What is Gstock?

GStock was a stock market analytics website developed in 2006 that provided clients with buy and sell signals on US-listed stocks.

The website catered to retail investors in the US who wanted access to technical analysis solutions for stock trading and to those who wanted to “beat the market”.

The unique characteristic of GStock was its vision to be a “supercomputer” by allowing volunteers to donate idle computing power.

Is GStock still operational and how did it function? Let’s learn more about the definition of GStock below.

Key points

What is Gstock?

GStock was a stock market analysis project established in 2006. 

It was a distributed computing project that allowed users to donate free computing capacity from their computer processing units (CPU). Volunteers had to download and run software in order to contribute CPU capacity. 

GStock was designed to be a “supercomputer dedicated to stock market analysis”. It shared similarities with the blockchain technology of today, where computers from across the world come together to verify transactions.

For GStock, the accumulated computing power was utilised to scan and analyse investment strategies that historically worked best for individual stocks. 

“GStock is a Virtual Supercomputer formed by many computers calculating a huge amount of investment strategies with one goal - To pick the best profit-making strategy for each stock,” said its archived website.

What does GStock mean? It is a shorthand for Grid Stock, which is the company behind the project. Grid Stock was based in Herndon, US.

As of December 2022, GStock’s official website was no longer functioning. The information in this article is based on GStock’s archived website.

GStock explained: How did Gstock work?

According to its archived website, GStock was an investment analytics website that provided stock alerts and investment strategies to retail investors.

GStock tested over one billion strategies per stock based on historical trading data in order to find the best investment strategy for a particular stock.

“As if, technology companies' stocks behave like oil companies' stocks. Companies, markets, core investors and operations are different - using the same strategy for all stock just doesn't make sense. That is why we find the best strategy that fits like a glove for every single stock. And it works like a charm,” said GStock.

GStock provided users with buy and sell signals on all US-traded stocks. Users were sent daily email reports with these ratings. GStock also signalled the right time to buy and sell a stock “in order to beat the Buy & Hold' strategy by several folds”.

The website had a stock picker interface for users to screen stocks based on market capitalisation, performance, industry and other parameters. According to its website, GStock’s stock picker was only available to premium users.

Was Gstock useful for traders?

Based on statistics shared on its official website, GStock said its portfolio beat benchmark US indices the S&P 500 (US500), Nasdaq Composite and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (US30) by 300% between January 2004 and June 2006.

A buy and sell call on internet company Travelzoo (TZOO) between 15 February 2006 and 27 April 2006 resulted in a return of 111% from the trade, GStock said.

In another trade, GStock claimed trade returns of about 186% in a two-day window between 4 April 2006 and 6 April 2006 on a buy-sell signal on OraLabs Holding Corp.

GStock quoted Tal Schwartz, PhD in Finance, Cornell University, on its website, who said:

Final thoughts

Today GStock has been replaced by a plethora of stock market analytics and investment tools. These new websites provide more advanced and accurate tools to help traders in their market journey. 

It is important for market participants to note that stock market forecasts can be wrong. The future of the market is uncertain and no-one can predict the future accurately. Forecasts shouldn’t be used as a substitute for your own research. 

Always conduct your own due diligence and remember that your decision to trade or invest should depend on your risk tolerance, expertise in the market, portfolio size and investment goals. And never invest money that you cannot afford to lose.

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