Archive note · corrected
Down-market trading advice: the content scorecard needs its archive
A dated correction preserves neutral market-regime definitions while withdrawing unsupported post samples, outcome gaps, survey context and causal claims.
What changed in this article
Editorial correction · 9 September 2026. The original article was published on 16 February 2026 and claimed that down-market social-media advice had more urgency, more deletions and worse benchmarked accuracy. It presented N=52 accounts, N=1,286 posts, N=742 trade-call posts, calm/down-market percentages, return gaps and survey context. The page did not preserve the post archive, regime timestamps, benchmark rows, deletion audit, survey identifiers or calculations. Those content, outcome, prevalence and causal claims are withdrawn. The original URL and publication date remain unchanged.
This correction keeps a neutral evidence-audit workflow. It does not tell readers to reduce allocation, pause trading or follow any particular source.
What the available market definitions establish
| Source | Dated definition | Boundary |
|---|---|---|
| S&P 500 series at FRED | FRED identifies the S&P 500 series as a daily closing price index sourced to S&P Dow Jones Indices, with dividends excluded. | A future down-market label must specify this index or another exact instrument and its observation window. The definition does not validate a content audit. |
| Cboe VIX overview and VIXCLS at FRED | Cboe defines VIX from near-term volatility expectations in S&P 500 option prices; FRED provides a daily closing VIX series sourced to Cboe. | These definitions can support a preregistered market regime, but they do not establish the article’s post-level classifications or creator outcomes. |
No source-complete creator archive or survey record was supplied for the original scorecard. The correction therefore does not replace it with another percentage.
What is withdrawn
The 52-account, 1,286-post and 742-call samples; 18%/41% urgency, 54%/29% benchmark disclosure, 47%/26% completeness, 9%/22% deletion, 52%/39% hit-rate and +1.1pp/−2.3pp outcome comparisons; the 37% posting increase; survey prevalence and consumer-confidence context; and the claimed causal chain are not verified findings. The proposed cooling-off, allocation and signal-intake rules are not published as advice.
The neutral audit question remains: can a public post be retrieved with its original timestamp, wording, benchmark and outcome without hindsight edits? That question is not answered by an unregistered scorecard.
Minimum register for a future content-quality study
Record each post URL and archived version; creator, timestamp, edit/deletion observation and wording; market instrument, regime series and cutoff; benchmark and return convention; call inclusion/deduplication rules; survey instrument, field dates and sample; outcome horizon; and complete calculations. Distinguish content observations from market results and from survey context.
Original publication: 16 February 2026. Correction: 9 September 2026. AI-assisted source checking and writing; no independent human expert review. This page is educational market research, not personalized investment advice.