-to-trough decline actually lived through.
Would these percentages look different in a falling market?
Substantially, and that is the whole point. We measured on a day when 67.4% of the names that have a 200-day EMA were trading above it — a broadly rising market. In that regime most things carry a positive Sharpe. In a sustained decline the same calculation turns negative across most of the same universe, without anyone's method having changed.
Related
The companion measurement — how rarely a fixed indicator threshold actually fires — is in what RSI overbought and oversold actually mean. Sizing a position is a separate decision from judging one, and the position size calculator handles that arithmetic. More lessons are on the learn page.