Methods: how NightWatch measures

NightWatch Labs, updated 2026-10-21

NightWatch publishes numbers: price gaps, ratings, warnings, hit rates. A number is only useful if you can tell where it came from and what it leaves out. These pages describe, in plain language, what each public surface measures, the formula behind it, how often it refreshes and where it breaks down.

The four method pages

• How the Observatory measures price gaps and session moves
  Price gaps between regional and global venues, and how tokenized stocks move while their home exchange is closed.
• How Guardrail ratings and grades are computed
  The rule behind usable, thin and avoid, and the grade letters that feed it.
• How the Crisis Bulletin warns and checks itself
  What a warning is, its severity, and how it is checked against later exchange notices.
• How One Price compares one asset across venues
  One asset, many venues: how the gap is computed and why many gaps cannot be captured.

How we source data

Every figure on the site is derived from one of four kinds of source, and each method page says which.

• Public exchange data. Scanners read order books, tickers, funding rates and listing information that exchanges publish without a login. No account data, no private keys and no trading access are involved in the measurements.
• Exchange announcements. Delisting, suspension, monitoring and special-treatment notices are collected from exchange announcement channels and classified by fixed text patterns. The source link is kept where the exchange provides one.
• Reference data. Official currency rates and exchange-session calendars are fetched from published sources and cached; the response names its source and as-of time. A source that fails is shown as unavailable, never filled in.
• NightWatch's own records. Warnings, ratings and scan histories are stored as they are issued. Published results are appended to and not rewritten; when a definition changes, it applies from its start date and earlier numbers are not restated.

Scanners run on NightWatch’s own servers on fixed cadences, and the API reads stored results where a calculation is expensive. Where a feed provides a computed-at time the live page shows it, and the small live-check box on each method page says “data not loaded” when its feed does not answer instead of showing a zero.

What these pages are not

They are descriptions of measurement, not recommendations. A rating, a gap or a warning is an observation made at a point in time with the limits listed on its page. For the wider risks of using the site, read the risk disclosure; for questions about a method, use the contact page.

Informational only, not investment advice. See the risk disclosure.