TRADRILL / GLOSSARY / TRANSMISSION CHAINS

What Is a Transmission Chain?

Category: Transmission chainsChinese: 传导链2026-08-16

Short definition

A transmission chain is a written sequence of hops from a real technology event to the listed companies it touches, where every hop names a relationship type, cites a source you can open, and states a magnitude — and where the chain ends in arithmetic, not a conclusion.

What it means

A transmission chain is the unit a Tradrill note is built from. It starts at an event (a supply agreement, a product launch, a capacity announcement), moves through the parts or techniques the event involves, and lands on specific companies. Each step — a hop — is a claim of the form "A affects B through relationship R, at magnitude M, according to source S." The chain is the ordered list of those claims.

What makes it a method rather than a story is the three-part rule on every hop: a relationship type (supply chain, revenue exposure, competitor, partnership), an evidence link, and a magnitude with the basis it was computed on. A hop missing any of the three is not stored and not shown. The rule exists because the failure mode of reading technology news is not ignorance but unanchored inference — a chain forces each inference to carry its own receipt.

A chain deliberately stops before the question readers most want answered. It says how large the exposure is and what the evidence supports; it does not say what to do about it. That boundary is what keeps the object educational: the value is in the arithmetic being checkable, and a checkable calculation is worth more to a learner than an opinion they cannot audit.

What a well-formed chain looks like

Before trusting a chain, check that it has these properties:

Every hop names one relationship type — not "is related to" but supply chain, revenue exposure, competitor or partnership.
Every hop links to a source a reader can open, and quotes the passage it relies on.
Every magnitude states its basis: which period, which filing, which denominator.
Magnitudes are labelled disclosed or estimated, and estimates list their assumptions.
The chain says what its evidence does not support, not only what it does.
It ends in a calculation and a market-reaction record, not in an instruction.

How to read a chain

Read it as an auditor, not as a consumer:

1.Start at the event and confirm it happened: open the event source before reading any hop.
2.For each hop, read the quote first and the claim second — ask whether the quote actually contains the relationship and the number.
3.Track the magnitude arithmetic across hops; the smallest exposure in the chain usually bounds the whole story.
4.Note which hops are estimated and what assumptions they carry; those are where the chain is most likely to be wrong.
5.Write down your own judgement of the chain before looking at the market-reaction section, then compare.

Frequently asked questions

Is a transmission chain a prediction?

No. It is a description of exposure — which companies an event touches and how much of their business is involved, according to cited evidence. It does not forecast prices and it does not tell a reader what to do; readers form their own view and can test it in simulation.

Why does every hop need a magnitude?

Because without a number, "affects" is unfalsifiable. A relationship worth 0.02% of revenue and one worth 20% are both "exposure"; only the number separates a headline from a material link. The magnitude also carries a basis so a reader can recompute it.

What happens when a hop cannot be sourced?

It does not enter the chain. A note may mention the suspected link in its failure-analysis section as an open question, but an unsourced hop is never drawn as part of the chain.

Keep reading: How to Keep a Trading Journal (for Practice) · How to Spot and Avoid Trading Scams and Investment Fraud

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