The open trades look great. The closed record tells a different story.

The week at a glance

SNOW is up 21% from our entry. CORT is up 24.5%. Both are still open. If that's all you read this week, you'd think the system is printing money — and honestly, that part of the story is real. But Sunday is when we tell the whole story. Week six closed at +1.45% against SPY's +0.40% — about a point of outperformance on the week. That's the good news. The harder number: cumulative alpha since day one sits at -1.88%. On a total-return basis over the full 30-day run, we're trailing SPY. That's the number we're watching most carefully right now, and we're not going to bury it. Win rate through 10 closed trades: 0%. Not a typo. Every closed trade has stopped out — including two that finished in positive P&L territory, which at least tells you the trailing stops are moving in the right direction. But zero wins-by-target is a data point we have to sit with, not explain away.

Trades we closed this week

Four trades closed this week. All four were stops. Here's how each one actually went. **EVC — three entries, three stops** This is the one that needs explaining. The Relative Strength Engine flagged EVC on July 14, July 30, and August 3 — three separate entries into the same name over three weeks. All three closed on August 11 at essentially the same exit price, around $10.00–$10.13. The July 14 entry was the cleanest loss: -0.43%, alpha -3.25%. The setup just didn't work, and SPY moved away from us while we held. The July 30 entry actually finished at +1.30% — a small positive P&L — but it still counts as a stop because it never reached the system's target. Alpha came in at -2.93%, meaning SPY ran harder than we did during that hold. The August 3 entry finished at +2.72%, alpha +0.69%. That's the best of the three, and the only leg where we kept pace with the index. So: three bites at the same apple, all stopped out. The P&L wasn't catastrophic, but three entries into one name that ultimately faded is a pattern worth naming. The engine kept reading relative strength in EVC. The stock kept disaggreeing. We'll be watching whether the system re-enters a fourth time — and whether we want to build any position-sizing rules around repeated signals in the same ticker. **PIII — two entries, two stops, both positive** PIII was the week's bright spot in the closed column. The August 4 entry closed August 13 at +14.05%, alpha +13.90%. The August 6 entry closed August 13 at +11.87%, alpha +11.36%. Both stopped out — the stock reversed before hitting the system's 2R target — but both stops triggered well above entry. The trailing stop did exactly what it was designed to do. These are the kinds of stops you can live with.

What we tuned this week

No parameter changes to the engine this week. We're letting it run as-is — 30 days isn't enough history to start tuning without risking curve-fitting the results into something that only looks good in hindsight. The one thing we're tracking closely: CRNX. The Relative Strength Engine opened a new position in CRNX every single day this week — August 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 — all in the $84 range, all up less than 1%. That's six total CRNX positions open simultaneously, including one from August 5. The engine treats each day's signal as independent, which is by design. But six entries in the same name within a ten-day window is a concentration we didn't fully anticipate. We're not changing anything yet. We are, however, watching carefully what happens if CRNX moves sharply in either direction with that many open legs. SNOW and CORT are the portfolio's anchors right now. SNOW is on day 19 at +21.4%. CORT is on day 18 at +24.5%. Both are still running. Whether those gains hold — or whether we're watching unrealized P&L quietly evaporate before the system exits — is the question the next few weeks will answer.

What we're cautious about next week

Three things we're watching heading into next week. First, the CRNX concentration. Six open positions in one name isn't inherently wrong, but if that stock gaps down on news, the portfolio feels it six times over. We're not sized to blow up on it — but it's a known exposure, and we're treating it like one. Second, the cumulative alpha gap. -1.88% against SPY over 30 days is real. SPY has had a strong run during this window — +3.3% total. The system's open positions are carrying most of its total return right now, SNOW and CORT specifically. If those two unwind badly, the cumulative picture gets uglier before it gets better. Third, win rate. Zero closed wins through 10 trades is a streak that ends eventually — but it hasn't ended yet. SNOW and CORT are the most likely candidates to change that. How they close will swing the win rate meaningfully, in one direction or the other.

Looking ahead to Monday

Thirty days in, the honest picture looks like this: two trades are working really well, one name cost us three separate entries, and on a cumulative basis we're still behind SPY. None of that is alarming at the 30-day mark. It is, however, exactly the kind of uncomfortable data a week-six recap is supposed to surface — not smooth over. This experiment was never going to be a straight line up. What we're learning is which parts of the system are behaving the way we expected — PIII's trailing stop execution, SNOW's extended hold — and which parts we didn't fully model going in, like the same-ticker re-entry stacking we're now seeing in both EVC and CRNX. Next week, we're watching whether SNOW and CORT keep holding their gains, whether CRNX consolidates or breaks, and whether the system finally closes a trade at target rather than at a stop. That first win-by-target is coming. When it does, it'll tell us something worth knowing.