Live journal

**Day summary (2026-09-15, paper, equity $95,176, cash $68,389 = 71.9%)**
A rebound day for the semis book after 9/14's sector-wide AI risk-off, with one exception: TSM. AMD +2.19% (close $504.20, reclaiming all of 9/14's -4.40%), NVDA +0.57% ($212.17), MU +0.39% ($927.60), the NVDA Oct-16 $220 call +5.10%, while MSFT gave back -1.64% ($497.12) and TSM fell -0.99% ($413.89) after gapping down to open $421.94 and printing a $412.55 low. One trade: TSM add-on-dip filled 8.4627 sh @ $413.58 ($3,500) at 12:11 ET. Pending queue was empty at start of pass; I have queued one revision (#65). Note the inverted correlation from 9/14 — MSFT was the only gainer that day and the only loser today, which is exactly the diversifier's job.

**Per-strategy check**
- **tsm-swing-contest (v6)** — thesis honored, and today was its first real test. The v6 bounded add-on window (price > 406 and price < 414) was written on 9/14 specifically so a gap-down open could not fill a "price < X" rule one ATR above the stop. TSM gapped exactly that way and the window filled at $413.58, leaving ~$15.6 (~1.8 ATR) of slack above the $398 stop. Position is now 18.976 sh @ $421.58, ~8.25% of equity against an 8% target — the add-on window has done its work and the strategy is fully built. The 8/24 low ($405.15) was approached but not broken, and volume fell to 8.3M from 14.3M, so the invalidation condition (heavy-volume close below $405.15) is not met. No change proposed.
- **nvda-momentum-swing (v7)** — no rules fired; NVDA closed $212.17 inside the stated $207-234 base. add-on-dip (<214) and entry-call (<212) are both technically live at today's price, which is why I checked: they were consumed on 9/14 and position_weight is now ~8.2%, at target, so further adds would push past the 10% max. Stop <204 is ~3.9% below. The one real blemish is already logged: 9/14's one-sided "<214" add-on filled at $209.38 on a gap, only 0.76 ATR above the $204 stop, versus the designed 1.4 ATR. TSM's window proved the fix; NVDA got the diagnosis first but TSM got the cure.
- **amd-swing (v6)** — two measurable defects, revision queued. entry-step/entry-call both require position_weight == 0, unreachable since the 9/10 fill, yet entry-call still displays as armed; and it is independently unexecutable ($900 cannot buy a 30+DTE 5%-OTM contract on a $500 stock — skipped 9/10, the fourth such skip in this book). Also, 9/14's $480.33 intraday low dipped under the <$482 deep entry without filling.
- **msft-diversifier-swing (v2)** — working as designed, no action. -1.64% to $497.12 on the day the semis bounced; 9/14 it was +1.97% while MU fell -5.25%. Position 9.128 sh @ $492.98, roughly flat (+$40). add-on <478 (-3.8%), TP >520, stop <465 all untouched. Its paired $1,200 call leg at <490 remains armed and is the one non-NVDA option leg I still consider plausibly affordable.
- **mu-oversold-swing (v7)** — no rules fired, position 3.8718 sh @ $903.97, +$92. The v7 gap-aware window (price > 915 and price < 960) is already validated in principle by TSM today. Stop <866 is ~6.6% below; TP >1050 is ~13% above. FQ4 earnings ~09-30 is the next real event and deserves a pre-earnings review.
- **crm-fade-swing** — archived, no rules, no action.

**Lessons**
- Bounded entry windows beat one-sided thresholds on high-priced, high-ATR names. Recorded as a durable rule: for stocks above ~$300 with ATR of 2-3%, write entries with both a lower and an upper bound and place the stop at least 1 ATR under the window's floor. TSM's fill at 1.8 ATR of slack versus NVDA's at 0.76 ATR is the controlled comparison, one week apart, same book.
- The sentinel samples discrete prices; it does not see intraday extremes. AMD's $480.33 low on 9/14 did not trigger the <$482 rule, just as MU's quote clearing >$1010 on 9/04 did not fill the take-profit. Put levels inside real trading bodies, not on wick extremes, and never raise a threshold to chase a miss that was never actually fillable.
- The "queued analysis unparseable — left for human review" sentinel log is cosmetic. It appeared at 15:06 on the TSM rule and that same hard rule filled normally five minutes later. This is at least the fifth occurrence; I am treating it as noise in the analysis-text path, not an execution risk, and will stop investigating it unless a hard rule actually fails to fire.
- Option affordability is a structural constraint of this book, not an outage. Four skips now (TSM 9/10, AMD 9/10, MU 9/14) all on $400+ underlyings. Under the 2%-of-equity premium discipline (~$1,900), only NVDA at ~$212 reliably supports a call leg. Strategies on expensive underlyings should be written as stock-only rather than carrying dead option entries.

**Proposals**
- Queued revision #65: **amd-swing v6 → v7** (awaiting your approval on the Pending page; I cannot apply it). Three changes, no change to price levels or the fundamental thesis: (1) mark entry-step `triggered` — it is factually consumed; (2) delete entry-call outright, as it is both permanently unreachable and unaffordable, making AMD an explicitly stock-only leg; (3) convert entry-dip from `< 482` to the bounded window `> 465 and < 482`, so a gap opening at $445-455 cannot buy less than half an ATR above the $438 stop. The paired take-profit-options/stop-loss-options exits are deliberately kept — they no-op without an option position and preserve an exit if one is ever opened manually. $482/$560/$438 and the ~$4,000 total commitment are unchanged. Accepted trade-off: a gap straight through the window means no fill at all.
- No revision proposed for NVDA, MSFT, MU or TSM. NVDA's spacing flaw is real but its add-on is already consumed at target weight, so rewriting the geometry now would be cosmetic; the right moment is the next time that strategy needs to open an entry. I would rather leave it documented in memory than churn a strategy file for no behavioral change.
- For your consideration, no action taken: the book is now ~72% cash with TSM (8.25%) and NVDA (8.2%) both at their swing targets. Every remaining ladder step sits 4-7% below market. That is the design working, not a failure — but MU's FQ4 earnings around 09-30 is the one dated event that could move a satellite position, and it is worth deciding before then whether that position is held through the print or trimmed into it.

**Day summary — 2026-09-14 (paper, equity $95,108, cash $71,889 = 75.6%)**

A sector-wide AI risk-off session, not a fundamental event: public calls by AI-lab leaders (Anthropic/OpenAI) for slower frontier development triggered a broad semiconductor selloff, with memory hit hardest. Book moves: MU -5.25%, AMD -4.40%, TSM -3.41%, NVDA -3.36% (on 123M shares, above the prior two sessions' 83-106M), MSFT +1.97%. Three rules fired, all hard rules on auto-execution paths, none of them my doing:

- MU entry-dip: 3.8718 sh @ $903.97 ($3,500)
- NVDA entry-call: 2× NVDA 2026-10-16 $220C @ $4.65 ($930)
- NVDA add-on-dip: 16.716 sh @ $209.38 ($3,500)
- MU entry-call ($800, dte≥30, otm 6%): skipped — "no affordable option contract"

Net P/L on positions: -$210. Invested weight rose to ~24%.

**Per-strategy check**

- **nvda-momentum-swing (v7)** — Rules behaved as written, but the *geometry* v7 was specifically built to fix got undone by the gap. v7 moved the add-on to <$214 and the stop to <$204 precisely to keep ~$10 (~1.4 ATR) of spacing. The gap-down open filled the add-on at $209.38, leaving $5.38 (~0.76 ATR) to the stop — a 2.6% further decline liquidates the whole 36.57-share position and closes the new calls. The intraday low $208.93 is 0.8% above the stated invalidation level (8/24 low, $207.25). Position is now ~8.1% of equity, at target, approaching the 10% max. Also the one genuine success: NVDA is the only name in this book where the ~$1,000 option budget actually buys a 30+DTE contract.
- **mu-oversold-swing (v6)** — Thesis and rule diverged measurably. The rule was written on 9/8 to enter a ~6.5% pullback around $950-960 with the $880 stop ~2 ATR away; it instead filled at $903.97, 2.7% (~0.7 ATR) above the stop, essentially on top of the strategy's own invalidation level ($887.61). The rule bought into the zone the document defines as thesis failure. Revision proposed.
- **tsm-swing-contest (v5)** — Two rules have been displaying "armed" while being permanently unreachable (`position_weight == 0` after the 9/10 fill), and the option leg is separately unexecutable. Add-on $415 / stop $404 is only 1.26 ATR of spacing, below the standard set in the NVDA v7 review. Revision proposed. Behaviorally the thesis held: lowest drawdown of the four semis names today.
- **amd-swing (v6)** — No action, correct. Closed $493.41; deep tier <$482 is now only -2.3% away, the closest it has been. Stop $438 is -11% away. Nothing off.
- **msft-diversifier-swing (v2)** — No action, correct, and the strategy earned its keep: the only green position on a sector shock day, the second such confirmation after 9/10. Watch item: its `buy_call $1200` leg at <$490 is probably unaffordable on a ~$505 stock too, but there is no evidence yet — I will not pre-emptively cut an untested rule.

**Lessons written**

1. *Gap-through-entry compresses the stop.* An entry condition with only an upper bound (`price < X`) fills far below X on a gap day, collapsing the designed entry-to-stop distance into noise. Documented with both of today's cases. Fix: bound the entry window on both sides for high-ATR names, or define stops as an ATR multiple of the actual fill.
2. *Option-leg affordability is structural.* Four skips now, all on >$400 stocks (TSM, AMD 9/10; MU 9/14). At ~2% of equity per position, only NVDA-priced names are reachable. The right response is deleting dead call legs, not raising budgets past the discipline.
3. Recorded the sector-shock day itself: four semis positions correlated near 1.0; the diversification that worked came from the non-semis leg, not from holding four different chip names.

**Proposals (both queued, neither applied — your approval only)**

- **#59 mu-oversold-swing v7** — entry window bounded (`price > 915 and price < 960`); stop $880 → $866 (~0.6 ATR below the 8/24 low, so a wick doesn't liquidate; ~1.1 ATR from the actual fill, worst case ~-$147); dead `buy_call $800` + `close_options` removed.
- **#60 tsm-swing-contest v6** — dead `position_weight == 0` rules resolved, unaffordable `entry-call` and its two paired `close_options` rules deleted (no TSM option position exists, so removal carries no risk); add-on becomes a bounded window `$406 < price < $414`; stop $404 → $398.

**Not proposed, and why:** NVDA has the same compressed-spacing defect, and it is the most consequential one in the book. I did not queue a fix because `propose_strategy_revision` rejects option actions on anything other than an `auto` strategy, and nvda-momentum-swing is `confirm` with two live $220 calls — any revision I could submit would have to strip `entry-call` *and* both `close_options` rules, leaving the open contracts with no automated exit. That is worse than the current state. If you want NVDA's add-on bounded and its stop re-spaced, the options question has to be decided first (keep the calls and accept manual management, or move the strategy to `auto`). I cannot change that boundary or the authorization level myself.

**Day summary（2026-09-11）**
账户权益 $95,276，现金 $79,819（约 83.8%），四个持仓全部延续 9/10 的自动成交状态，今日无成交、无观察记录、Pending 队列为空。今日是 9/10 板块级获利了结后的反弹修复日：AMD 收 $516.13（+2.49%，区间 $501.35-521.06，量 1,830 万股）、TSM 收 $433.19（+1.21%）、MSFT 收 $495.63（+0.65%）、NVDA 收 $218.29（-0.03%，量 8,329 万股为近月最低）。宏观层面 8 月 CPI 于今日公布，核心 CPI 环比 +0.3%（高于预期 +0.2%）、整体 +0.4%、同比维持 3.4%，利率期货对 9 月中议息会议的加息概率定价约 85%——这与 9/10 偏热的 PPI 是同一条线索：半导体的回撤是利率/估值驱动，不是 AI 需求叙事受损。四仓合计浮盈约 -$43，基本打平；NVDA 是唯一浮亏仓（-$164，-3.8%）。

**Per-strategy check**
- nvda-momentum-swing（v7，8% 目标，实际 4.6%）：收 $218.29，完全符合 v7 thesis 描述的 $207-234 区间震荡。加仓档 <$214（-2.0%）、期权腿 <$212（-2.9%）、止损 <$204（-6.5%）、止盈 >$248（+13.6%），全部未触及，今日"无动作"是正确结果。v7 修复的 $10（~1.4 ATR）档距在今日 $218.15-222.00 的窄幅波动中未受考验。需留意：entry-initial 仍处 triggered，自动修订不会 re-arm，若要重新建仓须在策略页手动操作。
- tsm-swing-contest（v5，8% 目标，实际 4.8%）：收 $433.19，持仓 10.5133 股 @ $428.03，浮盈 +$56（+1.2%）。今日 ATR 实测继续低于其他仓（区间仅 $428.90-435.37，1.5%），"最低波动锚"定位成立。加仓 <$415（-4.2%）、止盈 >$460（+6.2%）、止损 <$404（-6.7%）均未触及。entry-call 的 $900 腿已于 9/10 因"无可负担合约"跳过且条件（position_weight == 0）现已永久不可达——同 MSFT 的缺陷，但暂不重复提案。
- amd-swing（v6，4% 目标，实际 2.1%）：收 $516.13，持仓 3.9612 股 @ $504.90，浮盈 +$44（+2.5%），是今日最强仓。v6 于 9/9 把门槛从 $475-485 抬到 $505/$482 的重锚决策连续两日被验证：9/10 成交、9/11 即反弹 +2.5%。剩余深档 <$482（-6.6%）已随反弹拉远，止盈 >$560（+8.5%）、止损 <$438（-15.1%）。止损距市价过远是单档小仓（$2,000）的必然结果，可接受。
- msft-diversifier-swing（v1，8% 目标，实际 4.7%）：收 $495.63，浮盈 +$21。9/8 建仓以来四个交易日收盘落在 $491.65-495.63 的极窄带内，且 9/10 板块回落日仅 +0.16%——低波动非半导体分散器的核心假设已被实测确认。唯一缺陷是规则工程而非价格：entry-call 已死（见下）。
- mu-oversold-swing（v6，4% 目标，零仓位）：MU 收 $975.26（-0.22%，区间 $967.38-993.99）。entry-dip 门槛 <$960 距市价仅 -1.6%，是全书最接近触发的规则——本周 MU 已两次逼近（9/10 低 $973.50、9/11 低 $967.38）。止损 <$880、止盈 >$1,050 结构合理。零仓位在此是设计结果，不是失败；但需注意 MU 的 FQ4 财报约在 9 月底，若在财报前一两日触发建仓，等于用硬规则承担事件风险——这一点我未能在本轮核实确切日期（搜索未返回可靠结果），列为明确的未解事项。
- crm-fade-swing：已归档，无规则，无动作。

**Lessons**
写入 lesson 层一条"死规则与期权预算审计"：(1) 以 `position_weight == 0` 为条件的期权腿，一旦同条件股票腿成交即永久不可达，但策略页仍显示 armed，制造"还会执行"的错觉——NVDA v7 已修正，MSFT v1 仍存此缺陷，TSM v5 同样中招；(2) $900 的期权预算对 $400-500 价位标的普遍买不到 30+DTE 合约，9/10 的 TSM 与 AMD 两腿均因此跳过，应提高到约 $1,000-1,200 或直接删除规则，不要留着假装会执行。另写入 MSFT 当日结论（低波动分散假设被实测确认 + 死规则记录）。今日最重要的正面确认：AMD v6 的"重锚而非死等深档"是本书里第一个连续两日被价格验证的修订。

**Proposals**
提交 #55：msft-diversifier-swing v1 -> v2，只改两处——entry-call 从不可达的 `position_weight == 0 and price < 495` 改为纯回调条件 `price < 490 and position_weight < 0.10`（$490 位于 9/8-9/11 实测区间 $486-499 内），期权预算 $900 -> $1,200（约权益 1.26%，仍在 2% 纪律内）；配对的 take-profit-options(>520) 与 stop-loss-options(<465) 已存在且不变。价格档位（加仓 <$478、止盈 >$520、止损 <$465）、目标权重、基本面 thesis 全部不动，因为低波动假设已被实测确认，无重锚理由。等待你在 Pending 页决定——我无权自行应用。未提交的两项（TSM v5 同类死规则、MU 财报前建仓的事件风险）留待下一轮，避免同一天堆叠多个提案。

**Day summary (2026-09-10)**

A sector-wide profit-taking session in semis, on the heels of a hot August PPI print and Middle-East tension (external reporting; group-wide, not name-specific). The book went from two positions to four in one day, and every semis leg closed red:

- AMD −3.36% (o 508.70 / h 516.33 / l 502.92 / c 503.60, vol 15.6M — below the 22-28M of 9/8-9/9)
- NVDA −2.37% (c 218.36, vol 98.8M — below the 120-300M post-earnings pace)
- TSM −1.63% (c 428.28, vol 7.0M — the lightest in a month)
- MSFT +0.16% — the only green line

Two fills, both rule-driven, both hard rules on `auto` strategies, both at the sentinel's discretion (I placed nothing and can place nothing):
- TSM 09:41 ET, 10.5133 sh @ $428.03 ($4,500), rule `entry-initial` (<$430)
- AMD 12:11 ET, 3.9612 sh @ $504.90 ($2,000), rule `entry-step` (<$505)

Both accompanying $900 call legs were **skipped: "no affordable option contract."**

Equity $95,140, cash $79,819 (~84%), total unrealized −$179 (NVDA −$166 is nearly all of it). Pending queue was empty at open. Note that AMD filled at $504.90 and closed $503.60 — the entry is essentially at the day's second-lowest print zone, so today's −3.36% day-change on the position is a marked-to-open artifact, not a −3.36% loss (actual: −$5).

**Per-strategy check**

- **tsm-swing-contest (v5)** — Working as written, and this was the cleanest execution of the week. v5 deliberately waited for a ~2% pullback instead of chasing the 9/8 close of $439; it got $428.03 two sessions later and closed the day at $428.28, i.e. flat to cost. Weight 4.7% vs 8% target. Remaining ladder: add-on <$415 (−3.1%), stop <$404 (below the printed 8/24 low $405.15), TP >$460. The thesis claim that TSM is the lowest-vol name in the book held today: it fell least of the three semis. No change proposed.
- **amd-swing (v6)** — Working as written, and v6 vindicated the re-anchoring decision. v5 (written 9/8) required a pullback to $475-485, which was 7.5% below market and would never have filled; v6 moved the trigger to <$505 on 9/9 and it filled the next day. Weight 2.1% vs 4% target; deep tranche <$482 is only −4.3% away, which is reachable for a name with ~3% daily range. Stop $438 sits under the printed 9/3 low of $440.50 — correctly placed. No change proposed.
- **msft-diversifier-swing** — Did exactly the job it was added for: it was the only position that didn't fall on a semis-wide down day. Weight 4.7% vs 8% target; add-on <$478 is −2.8% away. One dead rule: `entry-call` is conditioned on `position_weight == 0`, which the 9/8 stock leg permanently consumed, so it will stay armed forever and never fire. Noted in memory; not worth a revision on its own since MSFT's low IV is one of the two places a ~$900 budget could plausibly buy a contract — flagging it for the user rather than churning the file.
- **nvda-momentum-swing (v6)** — **Measurably off. Revision proposed.** Two defects: (1) `add-on-dip` at <$210 and `stop-loss` at <$208 are $2 apart against a ~14-day ATR of ~$7.10 — any session reaching the add-on has near-even odds of also tripping the stop, so the design buys $3,500 and liquidates it. (2) The thesis explicitly says the stop is "anchored under the 8/24 swing low, not a round number," but $208 is a round number and sits *above* the printed 8/24 low of $207.25. That is the precise failure v3 was written to fix (the old <217 stop was taken out by a single $216.81 wick on 9/1; NVDA closed $217.44 that day and later ran to $234). Today's close of $218.36 puts price ~5% from the add-on, so this is not urgent — but it should be fixed before it matters, not after.
- **mu-oversold-swing (v2)** — Zero position, all rules armed, correct behavior. MU $977.41 vs the <$960 trigger: only −1.8% away, the closest of any armed entry, and MU fell hard today with the group. Worth flagging: when it does trigger, the paired `buy_call $800` will almost certainly be skipped as unaffordable (see lessons) — the stock leg will go on alone.
- **crm-fade-swing** — Archived, no rules, nothing to review.

**Lessons written to memory**

1. `option-leg-budget-mismatch` — The recurring "no affordable option contract" skip is now explained, not just observed. A $900-1,000 budget cannot buy one 30+DTE, 5%-OTM contract on a $400-500 underlying: rough 30-day premium ≈ 0.4·S·IV·√(T/365) puts AMD near $2,600/contract, TSM near $2,000, MU (at $977) near $5,600 — all above the ~2%-of-equity (~$1,900) discipline cap. Practical rule: only NVDA (~$218) and low-IV MSFT are candidates for a ~$1,000 option leg; on $400+ high-IV names, write stock-only rules instead of legs that are guaranteed to skip. This supersedes the older "options tooling is down / server error" note in memory — today's skips are an economic constraint, not a broken tool, which is a different problem with a different fix.
2. `option-leg-mutually-exclusive-condition` — Pairing a stock leg and an option leg on the same `position_weight == 0` condition means whichever executes first kills the other permanently (MSFT 9/8). Option legs should carry independent price conditions.
3. `re-anchor-thresholds-works` — Four of five re-anchored entries (MSFT <$495, NVDA <$228, TSM <$430, AMD <$505) filled within 1-2 days, and every historical threshold set 5%+ below market (TSM v3's <$395/<$375, AMD v5's <$482, MU's <$960) never filled. Starter thresholds belong 1-2% below market; 4-7% is for deep tranches. Recorded with the honest counter-cost: because all four filled inside two days, the whole book was established straight into a sector pullback — fill-rate was bought at the price of entry-timing diversification, so staged/time-based tranching still matters.
4. Position/state notes: `AMD-2026-09-10`, `TSM-2026-09-10`, and `book-state-2026-09-10` (~16% invested, 84% cash is the designed outcome — the five target weights sum to only 24%, so cash is not idle by mistake).

**Proposals**

- Queued **#54, nvda-momentum-swing v7** (needs your approval on the Pending page; I cannot apply it): `add-on-dip` <$210 → **<$214** (into the real 8/24-8/26 base of $208.48/$213.05/$209.66 closes); `stop-loss` <$208 → **<$204** (below the printed 8/24 low with ~0.4 ATR slack, ~3.2 ATR under the $226.61 entry). Spacing becomes ~$10 (~1.4 ATR), matching how TSM (<415/<404) and MSFT (<478/<465) are already built. Also rewrites the unreachable `entry-call` from `position_weight == 0` to a pure dip condition (<$212), keeping its existing paired `close_options` profit-target and stop. Worst case if both legs fill: ~$8,000 notional, stop ≈ −6% off a blended ~$220 cost ≈ −$480, ~0.5% of equity.
- No revision proposed for TSM, AMD, MSFT, or MU. All four behaved as their theses specify, and the option-leg budget issue is better handled as a standing design rule for future drafts than by rewriting four files today.
- Judgment call you may want to overrule: I did *not* propose stripping the now-dead option legs from amd-swing and tsm-swing-contest. Both are marked `triggered` and cannot fire again, so removing them is cosmetic — but it does leave two strategy files describing option exposure the book will never hold.

**Day summary (2026-09-09, paper)**
Quiet session: no trades, no observations, empty pending queue at start. Equity $95,251, cash $86,319 (~90.6% cash, 9.4% invested). Both positions drifted slightly lower — NVDA closed $223.67 (-0.91% on the day, low $223.46, volume 75.2M, the lightest in a month) against a $226.61 cost, and MSFT closed $491.65 (-0.47%, volume 11.9M) against $492.98. Combined open P&L about -$68, i.e. noise. Meanwhile the three zero-position names all moved *away* from their entry gates rather than toward them: AMD +3.0% to $521.09 (high $526.79), MU +2.75% to $1,027.77 (high $1,042.40), TSM -0.78% to $435.56. The semis complex was strong and our two holdings were the two laggards — the book was positioned defensively into an up day for the sector it is supposedly long.

**Per-strategy check**
- **nvda-momentum-swing (v6, filled 9/8 @ $226.61)** — behaving as written. Thesis says NVDA is basing in a $208-234 range post-earnings; today's $223.46-226.18 range on the month's lightest volume is exactly that digestion, not breakdown. Entry done at 4.7% weight vs 8% target; add-on <$210 sits -6.3% away, TP >$248 +10.9%, stop <$208 -7.0%. Nothing to fix.
- **msft-diversifier-swing (filled 9/8 @ $492.98)** — doing its job. Three sessions of $489.80-495.19 while AMD moved 14% confirms the low-volatility diversifier premise (day moves -1.15%, -0.47%). Add-on <$478 (-2.8%), TP >$520 (+5.8%), stop <$465 (-5.4%). All levels sane relative to market. No change.
- **tsm-swing-contest (v5, zero position)** — closest to action: entry <$430 is only -1.3% below the $435.56 close, well inside TSM's ~2% daily range, so a fill is plausible any session. The v5 stop widening to $404 (under the printed 8/24 low $405.15) still looks correct given the 9/3 stop at $409.17 that reversed to close $417.02 the same day. No change.
- **mu-oversold-swing (v2, zero position)** — the awkward one. Entry <$960 is -6.6% below market while TP >$1,050 is only +2.2% above, and MU already printed $1,042.40 intraday today. The gap is not yet inverted so I am not proposing a level change, but this is a live example of the position-guard hole below: if price tags $1,050 with zero shares, a "sell all" could consume the profit target before we ever own the stock. Worth watching daily.
- **amd-swing (v5, zero position)** — measurably broken, revision filed. v5 was drafted on the 9/8 spike day and anchored entry to the pre-spike $475-485 zone; AMD then closed $505.74 and $521.09. Entry <$482 now sits 7.5% *below* market while TP >$525 sits 0.8% *above* — the strategy cannot buy but is one session from firing sell-all on zero shares. Separately, the stop at $445 sits above the printed 9/3 low of $440.50, i.e. inside normal noise, repeating the exact mistake the thesis claims to have fixed.
- **crm-fade-swing** — archived, no rules, nothing to review.

**Lessons written**
1. `level-sanity-check-when-drafting`: before submitting any strategy, verify stop < entry < take-profit *and* that market price sits between entry and TP. Anchoring entries to pre-spike levels on a violent re-rating day assumes the news move fully round-trips. This is the fourth pullback-only stall (TSM Aug, NVDA earnings gap, MU >$1,000, AMD now) but the first that was self-inflicted at drafting time rather than caused by the market running away.
2. `exit-rules-need-position-guard`: every take-profit/stop-loss in this book is price-only, with no `position_weight > 0` guard. During a zero-position stretch a price spike through the TP line risks consuming the exit rule before entry ever fills. MU is in that danger zone right now. Add guards on the next revision of each strategy.
3. Updated the account-state profile entry, including the structural point that the five target weights sum to only 32%, so ~68% cash is the blueprint's design, not an execution failure — and that option legs still cannot place because the options server has been erroring since contest week, so the book must be judged as stock-only.

**Proposals**
- Queued revision **#53: amd-swing v5 → v6** (awaiting your approval on the Pending page; I cannot apply it myself). Re-anchors entry into two tranches keeping total capital unchanged at $4,000: $2,000 starter at <$505 (a ~3% give-back into the 9/8 body, matching your habit of a small first tranche) plus $2,000 at the original <$482 deep level. Take-profit raised $525 → $560 so it is no longer below market; stop moved $445 → $438, just under the printed 9/3 swing low and ~2.5x the ~$17 ATR below the starter. Option leg trimmed to a single $900 dte>=30 otm=5% call with close_options on both exits. Fundamental thesis and invalidation unchanged. No revision proposed for the other four — MSFT and NVDA are tracking their theses, TSM v5's levels are already correct, and MU's mismatch is not yet severe enough to justify chasing levels.

**Day summary (2026-09-08)**
The post-contest book went live. Two entry rules fired and filled: NVDA 19.858 sh @ $226.61 and MSFT 9.128 sh @ $492.98, ~$4,500 each (~4.7% weight apiece against 8% targets). Equity $95,315.37, cash $86,319.45 — still ~90.5% cash, 9.4% invested. Combined open P&L is essentially zero (MSFT +$10, NVDA -$14). Both names faded intraday: NVDA opened $233.21 and closed $225.73 (-2.01%, low $224.85, 112.6M shares); MSFT closed $493.95 (-1.15%) on light 15.7M volume. The MU take-profit queued on the 09-07 holiday filled at the open at $1,028.62 — 1.8% *better* than its $1,010 trigger, which retires my earlier suspicion that the sentinel had failed to execute it on 09-04.

The one real defect: both paired call legs (MSFT $900, NVDA $1,000, dte>=30) errored with "options MCP server failed to start … no such file or directory: 'uvx'". The stock legs filled, the option legs did not. Actual exposure is stock-only.

**Per-strategy check**
- **nvda-momentum-swing (v6)** — thesis honored. It called for entry in the low/mid part of the $208-234 post-earnings base; the fill at $226.61 is mid-range, arguably the upper half of it. Stop $208 sits just under the 8/24 low ($207.25), TP $248 requires a genuine range breakout. Today's -2% fade left the 8/24 low untouched, so no invalidation. add-on-dip <$210 armed but -7% away. Position is half of target weight.
- **msft-diversifier-swing** — did exactly its job: gave the book a non-semis leg on the day semis wobbled (NVDA -2.0% vs MSFT -1.15%, and MSFT's whole day range was 1.0% vs NVDA's 3.8%), which is the low-volatility premise the strategy was written on. add-on <$478 is -3.2% away, the nearest rung anywhere in the book. TP $520, stop $465.
- **tsm-swing-contest (v5)** — zero position; entry <$430 vs $439.01 (-2.0% away). Correct behavior for a pullback-only anchor, and the widened $404 stop (under the printed $405.15 low) directly fixes the 9/3 failure where the old $410 stop was clipped at $409.17 on a day TSM closed $417.02.
- **amd-swing (v5)** — zero position; entry <$482 vs $505.74 (-4.7% away). The strategy explicitly refused to chase the +6.5% Anthropic/Saudi-AI spike, and AMD held $505.74 today rather than retracing. Missing the continuation is the accepted cost of not chasing; the take-profit logged "no position" twice, which is cosmetic noise, not an error.
- **mu-oversold-swing (v2)** — zero position after the profitable exit; entry <$960 vs $1,000.26 (-4.0% away). Clean round-trip closed: the satellite's only job this cycle was done at $1,028.62.

**Lessons** (written to memory)
1. Option legs are currently inoperable environment-side; real exposure is stock-only, and a paired entry-call can never retry once its stock leg fills because the condition requires `position_weight == 0`. The failure is benign — no bad fills, no phantom risk — but I should not assume an options budget is funded.
2. Rules triggering while the market is closed fill at the next open, not at the trigger price. MU proved this favorably (+1.8%); it will hurt symmetrically on a gap-down.
3. A 1-2% same-day fade on a swing entry sized ~4.7% of equity is noise, not evidence the entry logic is wrong. Stops are deliberately 7-8% away because contest week proved tight stops get clipped by wicks. These entries get judged on their 1-2 week horizon.
4. Structural watch item: three of five strategies are pullback-gated 2-4.7% below market, and the two that filled sit at half their target weight. This is the same configuration that froze TSM at 5.4% for weeks. Not yet a divergence — but if AMD/MU/TSM stay unfilled for ~5+ sessions while the semis uptrend continues, the honest fix is re-anchored near-market rungs, not more waiting.

**Proposals**
None. I deliberately filed no strategy revision today. The stops and option-DTE changes made this morning have had exactly one session of live data, every rule that fired did what its thesis said, and the only malfunction (options tooling) is an environment failure that no YAML edit can repair — the unreachable entry-call rules cost nothing when they error. Proposing changes now would be reacting to a single red close, which is precisely the reflex that produced last week's chase-then-stopped-out pattern. I've recorded the weight-shortfall trigger in memory instead and will propose re-anchoring only if the market refuses to come to us.

Day summary
2026-09-07 was a US market holiday (Labor Day), so there was no trading session and no new price data — every quote I pulled (MU $1,016.59, NVDA $230.36, AMD $477.57) is still the 09-04 close. The only event was the sentinel firing mu-oversold-swing's take-profit rule (price > 1010 -> sell all) at 13:51 UTC against that stale close, submitting a sell of 2.717439509 MU. As a DAY market order on a non-trading day it is queued and can only fill at the 09-08 open; status is still "submitted, fill pending," so the +$262.53 (+10.5%) shown on the position is a mark, not a realized result. The paired take-profit-options rule correctly skipped (no option positions open). Account: equity $95,286.74, cash $92,524.22, MU $2,762.52 the sole position — roughly 97% cash. Pending queue empty.

Per-strategy check
- mu-oversold-swing (v5, auto): Thesis was an oversold bounce from the $928-950 band toward the 8/17 high; that played out — MU broke out 09-04 (+6.10%, high $1,017.77, volume 35.1M, heaviest in weeks) on the sold-out AI/HBM narrative, and the $1,010 target was reached. But the exit mechanics are visibly off: the live quote already cleared $1,010 during the 09-04 session without the rule acting, and the rule instead fired on a closed-market holiday off the stale close, guaranteeing execution at Tuesday's open rather than at the target. Direction correct, timing surrendered to the next gap. Contest window (08-28 to 09-04) has also expired, so the thesis itself is now out of date.
- nvda-momentum-swing (v5, auto): No position, no trades. Entry bands ($226-232 for $3,000; $220-226 for $2,000) contain the last price of $230.36, but entry-momentum and entry-call are already consumed/triggered from the contest week, so nothing can act. The strategy is effectively retired-in-place while its stated thesis window has closed.
- amd-swing (auto): No position. Last price $477.57 sits inside the original $470-485 entry band, but entry rules are consumed; only exit rules remain armed with nothing to exit. Same dead-strategy state.
- tsm-swing-contest (v4, auto): Flat since the 09-03 stop at $409.17 (which was followed by a $417.02 close the same day — the noise-width stop problem already recorded). No re-entry rule exists, so it cannot participate in the semis rally.
- crm-fade-swing (auto): No option position; the put was salvaged 09-02 at $1.07. Remaining rules are all close_options with nothing to close. The short-software leg no longer exists, so the semis/software pair is unpaired.

Lessons
1. Auto hard rules evaluate against the last available quote, not a live one. A price threshold can therefore fire up to about a session and a half late — including on a closed market — and the resulting DAY market order executes at the next open. On a name whose daily range is 3-6% (MU), "sell all above $1,010" in practice means "sell at whatever Tuesday's open gives." Thresholds should be levels you would still accept one session later, and an exit is never done until filled_at/filled_avg_price exist. (I tried to persist this to the lesson layer four times; each write was rejected for exceeding the 500-character limit, so it is recorded here in the transcript and I will retry with a shorter entry next pass.)
2. Structural, and larger than any single rule: all five active strategies are one-shot contest specs whose window ended 09-04. Four of five have consumed entries and no re-entry path, so the book can only decay toward cash — which is exactly what happened, and today's MU sale completes it. Once that fill lands the account is ~100% cash with zero monitored exposure, while the user's standing blueprint (NVDA 20% / AAPL 15% / TSLA 12% / TSM 10% / MU 8%) is entirely unfunded. The gap is now authorization design, not price levels.
3. MU remains the week's only winner and confirms the user's framing: high-beta satellite where patience, not tight stops, paid. TSM/NVDA/AMD all stopped out on intraday noise and then rallied; MU was left alone and gained 10.5%.

Proposals
None filed today. I deliberately did not queue a revision: with the market closed there is no new evidence, the MU order is still unfilled so I cannot measure the actual slippage the fix should target, and mechanically patching a strategy whose contest thesis has expired would be cosmetic. The right next step is a decision from the user, not an edit from me — either archive these five contest specs and draft post-contest strategies aligned to the long-term blueprint, or explicitly re-authorize them with re-entry paths. I can draft either once you tell me which, and I'd rather do it after seeing the 09-08 MU fill price.

**Day summary — 2026-09-04 (final contest session)**
Equity $95,280.79, cash $92,524.22 (~97% uninvested). No trades and no observations today. The only holding is MU 2.7174 sh @ $919.98, now $1,016.59 (+6.10% on the day, +10.5% on cost, +$256). The semis complex ripped across the board: MU $1,016.59 (+6.10%, high $1,017.77, volume 34.7M — heaviest in weeks, on the sold-out AI/HBM memory narrative), AMD $477.57 (from a $462.00 open, +4.7%), TSM $428.52 (+2.8%), NVDA $230.36, CRM $259.29. The week's shape is now unambiguous: the direction call was right and the mechanics gave the money back. Options overlays bought 08-28 (5-DTE, 2-4% OTM) were near-total write-offs of roughly -$4.8k, which is effectively the entire -$4.7k drawdown, while the four stock legs together finished about flat; and noise-width stops sold every name within a session or two of the price recovering above the exit.

**Per-strategy check**
- **mu-oversold-swing (v5)** — Thesis validated, and the single best decision of the week: the stop stayed at $875 (a real invalidation, not noise), the position was never shaken out, and the longer-dated/smaller option shape kept overlay damage contained. One thing is measurably off and needs verification, not a rule change: `take-profit` (price > 1010 → sell all) and `take-profit-options` (price > 1010 → close_options) both read `armed` while MU quoted $1,016.59 and printed a $1,017.77 high — the level cleared and no fill appeared in the journal. Either the sentinel had not evaluated after the breakout, or the order path failed as it did on 09-01. This is the same execution-reliability defect the v5 thesis already recorded, so it is a monitoring item for the next pass; if MU opens back under $1,010 the +10.5% target is simply forfeited.
- **nvda-momentum-swing (v5)** — Zero position. The v5 diagnosis was right on both counts: the $217 stop was noise-width, and the widened $211 stop plus the new $220-226 re-entry are the correct shape. But NVDA closed $230.36, inside `entry-momentum`'s own $226-232 band, and nothing acted — the entry is marked `triggered` and one-shot entries never re-arm, while the new re-entry band sits below the market. The strategy is structurally sidelined.
- **amd-swing (v4)** — Zero position, stopped out near $455 on 09-03. AMD spent the entire 09-04 session inside `entry-dip`'s $470-485 band and closed $477.57, ~+4.9% above the stop price, with nothing firing. Same one-shot-entry lockout; unlike NVDA it has no re-entry rule at all.
- **tsm-swing-contest (v4)** — Zero position, stopped out at $409.17 on 09-03 in a session that closed $417.02. TSM then traded 09-04 from $421.88 to $428.52, entirely inside `entry-dip`'s $424-435 band, with nothing firing. The "relatively more stable member of the complex" premise failed all week and the $410 stop was inside ordinary daily range.
- **crm-fade-swing (v4)** — No position; the put was salvaged 09-02 at $1.07. CRM closed $259.29, i.e. the fade never came and the software short leg of the pair was simply wrong this week — the pair's long side (semis) worked and the hedge cost money on both legs of its own logic.

**Lessons**
Written to memory: (1) `one-shot-entry-decays-book-to-cash` — an entry gated on `position_weight == 0` fires once, stays `triggered`, and never re-arms, so after a stop-out the strategy is retired and the book ratchets one-way into cash; 09-04 is the clean proof, with AMD and TSM sitting inside their own entry bands all session at zero weight. Any auto strategy carrying a stop must carry an explicit re-entry, or the stop is an exit from the market rather than a risk control. (2) MU stock note updated with the $1,016.59 breakout, the earnings date (~09-30), the stale "<$1,000 abandon swing" line, and the un-executed take-profit to verify. The week-level post-mortem entry was repeatedly rejected by the 500-character memory limit; its substance is preserved here and in the two entries that did land — I will re-write it compactly on the next pass.

**Proposals**
None queued. I deliberately did not propose revisions today: the contest window closes with this session, so re-arming entries or re-anchoring stops on amd-swing / tsm-swing-contest / nvda-momentum-swing would commit fresh capital under a mandate that has expired, and the honest fix is a new post-contest mandate rather than another patch to four one-week strategies. The one live decision — whether MU's un-filled $1,010 take-profit should be honoured, re-anchored higher into the breakout, or converted to a trailing exit — is yours; MU is the only position and the only strategy still doing what it was written to do. Note the boundary: I have no order tool in this pass and no way to apply anything myself.

**Day summary (2026-09-03)**
One trade fired today: tsm-swing-contest's stop-loss sold all 4.6819 TSM at $409.17 (rule: price < $410). The paired stop-loss-options rule was skipped — no option positions remained to close, since the $435 calls had already been salvaged on 9/01. The irony is measurable: TSM's intraday low was $407.82 and it *closed the same session at $417.02*, so the stop sold roughly 1.9% below the day's close on a day the whole complex rebounded (NVDA $228.45, MU $958.16, AMD $456.16, CRM $264.42). Account: equity $95,120.79 (-4.9% vs the $100k start), cash $92,524.28 — about 97% uninvested. The only surviving position is MU 2.717 sh @ $919.98, +$96.52 (+0.22% today). Pending queue was empty at session start.

**Per-strategy check**
- *tsm-swing-contest (v4)*: Rule executed exactly as written; the rule itself was wrong for the volatility. Stop sat ~1.2% under a consolidation range on a name with 2%+ daily ranges, so an intraday probe became a realised loss. No re-entry is reachable — entry band $424-435 is ~1.7-4.3% above the $417 close, so this strategy is now retired-by-mechanics with zero position.
- *nvda-momentum-swing (v4)*: Same failure, one day earlier. Stopped out near $217 on a 9/01 intraday probe; NVDA closed that very session at $217.44 (above the stop) and is now $228.45, ~5% above the exit. Worse, NVDA traded all of today *inside* its own entry band ($226-232) with position_weight zero and nothing fired — the one-shot entry was already consumed.
- *amd-swing (v?)*: Stopped out at <$455; AMD closed $456.16 today after a $440.50 washout low. Third instance of the identical pattern. Entry band $470-485 is now ~3-6% above market: unreachable.
- *mu-oversold-swing (v5)*: The one strategy behaving as designed. Equity leg held, +0.22% today, MU $958 sits comfortably between the $875 stop and the $1,010 take-profit. Its v5 fix (dte>=21, $800 budget) is the shape the others should have adopted.
- *crm-fade-swing (v4)*: salvage-decay correctly closed the puts on 9/02 at $1.07 after the fade never began. Vindicated today — CRM rose to $264.42, only 1.4% below the $268 stop. Booking residual premium beat surrendering it. Entry-put band ($245-250) is far below market, so the leg stays flat, which is correct.

**Lessons**
Two written to curated memory. First: tick-based stops placed 1-3% under a range on high-volatility semis systematically harvest the day's low — four stop-outs this week, not one of which was followed by further downside. Short-hold stops need close-confirmation or ≥1.5x ATR width. Second, and larger: a strategy with a one-shot entry and a stop is a lottery ticket in a chop market. After each stop-out no rule could re-enter, so the book decayed one-way into ~97% cash and did not participate in today's broad rebound. The dominant cost this week was non-deployment, not loss-taking — the four expired 5-DTE calls (~-$4.8k) explain essentially the entire drawdown while the four stock legs netted roughly flat.

**Proposals**
Queued one revision: nvda-momentum-swing v5 (#32). It re-anchors the stop from $217 to $211 (below the 9/01 whipsaw low of $215.10, still above the 8/24 washout low of $207.25), adds a single smaller lower-band re-entry rule ($220-226, $2,000) so a stop-out no longer retires the strategy, and reshapes the option leg to dte>=21 / $1,000 / otm=4% with the decay exit loosened to $218 to match the longer tenor. It requires your approval on the Pending page — I cannot apply it. I deliberately did *not* queue three near-identical proposals for amd-swing and tsm-swing-contest: the contest week ends tomorrow, so approving this may buy only one session, and the same two fixes apply verbatim to those strategies if you want them carried into next week. Say the word and I'll draft them.

**Day summary (2026-09-02, contest day 4)**
Equity $95,146 (-4.85% vs the $100k start), cash $90,609 (~95% uninvested). Only one action fired today: the CRM put leg (5x $252.50P, 9/4 expiry) was closed at $1.07 by the v4 `salvage-decay` rule at 13:48 ET, recovering ~$535 of the $1,395 premium instead of letting it decay to zero. Underlyings were broadly higher: NVDA $224.41 (+3.2% from 9/1's $217.44 close, intraday high $227.95), MU $956.08 (+2.43%), TSM $415.57 (+0.38%), AMD $457.06 (-0.55%), CRM $257.19 (-0.36%). Remaining book is two stock legs only — MU 2.717 sh @ $919.98 (+$94) and TSM 4.682 sh @ $427.18 (-$56). No option positions remain open anywhere; the pending queue is empty.

**Per-strategy check**
- *crm-fade-swing (v4)* — The only strategy that acted, and it worked exactly as the 9/1 revision intended. The fade never began (higher closes 8/27 through 9/1), the puts sat in the old dead band where no rule could fire, and the new $254 salvage floor exited them promptly. Realized ~-$860 on the leg instead of the ~-$1,395 write-off that v3 guaranteed. `entry-put` (245–250) is correctly out of reach at $257, so no re-chase. Thesis invalidation ("fade fails to begin") has now fully played out; nothing further to do this week.
- *nvda-momentum-swing (v4)* — Stock leg was stopped out at $217.44 on 9/1; NVDA then closed $224.41 today, +3.2% above the stop. The $226 `salvage-options` floor and the raised $226 `entry-call` floor were never tested because the calls had already been swept at expiry. Rules are internally consistent now, but the episode is the clearest evidence that the $217 stop was inside the daily noise band.
- *amd-swing* — Stopped out at $454.19 on 9/1; AMD closed $459.61 that same session and $457.06 today. Same defect as NVDA: a stop ~3.5% away on a name with a ~3% average daily range. Flat, no rules live.
- *mu-oversold-swing* — The only leg still working. Stock +2.43% today, +3.9% on the position, and it is the one strategy whose stop ($875) sits ~1.5x the daily range away and therefore never fired. Its call was also the only option leg to lose less than half (dte>=21 rather than 2–7 DTE). `take-profit` at $1,010 is ~5.6% above spot and reachable; `salvage-options` is moot with no contract open.
- *tsm-swing-contest (v4)* — Stock leg -2.7% at $415.57, sitting ~1.3% above its $410 stop, i.e. inside one day's range — the same fragility that already cost NVDA and AMD. The v4 $420 salvage floor did its job on 9/1 ($0.48 recovered). Weakest of the four longs all week, which contradicts the thesis line calling TSM "the relatively more stable member of the complex."

**Lessons**
Written to curated memory: the contest week's entire drawdown is attributable to the option overlay, not to stock selection or direction. Five short-dated legs consumed ~$6.1k of premium and returned ~$1.4k (NVDA -97%, AMD -97%, TSM -84%, CRM -62%, MU -40%), while the five stock legs together lost roughly $150. The common flaw was buying 2–7 DTE out-of-the-money options immediately after a large move, when implied volatility was highest — theta and IV crush overwhelmed the thesis in every case, including the ones where the directional call was right. The single leg with dte>=21 (MU) lost least by a wide margin.
A second lesson I could not fit into memory this pass and will record next session: stops placed inside a single daily range manufacture losses. NVDA printed lows under $217 on three consecutive sessions before the stop finally executed at $217.44, then rallied 3.2% the next day; AMD sold at $454.19 and closed that very session at $459.61. MU, whose stop sat ~2x its daily range away, is the only stock leg still open and profitable. Future auto stops should require distance >= ~2x recent average daily range, or close-based confirmation.

**Proposals**
None queued today. The three defects I can measure — short-dated option sizing, stop distances inside the noise band, and the "TSM is the stable one" assumption — all concern strategies that are now flat or expire with the contest on 9/4, so a revision would be paperwork rather than risk control. Every dead-band option defect has already been patched (v4 across all five). The right place for these findings is the post-contest strategy design, and I will bring concrete parameter proposals (dte>=21, ~1% premium sizing, 2x-ADR stops) when the next cycle's documents are drafted rather than amending expiring ones now.

**Day summary — 2026-09-01 (contest week, day 3)**
Equity $95,498 (-4.5% from the $100k start), cash $90,074, so ~94% of the account is uninvested after today's forced exits. The broad AI-semis complex sold off together: NVDA -1.5% to $217.44, AMD -2.4% to $459.61, MU -2.6% to $933.44, TSM -0.3% to $414.01 — press coverage attributes it to a global bond selloff lifting yields, i.e. a valuation/rate move, not a change in AI demand. Two stop-losses executed as designed (NVDA at 13:40, AMD at 14:40), leaving MU stock, TSM stock and the CRM put as the only open positions.

The day's defining event was not directional, it was operational. Every `close_options` attempt failed from 13:40 to ~16:10 because the options order tool could not start (missing `uvx` binary). The four salvage-options rules that were added on 8/31 specifically to prevent premium write-offs all fired correctly and on time (MU<940, AMD<468, NVDA<226, TSM<420) and none of them could execute. Hourly retries at 14:10, 14:40, 15:10, 15:40 and 16:10 all errored. The contracts were finally liquidated at 16:18–16:19, three of them by the DTE<=1 expiry sweep rather than by strategy rule: NVDA 13x at $0.03, AMD 2x at $0.15, MU 1x at $6.30, TSM 4x at $0.48. Right rules, wrong outcome — the premium was already gone by the time the orders went through.

**Per-strategy check**
- **nvda-momentum-swing** — thesis (post-earnings breakout continuation) invalidated. NVDA gave back the entire 8/27 +8.7% gap over three sessions ($227.98 → $217.55 → $220.78 → $217.44) and broke the $217 stop; stock leg sold as designed. The $230 call ended at $0.03, a -97% write-off. Rules behaved correctly on the equity side; the option side was destroyed by tenor, then by the execution outage.
- **amd-swing** — thesis (stabilization/bounce) invalidated. AMD fell through $468 (salvage) and $455 (stop) in the same session; stock sold at $454.20, the $485 call closed at $0.15 (-98%). Both stops fired in the right order; the option exit again could not execute when it mattered.
- **mu-oversold-swing** — the only long still working. Stock leg is +1.3% at $933.44, comfortably above the $875 stop; the oversold-bounce thesis stands. But the call that was profitable on 8/31 (+$105) lost 40% in one -2.6% session and was closed by the expiry sweep at $6.30, not by the salvage rule. Note the live hazard: MU at $933 sits just under the $942–950 entry-call band, so the same short-dated leg can be re-bought within days.
- **tsm-swing-contest** — the only strategy whose option was closed by its own rule today (salvage-options at $0.48, -84% from $3.05), which is v4 working as intended, just late and cheap. Stock leg holds 4.68 shares at $427.18, now $414.01 (-3.1%), sitting only ~1% above the $410 stop. TSM has closed lower on four of the last five sessions; the "relatively more stable member of the complex" assumption remains unconfirmed.
- **crm-fade-swing** — the clearest measurable divergence. The fade has simply not begun: CRM closed higher every single session after the spike (252.05 → 256.00 → 257.54 → 258.16) and never once traded back toward entry. That is the strategy's own written invalidation, and no rule expresses it. The puts are at $1.90 vs $2.79 entry (-$445) with three sessions left, and CRM at $258 sits in a dead band where none of the exits (<245, <228, >268) can fire. Today the put lost -5.98% while the underlying rose +0.24% — theta is now the dominant term.

**Lessons** (both written to curated memory)
- `contest-option-overlay-verdict`: all four 5-DTE, 2–4% OTM calls were near-total write-offs; combined option damage of roughly -$4.8k accounts for essentially the whole -$4.5k account drawdown, while the four stock legs together finished about flat. Requiring an options leg on *every* strategy converted a flat equity book into a -4.5% book. If required again: one leg for the whole book, `dte>=21` not `>=5`, ~1% of equity.
- `option-exit-execution-fragility`: correct option exit rules are not the same as reliable option exits. Rules that must act inside a single session cannot be depended on in this environment; prefer equity expressions and longer tenors that survive an outage.

**Proposals** (queued, awaiting your approval — I cannot apply either)
- **#30 crm-fade-swing v4** — adds `salvage-decay` (close puts while CRM > 254) to recover roughly $950 of the $1,395 premium instead of letting it decay to zero, and tightens the entry cap from $262 to $250 so a new put is only opened once the fade has actually started. A $4 buffer separates the bands to prevent churn. No loss tolerance widened.
- **#31 mu-oversold-swing v5** — leaves every price level and the equity thesis untouched, and reshapes only the option leg: `dte>=21` instead of `>=5`, budget $800 (~0.8% of equity) instead of $1,500, otm 5% to hold a comparable delta. Rationale notes the same change should be applied to tsm-swing-contest, amd-swing and nvda-momentum-swing if you accept the reasoning; I stopped at MU rather than filing four near-identical proposals for you to read.

I did not propose anything for nvda-momentum-swing or amd-swing today: both are now flat with their stops correctly executed, and re-tuning a strategy the same day it stopped out would be fitting to one bad session rather than to a measured defect.

**Day summary**
2026-08-31, contest week day 2. No trades fired and no observations were logged — every armed rule sat inside its no-action band all session. Equity closed at $96,975.61 against the $100,000 contest-week start (-3.0%), with cash unchanged at $84,395.01 (~87% of equity still uninvested).

The important number is the split. Summed across the four equity legs, open P&L is **-$29** (AMD -$3, MU +$105, NVDA -$75, TSM -$56). Summed across the five option legs, open P&L is **-$2,994** (NVDA 230C -$1,235, TSM 435C -$956, AMD 485C -$678, CRM 252.5P -$230, MU 965C +$105). Essentially 100% of the drawdown is the option overlay, not the stock selection. Three of four semis longs rose today (MU +2.77%, NVDA +1.36%, AMD +1.10%; TSM -0.60%) and the option book still bled, because every contract is 5-DTE and out of the money.

**Per-strategy check**
- **nvda-momentum-swing (v3)** — Equity leg fine: NVDA closed $220.50 (+1.36%) after a $216.21 low, i.e. it probed below its own $217 stop intraday for the second session running (8/28 low was $216.81) and recovered both times; stock leg -2.6%. The v3 fix (adding a $224 entry floor) correctly kept it from buying the crash. The 13 $230 calls expiring 9/2 are at $0.13 vs $1.08 (-88%) and need ~+4.3% in two sessions just to reach the strike. Thesis intact, overlay broken.
- **tsm-swing-contest (v3)** — The weak link. TSM ~$415, the only contest long to fall today, sitting ~1.2% above its $410 stop; stock leg -2.9%. The thesis's premise that TSM is "the relatively more stable member of the complex" is not being borne out this week — it is the worst performer of the four. The $435 calls expiring 9/4 are -78% and need ~+4.8% to reach the strike.
- **amd-swing (v3)** — Healthiest equity leg: AMD $470.72 (+1.10%), stock leg -0.1%, comfortably above the $455 stop. The $485 calls expiring 9/2 are -66% and need ~+3% in two sessions.
- **mu-oversold-swing (v3)** — Best strategy in the book and the oversold-bounce thesis is confirmed: MU closed $958.73 (+2.77%), stock leg +4.0%, and the $965 call is the only profitable option in the account (+$105, now 0.7% OTM). But that gain is unprotected — see below.
- **crm-fade-swing (v3)** — CRM $257.53, still inside the entry band and still refusing to fade; puts -16.5%. The v3 fixes (the $262 entry ceiling that killed the re-entry loop, and the exit-window at <$245) were correct and remain the right structure. The fade thesis is unconfirmed, not yet invalidated ($268 is 4.1% away). This one has the same expiry problem as the others — between $245 and $268 no rule can fire before the 9/4 expiry — but I ran out of tool calls before proposing a fix; it is the first item for tomorrow.

**Lessons**
1. **The overlay's exits were keyed to the equity thesis, not to the contract.** Every option leg was given close_options rules at the same prices as the stock take-profit and stop-loss. Those levels are 6-12% away from spot, which is a reasonable swing band for shares and an unreachable one for a 5-DTE option. The result is a dead zone across the entire realistic price range where no rule can ever fire, so the designed outcome for each contract is a silent 100% premium write-off — no trigger, no journal entry, no decision. That is not a bad forecast; it is a structural hole in the rule set, and it is the whole of this week's loss.
2. **It cuts against winners too, which is what makes it structural rather than just unlucky.** MU's call is profitable right now and its default path is still decay to zero, because $1,010 will not print in two sessions. A rule set that can only bank a gain by luck is mis-specified even when the thesis is right.
3. **The stops appear to be evaluated on the sentinel's pass, not intraday.** NVDA traded below $217 on two consecutive sessions without stop-loss firing, and recovered both times. This week that helped. I should not assume a price-level stop protects against an intraday spike, and should stop describing these as if they do.
4. **Stock selection is not the problem; position sizing of premium is.** -$29 on ~$9,470 of equity exposure versus -$2,994 on ~$5,745 of premium. Sizing premium at ~$1,500 per name across four names put ~6% of equity into instruments that can go to zero in five days — inside the letter of the 2%-per-position guidance per trade, but concentrated on one factor (near-dated semis vol) in aggregate.

*Note: I exhausted my tool budget on the four revisions and did not write these to curated memory. Lessons 1-4, especially the premium-concentration point, should be committed on the next pass.*

**Proposals**
Four revisions queued for approval on the Pending page; none is applied automatically, and none widens a stop or loosens a loss tolerance:
- **#26 nvda-momentum-swing v4** — add `salvage-options` (close calls below $226) to recover residual premium instead of letting it expire worthless; raise entry-call floor $224→$226 so the salvage and entry bands cannot overlap into a churn loop.
- **#27 tsm-swing-contest v4** — add `salvage-options` below $420, with a $4 buffer to the $424 entry floor; thesis text updated to record that the "more stable member" premise is failing. Equity stop left at $410 to do its job.
- **#28 amd-swing v4** — add `salvage-options` below $468; raise entry-call floor $470→$472 for buffer. Equity leg healthy and untouched.
- **#29 mu-oversold-swing v4** — add `salvage-options` below $940 to protect the one profitable contract; raise entry-call floor to $942 to avoid overlapping the salvage band. Thesis confirmed; entries and equity levels unchanged.

Not proposed: any change to CRM (out of calls — tomorrow's first item), and no change to any equity entry band, stop, or take-profit anywhere. The equity theses are doing their job.