Your Press Releases Are Leaving Money on the Table

After analyzing more than 500 press releases from NYSE and NASDAQ micro-cap and small-cap companies, the finding is consistent and concerning: the average algo score is 47 out of 100.

That means the typical small-cap press release is failing to clear the threshold that would trigger positive algorithmic attention from institutional trading systems.

What the Scoring Analysis Revealed

The gap between low-scoring and high-scoring releases is not about company quality — it is almost entirely about structural language choices.

The bottom quartile shares these characteristics:

• •Headlines written for human readers, not for NLP classification — vague, adjective-heavy, non-specific
• •Passive voice in the lead paragraph
• •Financial metrics buried after three paragraphs of narrative
• •Boilerplate forward-looking statement language that NLP systems flag as maximum uncertainty

The top quartile shares these characteristics:

• •Headlines with a specific metric, comparison period, and directional word in the first 10 words
• •Active voice with named executives driving outcomes
• •Key financial metrics in the first 75 words
• •Causal language — "driven by," "resulting from" — that NLP systems classify as explanatory

The Language Changes That Move Scores 20+ Points

Change 1: Specificity in the headline. Replace "Company Reports Strong Q1 Results" (scores 12/100) with "Company Reports Q1 Revenue of $X, Up 23% YoY, Raises Full-Year Guidance" (scores 67/100). Same news, 55-point difference.

Change 2: Executive attribution with action verbs. Replace "Revenue growth was achieved during the period" with "CEO John Smith grew recurring revenue 23% by expanding three enterprise accounts." The latter scores 31 points higher on attribution models.

Change 3: Operational causation. Every metric needs a because. "Revenue increased 23% because enterprise contract signings doubled year-over-year" scores dramatically higher than "revenue increased 23%."

What a 20-Point Score Improvement Means for Your Stock

Companies whose releases consistently score above 65 show measurably different trading patterns in the 72 hours post-release:

• •Higher average volume vs. 10-day baseline
• •Tighter bid-ask spreads
• •Lower probability of triggering short-seller screening alerts
• •Higher probability of appearing in momentum fund opportunity sets

We'll score your last three press releases for free and show you exactly where points are being lost — and what specific language changes would recover them.