Two clean gaps on Friday's screen. Both cleared my 7% threshold on the correct measurement.
One had rocket fuel behind it. One had a signal. Grading the difference is most of the work.
1. Measurement first
An EP gap is the open against the prior regular-session close. Not the day's percentage change.
Five names on my screen showed double-digit daily moves. Four had gaps under 2% — intraday thrusts wearing an EP costume.
2. $FEIM - The Fuel
Q1 after the close Thursday. Sales $23.5M against $17.9M expected. EPS $0.41 against $0.15 consensus. Record funded backlog, up 82% year on year. Revenue up 70%.
Opened +32% against the prior close.
That's not a beat. That's the market repricing the company.
3. $FEIM - The Base
6 months of chop between roughly 55 and 80. Not deep neglect, but no trend either. The gap cleared the entire range on roughly eight times average volume.
One caveat: short interest was 11% of float going in. Some of that thrust is covering, not conviction.
4. $ATEC - A different animal
No earnings. The CEO bought 115,000 shares on the open market for about $1.01m at an average of $8.81, and the filing hit Friday.
Opened +8%. Closed up over 20%.
5. $ATEC - Grade the catalyst, not the reaction
An insider buy is a signal, not a change in the business. Nothing was different about the company on Friday than on Thursday.
$FEIM: 70% revenue growth. $ATEC: one executive's conviction.
Same gate cleared, opposite quality.
6. The reaction size is not evidence
$ATEC daily move was 2/3 of $FEIM's. If you rank on % change you'd call them comparable.
Rank on what caused the move & they aren't in the same category.
Gap tells you the market reacted. It doesn't tell the reaction has anything under it.
7. Context matters too
$ATEC is down roughly 38% over twelve months and sits well below its 52-week high of $23.29. The buy came near multi-year lows.
A bounce off a downtrend low is not a stage-2 base. The EP framework wants sideways neglect, not damage.
8. Where each lands
$FEIM: a genuine EP with real fuel, already extended by the time it was grade-able.
$ATEC: a gap that passes on measurement and fails on substance.
Both go in the library. The second one is the more useful card.
9. The rule underneath
A threshold tells you a name qualifies for assessment. It doesn't tell you the assessment came out well.
Most of the discipline is in what happens after something passes the filter.