Jev vs. Claude as blind headline judge: six gates before either touches a trade

Independent researchers Alex Vidovich and Zivana Zerjal published a 11-page working paper on SSRN on October 9, 2026 describing six tests for using a small commercial text model as a headline judge beside a live intraday and overnight trading system on one account. The paper reports the judge read one plain fact correctly against a real label, produced one small effect below its bar, and saw several effects vanish, with its margin over a simple headline count described as borderline; the authors make no claim about either strategy's returns. The six gates require the model to read a fact correctly, beat a simple count of its own headlines, show no memory of famous past events, give the same answer twice, always see the decision-time date, and check each forward verdict rule against random flags.

A Thermometer, Not an Analyst: Lawful Uses of a Text Judge in a Live Trading Lab - Alex Vidovich · Independent researcher · alexvidovich.com https://alexvidovich.com - Zivana Zerjal · Independent researcher · zivanazerjal.com https://zivanazerjal.com October 9, 2026 · 11 pages · Working paper · posted on SSRN Abstract A text model can sit next to a live trading system the way a thermometer sits next to a patient: it reads, it never prescribes. We follow one such model into a lab running an intraday strategy and a second, overnight strategy on one account. It is a small commercial judge, pinned to one version, that answers only typed questions about headlines. We describe six tests for a text signal: read a plain fact correctly against a real label, beat a simple count of its own headlines, show no memory of famous past events, give the same answer twice, always see the decision-time date, and check each forward verdict rule against random flags. They were assembled over three days, most of them after a failure, and we present them as the checklist we would now apply up front. We compare the judge with a general chatbot on blind rows, list what it may touch stamps written after the close, counted forward and what it may never touch any number in the trading system , and report the plumbing failures that corrupted its readings. Its readings so far are small: one fact read well, one small effect below its bar, several that vanished; the fact was read under one setup, and its margin over a simple headline count is borderline. None of the six tests is new on its own; what is new is using them together on a text instrument beside a live system, and reporting every study it was used in, failures included. This is a paper about checking data and the instrument, not about profit: we make no claim about either strategy's returns. Keywords: large language models, text classification, news analytics, pre-registration, look-ahead bias, research infrastructure, trading systems JEL classification: G14, G17, C45, C52, C81, C88 BibTeX @techreport{vidovich2026text, title = {A Thermometer, Not an Analyst: Lawful Uses of a Text Judge in a Live Trading Lab}, author = {Alex Vidovich and Zivana Zerjal}, year = {2026}, month = {10}, type = {Working paper}, institution = {alexvidovich.com}, doi = {10.2139/ssrn.7589261}, url = {https://alexvidovich.com/papers/text-judge}, }