Vol. I · Downside-Risk Intelligence · Est. 2026

Backtest-validated screens for concentrated public-equity books.

A per-target Stress-Test Deck built from SEC filings, counterparty mapping, and a scoring pipeline whose detection track record is disclosed on the cover page — not asserted in marketing.

Every claim in every deck links to a primary source. The full pipeline is open source, Apache-2.0. Audit the repository.

Detection Timing

Frozen backtests

SVB 2023 · Wirecard 2020 · FTX 2022

Event Recall Median lead FP
SVB 2023 5 / 5 2.34 d 0
Wirecard 2020 1 / 1 6.60 d 0
FTX 2022 3 / 3 7.12 d 0
Aggregate 9 / 9 2.48 d 0 / 3

n = 161 observations across three frozen historical windows (SVB 2023, Wirecard 2020, FTX 2022). Real primary-source news from the GDELT archive, measured on information available at the time only. Early-stage validation; coverage expanding.

Built for search funds, small family offices, litigation-finance analysts, small credit shops, and single-name activists underwriting concrete downside exposure.

§ I · Methodology

How a Stress-Test Deck is built

I

Ingest

SEC EDGAR filings (8-K, 10-Q, 10-K) and primary-source news from a curated whitelist of financial wires are pulled for the target and its declared counterparties — suppliers, customers, funding sources, regulators.

edgar_adapter.py · gdelt_adapter.py

II

Map & score

A conservative entity-mapping pipeline links each observation to the right name with word-boundary matching and an acronym stoplist. A deterministic 7-factor risk-scoring formula grades every signal. No LLM decides severity.

entity_mapping/service.py · scoring/service.py

III

Deliver

You receive a structured 8–12 page PDF: target & counterparty dependency map, 90-day evidence timeline with primary-source URLs, invalidation markers, and the historical detection track record on structurally comparable names.

target_stress_test.py · templates/pdf/

§ II · The working paper

Detection-Timing Backtest of a Systematic Downside-Risk Screen Across Three Modern Financial Crises

We replay a systematic entity-mapping and severity-scoring pipeline against real primary-source news headlines from three widely-studied financial crises and report per-name detection timing, mapping precision, and false-positive control behavior.

“Across the three frozen historical windows (161 real news observations sourced from GDELT DOC 2.0), the pipeline flagged 9 of 9 affected names at ‘elevated’ or ‘high’ severity before the realized event date, with a median lead time of 2.5 days and zero false positives on the three unrelated control names.”

§ III · Track record

Tested against history, not hindsight.

Detection is validated on frozen historical windows — the pipeline sees only the information that existed at the time. Three crises, each replayed against real primary-source news from the GDELT archive:

9/ 9
Affected names detected at elevated severity across SVB, Wirecard, and FTX
2.5days
Median lead time across the 9 flagged names before the realized event
0
False positives on the three control names (MSFT × 2, DTE)
Event Failure mode Obs. Recall Median lead FP on control
SVB 2023
Regional-bank contagion, Mar 6–12
Deposit run 98 5 / 5 2.34 days 0
Wirecard 2020
Accounting fraud + insolvency, Jun 15–30
Idiosyncratic fraud 14 1 / 1 6.60 days 0
FTX 2022
Crypto counterparty contagion, Nov 2–14
Counterparty risk 49 3 / 3 7.12 days 0
Aggregate 161 9 / 9 2.48 days 0 / 3

Early-detection and prioritization evidence on a historical dataset. Not a return forecast. Not a guarantee of future results. Full methodology, watchlists, ground-truth files, and pinned tests are published in the open repository.

§ IV · The deliverable

An 8–12 page deck. Per target. Every claim linked.

Each Stress-Test Deck is a self-contained PDF built by the same pipeline the working paper documents. Human-reviewed before delivery.

  • ICover · target, window, engagement date
  • IIExecutive summary · mechanical + analyst thesis
  • IIIDependency map · target & declared counterparties
  • IVKey metrics · observations, flags, peak severity
  • VTop evidence · primary-source URLs
  • VITimeline · chronology of shippable flags
  • VIIInvalidation markers · what would falsify the thesis
  • VIIIDetection track record · on comparable events

§ V · Engagement structure

How to work with us

Tier 01

Single-target memo

$500–$1,500

  • One public-equity target, 90-day window
  • 8-page PDF, primary-source URLs
  • Delivered in 5 business days
  • 30-minute readout call included

Tier 03 · Ongoing coverage

Retainer

$2,500/mo

  • Up to three names in a concentrated book
  • Weekly deck refresh
  • Alerts on new elevated flags
  • Month-to-month, cancel anytime
Enquire about a retainer →

All engagements: pay first, deliver on the committed timeline. Stripe Invoicing or bank transfer.

License Apache-2.0
Pinned tests 75 passing

§ VI · About

The analyst behind the pipeline.

Aetherius is built and run by Zarif Latif, a computer-science undergraduate at BRAC University and the engineer behind every component this site documents. The SEC EDGAR ingestion, the conservative entity-mapping layer, the deterministic scoring formula, and the backtest harness — 75 pinned tests running against frozen GDELT corpora — are all his work, and all of it is open for audit under Apache-2.0. His focus is systematic, evidence-first risk research: shipping the part of the problem that can be measured and reproduced today, rather than the part that can only be asserted. He also builds Railo, an automated platform that ships deterministic security fixes in every pull request. Based in Dhaka; engagements conducted remotely.