Glossary term
Heat Score
Closelook’s 0–100 reading of how much a theme is driving the market right now, attached to every entry in the 101 reference and shown with a trend arrow. It is an editorial judgement updated as the reference is maintained, not a computed indicator.
AI-generated — produced automatically by Closelook’s systems under this site’s editorial policy.
What it means
Each of the themes in the Closelook 101 — the memory wall, the power constraint, the SaaSpocalypse, sovereign AI and the rest — carries a heat score from 0 to 100 and a trend: rising, falling or flat. A score above 80 means the theme is moving prices this week; below 40 means it is background. The score is set by the editors when an entry is written or revised and reflects the tape, the print calendar and the news flow at that moment. The 101 listing sorts by it, so the hottest themes read first.
It is deliberately not a formula: a theme can be quiet in the data and loud in the market, and the score is meant to say which.
Why it matters for the AI trade
The AI trade is a set of themes that take turns leading. In September 2026 the economic-scenarios and recursive-self-improvement entries entered at 86 and 91 as the labs’ pacing call made the pace of the frontier the market’s subject; the capex-cliff theme rose with it and the memory-wall theme cooled as memory prices fell. Reading the scores together is a faster map of the tape than the index moves.
How Closelook uses it
Scores appear on the 101 listing with a heat bar and on each entry with a note explaining the current reading; the “new and updated” strip surfaces entries whose score has just changed. The sentinel ticker entry describes the single-stock counterpart — the name whose price confirms or denies a theme.
Common questions
- How is the heat score calculated?
- It is not calculated; it is set by the editors when an entry is written or revised, from the tape, the print calendar and the news flow. That is stated on every entry so that readers do not mistake it for a model output.
- How often does it change?
- When the entry is maintained — typically when a theme moves, a print lands or a read is published. Scores are not updated on a schedule.
- What does the trend arrow mean?
- Rising means the theme is gaining influence on prices since the last revision, falling that it is losing it, flat that it is stable. The arrow is the editors’ direction of travel, not a rate of change.