EventScore, explained
Every SEC Form 8-K filing gets a single signed number from −100 to +100 on HoldLens. This is exactly how that number is computed.
TL;DR
EventScore is a signed −100 to +100 score computed from SEC Form 8-K filings — a company’s own disclosure of material events (earnings, bankruptcy filings, executive changes, cybersecurity incidents, acquisitions, going-concern statements). The score weights events by category (existential events outweigh routine ones), freshness (4-business-day filing window means the data is current within a week), and direction (positive vs negative materiality). Distinct from ConvictionScore (smart-money positioning) and InsiderScore (Form 4 insider trades) — together they form the HoldLens SEC signals trilogy.
Why score 8-Ks at all?
SEC Form 8-K is a company's own disclosure of material events to the market. Companies file a 8-K within 4 business days of any event they determine is material. The event types range from earnings announcements (routine, high volume) to bankruptcy filings (rare, existential) to material cybersecurity incidents (added 2023, high variance).
Treating all 8-Ks as equal is wrong — a quarterly earnings release and a CEO-departure 8-K are not the same thing. Treating them as unequal but without a formula is worse — it introduces opinion. Both failure modes are avoidable.
The EventScore formula
EventScore is deterministic. Given the same 8-K filing, it always produces the same number. It is a transformation, not a prediction. The formula is:
EventScore = base_severity(item_type)
× market_cap_weight
× recency_decay
× cluster_bonus
(clamped to [−100, +100])1. Base severity by item type
Each SEC 8-K item number has a canonical severity assigned based on how much it historically moves stock prices and how much it changes the forward picture. Sample values (full table in methodology):
| Item | Event type | Base |
|---|---|---|
| 1.03 | Bankruptcy or Receivership | −95 |
| 4.02 | Non-reliance on prior financials (restatement) | −75 |
| 1.05 | Material Cybersecurity Incident | −60 |
| 5.02 | Officer Departure (CEO/CFO) | −30 to +10 (signed by surrounding context) |
| 2.02 | Earnings Results | signed by beat vs miss |
| 1.01 | Material Definitive Agreement | +30 (typical M&A signing) |
| 2.01 | Completed Acquisition or Disposition | +40 (close completed) |
| 2.06 | Material Impairments | −55 |
2. Market-cap weight
An 8-K from a $2B small-cap carries more per-event signal than an 8-K from a $2T mega-cap — the small-cap's price moves proportionally more on the same event. Market-cap weight is a logarithmic scaler: weight = log10(1e12 / market_cap) / 2, clamped to [0.8, 1.5]. Micro-caps see their signal slightly amplified; mega-caps see it slightly dampened, but nothing approaches "zero signal."
3. Recency decay
An 8-K filed yesterday carries more signal than one filed a month ago — not because the event itself changes, but because markets have had more time to price in the old one. Recency decay is a gentle exponential: the score degrades by about 50% over 90 days, zero-ing out after about 240 days. This is how we avoid stale events dominating per-ticker EventScore aggregates.
4. Cluster bonus
Multiple material events at the same company within a 30-day window get an amplification bonus of ×1.25 per additional event (capped at ×1.75). The reasoning: one 8-K is an event; three material 8-Ks in three weeks is a pattern. Restatement + CEO departure + cybersecurity incident in rapid succession is almost never coincidence.
What EventScore is NOT
- Not a prediction. A high negative EventScore says "this thing just happened and historically that kind of thing matters." It does not say "the stock will go down." See our disclaimer.
- Not a news feed. EventScore only scores SEC 8-K filings. Earnings calls, analyst downgrades, and macro news are all higher-signal than most 8-Ks but live elsewhere.
- Not sentiment analysis. Item-type severity is a fixed table based on historical effect, not an NLP sentiment pass over the 8-K's text. We don't estimate tone from prose; we look at WHAT was filed, not HOW it was worded.
- Not a replacement for reading. EventScore is a triage layer — it tells you which 8-Ks are worth reading in depth. The filings themselves are still the source of truth; we cite them on every /events/ detail page with direct SEC EDGAR links.
How EventScore aggregates per-ticker
Each ticker's overall EventScore is the recency-weighted sum of all per-8-K scores in the last 240 days, divided by the count. New events push the aggregate toward their direction; old events fade into the baseline. Tickers with zero recent 8-Ks have EventScore = null, not 0 — absence of signal ≠ neutral signal.
Where to use EventScore
- /events/ — the full material-events hub, live feed + per-company + per-item-type
- /events/type/cybersecurity-incident/ and the 8 other item-type drilldowns
- Every per-ticker page (e.g., /ticker/AAPL/) shows the ticker's EventScore alongside its ConvictionScore and InsiderScore — read all three together (see The SEC Signals Trilogy)
The invariant
Every data row on /events/ links back to the source SEC EDGAR filing by accession number. If you want to verify a score, click through to the 8-K itself. If you find a scoring error — wrong item-type classification, wrong base severity — email [email protected] with the accession number and we correct verified errors within 48 hours.
Full score table + edge-case rules (amended filings with /A suffix, multi-item 8-Ks, correction filings) live in the methodology page.
Our view
The 8-K is the most under-read disclosure in retail investing. Everyone watches earnings calls and reads 10-K annual reports, but the 8-K is where the real-time information lives: leadership departures, regulatory subpoenas, going-concern statements, ratings downgrades, debt-covenant breaches. By the time a story makes financial-media headlines, the 8-K is usually 3–7 days old.
EventScore exists to compress that information into one comparable number so a retail investor doesn’t need to read 50 8-Ks per day across their watchlist. The score is descriptive — it tells you what happened and how material it was — not predictive. Companies announcing layoffs aren’t always going to fall; companies winning regulatory approvals aren’t always going to rise. But knowing the event happened, in time-stamped form, with appropriate weight, is the information edge the 8-K filing was designed to provide.
Pure-reference encyclopedic entry on our sister site: secfilingdex.com/learn/8-k — 8-K is the canonical material-event filing.
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