July 17, 2026

One corner of the book is sending a signal worth watching

Both open trades are under pressure — and one of them may be forcing a decision sooner than expected.

Scoreboard Update

EXPERIMENT UPDATE — Day 10 System: -0.1% | SPY (same window): -1.1% | Alpha: +1.0% Win rate: 0% (0/2) Open positions: EVC (day 4, -9.0%), PIII (day 2, -3.4%)

Today's market and our positions

SPY dropped 1.09% today and didn't give much room to hide. Both open positions moved against us — which isn't fun to report, but this is exactly what a down market day looks like inside the system: positions under pressure, no new signals, no closed trades. Just sitting with what we have and watching how it resolves. Through Day 10, the scoreboard reads: system -0.1%, SPY -1.1% over the same window. That's +1.0% alpha. Worth noting — even with both open trades currently in the red.

What our open trades are doing

EVC is the one that stings. We're on Day 4 of this Relative Strength Engine hold, and the stock is down 9.0% from our entry at $11.75, now sitting at $10.69. SPY fell about 1.1% over roughly the same period, which means EVC is underperforming by nearly 7.9 percentage points. That's the opposite of what a relative strength trade is supposed to do. The thesis was that EVC would hold up better than the index during weakness. So far, it hasn't. PIII is on Day 2, entered at $11.20, now at $10.82 — a -3.4% move against us, with SPY down about 1% in the same window. That puts PIII lagging by about 2.4 points. Still early, and the damage is less severe than EVC's, but it isn't showing the relative resilience we'd want to see either. Two positions, both from the Relative Strength Engine, both struggling in a down tape. That's uncomfortable. It's also information.

Today's closed trades, post-mortem

No trades closed today, so there's no post-mortem to run. The book carried forward as-is. If something closes tomorrow — at a loss or otherwise — we'll break it down fully: entry, exit, what the system read, what the market did, and whether the logic held even when the outcome didn't.

What could change by tomorrow's open

EVC is the near-term concern. It's sitting well below entry and hasn't shown any bounce. If it keeps lagging SPY tomorrow, the stop conversation gets real, fast. PIII has more room to recover, but it needs the tape to cooperate. A continued weak open tomorrow — especially if SPY gaps down — could push both names to decision points sooner than we'd like. We're also watching whether the Relative Strength Engine turns more cautious in its signals given what these two are doing. Drawdowns like this are normal. How the system manages them is what we actually care about.

What we're watching tomorrow

Tomorrow morning the engines scan fresh. The question is whether they find anything worth acting on in this tape — or whether they stay quiet. Sometimes quiet is the right answer.

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Which side will you be on?

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“The Buck Stops Here”

Kelly Maguire

Behind the Markets

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