Analyst’s summary
Jonathan Maze is the editor-in-chief of Restaurant Business, who writes on the restaurant industry. His record is built from his posts on X, where almost all of his claims name a restaurant company without taking a direction; only a handful of claims are directional, and of those most are calls about business outcomes rather than price levels, all in single equities. Across the whole record his most-called names are YUM, BROS and SBUX.
How accurate is he?
He is accurate 12.5% of the time against a base rate of 36.0% for the stocks he calls, so he scores 23.5 points below it. Accurate means he hits or partially hits the hurdle in the direction his signal implies, inside the window he named or the calculated window determined from our algorithm; for a price target it means the target was reached inside the window, or half the stated move was.
How does he compare to just holding the S&P 500?
If you had put $1 into the S&P 500 on the day of his first equity call in March 2025 and left it there until his last equity call was settled, you would have $1.38. If you had put $1 into every one of his 8 equity calls instead, buying when he posted and selling when each call was due, you would have $0.92; the S&P 500 held on those same days made $1.41.
Taking profit early, at twice the hurdle with no stop-loss, turned $1 into $0.91. The base rate on the stocks he picks is $1.10: the same stocks, bought on random dates in the same period, held for the same lengths of time, with the same long and short sides.
Explainer on his accuracy against his return
Accuracy counts how often he was right; return counts how far the price went. He was right less often than chance, and a dollar compounds the path, not the average: his hits averaged +22.7% and his misses -8.6%. (* see the footnote below for a fuller explanation)
How does following his timing compare to the base rate of the stocks he chose?
A dollar following every one of his calls to the end of its window became $0.92 against a base rate of $1.10; with a stop at the hurdle and a take-profit at twice it, $0.58. Over the last six months he scored 100.0% against a base rate of 43.0% on 1 calls.
What is the best holding period if we follow Jonathan?
30 days: a dollar following every call for 30 days became $0.92 against a base rate of $1.03, and no other plain hold does better. On tracking, his edge over the stocks is largest at 30 days, +1.6% against +0.9%, and at ninety days he is 4.5 points behind them.
Does he have any names where he has a particular edge?
On none of his most-called names other than BROS did his calls beat the stock's own 30-day move; on BROS, the name he calls most, they beat it by 2.1 points; they trailed it on YUM and TXRH.
In our opinion, a follower should treat Jonathan Maze as a source on the restaurant industry, not as a source of tradable signals. His calls, when followed, returned less than buying the same stocks on random dates, and his best holding period still left a dollar at $0.92. The one exception is BROS, where his calls beat the stock's own thirty-day move, but on YUM and TXRH they trailed it. A fund should read him for context and names, and not size positions on his direction.
Notes
1 Right means the hurdle test. Every stock carries a hurdle, T, that depends on its class and on how long the call was given (the table on page 2): 5 percent for a single equity at ninety days, under half a percent at next close, eleven at a year; 13 percent for crypto at ninety days. A full hit is a move of at least twice T in the direction he called by the end of the window and counts 1.0; a partial hit is at least T and counts 0.8; a miss, and a flat outcome that moved less than T either way, count zero. A price-target call is a full hit when the target is reached inside the window, a partial at half the stated move and a miss otherwise; it has one reading, the touch, so a later fall does not change it and the hit rate is not a holding return. Every resolved call is scored and every one is in the denominator. At expiry reads the price once at the window's end; one-touch counts the same move if it happened at any point inside the window.
2 Base rate: for each call, over every window of the same length on the same stock across the record, from two years before his first call to the last price and leaving out the call's own window, the share that cleared the same hurdle in his direction, with a partial at 0.8 and everything else zero; built exactly as the hit rate is, then averaged over his calls. Lift is his rate minus it. The percentiles and the drift in Parts 2 and 3 use a narrower set, the 730 days before each call.
3 The percentile is where a call's return ranks among all windows of the same length in that stock's own past two years; the 50th is chance. The placebo band is what random posting dates on the same stocks produce; a reading inside it is indistinguishable from chance.
4 The dollar base rate: the same stocks, the same number of calls, the same long and short sides, bought on random dates; the median of 150 such runs. Each call is held to its own window, and a price-target call is sold at its target if that comes first, on his dates and on the random ones alike.
5 Win rate and return per call: a follower buying at the first close after each post and selling thirty days later, costs deducted; the share of calls that made money, and the average result.
6 Drawdown: the deepest fall of that follower's account from its peak.
7 A bracket is a take-profit and a stop-loss set in advance; here both are set in units of the call's own hurdle, and a price-target call takes its target as the take-profit, so a take-profit fill is a hit banked and a stop fill is a miss taken. It is a rule of ours, not part of his record, and it never feeds the alpha gate.
* Accuracy counts calls. Every call counts once, whatever the size of the move: a full hit is one, a partial is 0.8, a miss or a flat is zero. One of his eight calls were full hits, zero partial, seven were misses or flats. Random windows on the same stocks clear the hurdle more often than that, because stocks of this kind move the hurdle's distance inside the window about 26.2% of the time on their own. So by count he is right less often than chance. Return weighs calls by how far they moved. His one hits averaged +22.7%, one of them, BROS, +22.7%. His three misses averaged -8.6%, and his four flats were small. Add them up and the winners are worth +25 points against -35 for the losers. Here the two measures point the same way.
Summary of metrics
Integrity: 1653 posts were read, yielding 932 claims, 13 directional calls and 8 resolved. (see section: the worked claim, Part 5, annex)
Information: scoring for accuracy by our rules, he is accurate 12.5% of the time, against a base rate of 36.0% for the same stocks, so he scores 23.5 points below it. On tracking his calls, his best horizon is 30 days, where his calls return +1.6% against +0.9%, an edge of 0.7 points. At the ninety-day horizon his calls return -1.2% on average, 4.5 points behind the stocks' own return of +3.2% over the same days. (see section: 1.3, 1.18, 2.19)
Robustness: the record spans 17 months, so there is no full year to compare; over the last six months he scored 100.0% against a base rate of 43.0% on 1 calls; the record holds 8 resolved calls on 5 stocks. (see section: 1.6, 1.9, 5.3, 5.4)
Concentration: on none of his most-called names other than BROS did his calls beat the stock's own 30-day move; on BROS, the name he calls most, they beat it by 2.1 points; they trailed it on YUM and TXRH. (see section: 2.8)
Response profile: if we follow all of Jonathan's calls, the holding period most profitable is 30 days. One dollar following every call for 30 days became $0.92 against a base rate of $1.03. There is no benefit to holding his calls for one day, 7 days or each call's own window. (see section: 1.3, 2.13, 2.14b)
Distribution: one call is worth -1.3% on average, after costs; the middle half of his calls end between -6.5% and -1.3%, and 25.0% of them end positive. Following every call to the end of its window turned one dollar into $0.92 against a base rate of $1.10, and the account fell 32.7% from its peak along the way. (see section: 2.13 to 2.16)
accuracy at expiry (vs base rate at expiry of 36.0%)
accuracy on one-touch (vs base rate one-touch of 64.2%)
one dollar following all of his calls vs one dollar holding the index for the same period
SBUX -4.9%/-0.9%
WEN -0.9%/+3.7%
the names where his edge is biggest: his average 30-day return / the stock's own
Part 2 withheld: fewer than ten resolved calls with a price
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Following Jonathan Maze's calls from the first close at or after each post and holding each call to the end of its own window, one dollar became $0.92 over 470 days in market, against just holding the S&P 500 for his equity calls ($0.92 following those calls against $1.38 held), and against holding the same stocks Jonathan chooses on random dates, which would have produced $1.10.
This report does not establish an investment advantage. Comparison data for similar assets was unavailable.
No series available.
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