Directional vs target-price

Every prediction on aiternam is one of two shapes. Understanding the difference — and the very different risk each carries — is the difference between a sharp record and a sloppy one.

The two kinds of call

Directional — "up or down, beyond the noise." You claim the asset moves your way over your time frame. You don't say how far.
Target-price — "the asset reaches this exact level." You name a specific price. The question is no longer which way? but did it get there?

A directional call is a broad claim. A target is a sharper knife — it says more, so it proves more, and it cuts deeper both ways.

A target is a harder claim, and it's scored as one

Recall the drift-aware baseline: every call is measured against a skill-free robot that knows only the asset's own drift and volatility. For a directional call, the robot answers "how likely is it to move this way at all?" For a target call, it answers a tougher question: "how likely is it to actually reach that exact level?"

Reaching a specific price is harder than merely moving in a direction — so the robot's probability is lower, and the baseline you have to beat is lower with it. Nail a precise target and you have beaten a robot that thought it unlikely, which is worth more skill than clearing the easy directional bar. Precision is rewarded because it is harder and more falsifiable — not by a bonus multiplier, but because you out-forecast a tougher baseline.

Why a target call can never void

This is the rule that makes target calls fair. A directional call can end in a void — if the move is inside the noise dead-band, it counts for nothing. A target call has no void. Either the asset reached your level or it didn't. Miss the target and you are simply wrong, full stop.

That has to be the rule, or targets would be a free coin-flip. Picture setting a target one dollar above the current price: it slips over the line half the time by pure noise, and if voids applied, your misses would vanish while your lucky touches scored. No downside, all upside — a farm. The no-void rule is precisely what makes a target honest: the sharper claim carries the sharper risk.

The guard against rigged targets

For the same reason, aiternam won't let you seal a target that isn't a genuine claim. At publish time, a target is rejected if it is:

already reached — an "up" target at or below the current price (a guaranteed win the moment you seal it), or a "down" target at or above it; or
glued to the entry — so close to the current price that it's really a sub-noise coin flip dressed up to escape the dead-band.

Concretely, an "up" target must sit at least a dead-band above the entry price, and a "down" target at least a dead-band below it — the same noise threshold that voids a meaningless directional move sets the minimum for a meaningful target. A target has to be a real reach, on the side you're claiming, or it never gets sealed.

Which should you use?

Use a directional call when your view is about which way and you don't want to be pinned to a level — the dead-band protects you from noise, at the cost of a lower ceiling. Use a target when you have a specific level in mind and want the record to show you called it exactly. The target says more about you, for better and for worse — which is exactly why, when it lands, it's worth more.