This position does not look finished — not even close

The week at a glance

IOVA is up 35% from our entry. TWST is up 34.7%. Both are still open — and we haven't closed a single trade yet. Zero wins, zero losses, 0-for-18 on closed trades. That's not a bug. That's the whole point right now. Day 60 of the experiment. Week nine in the books. The system returned +3.03% this week against SPY's +1.27% — putting us +1.77% ahead of the index for the week. Since Day 1, cumulative alpha sits at +3.03%. The system is up 3% over that window. SPY is flat. Here's the week's open-position snapshot: | Ticker | Engine | Entry Date | Entry Price | P&L | Alpha | |--------|--------|------------|-------------|-----|-------| | CRNX | Relative Strength | Aug 5 | $83.93 | +1.22% | +1.01% | | CRNX | Relative Strength | Aug 10 | $84.22 | +0.87% | +1.08% | | CRNX | Relative Strength | Aug 11 | $84.26 | +0.82% | +0.72% | | CRNX | Relative Strength | Aug 12 | $84.47 | +0.57% | +0.72% | | CRNX | Relative Strength | Aug 13 | $84.53 | +0.50% | +1.34% | | CRNX | Relative Strength | Aug 14 | $84.61 | +0.40% | +1.04% | | CRNX | Relative Strength | Aug 17 | $84.70 | +0.30% | +0.47% | | CRNX | Relative Strength | Aug 18 | $84.78 | +0.20% | -0.31% | | CRNX | Relative Strength | Aug 19 | $84.76 | +0.22% | -0.07% | | CRNX | Relative Strength | Aug 20 | $84.72 | +0.27% | -0.88% | | CRNX | Relative Strength | Aug 21 | $84.74 | +0.25% | -0.49% | | CRNX | Relative Strength | Aug 24 | $84.79 | +0.19% | -0.84% | | CRNX | Relative Strength | Aug 28 | $84.86 | +0.11% | -0.15% | | CRNX | Relative Strength | Aug 31 | $84.99 | -0.05% | -0.61% | | TEAM | Relative Strength | Sep 9 | $179.86 | +4.38% | +3.21% | | TEAM | Relative Strength | Sep 10 | $181.65 | +3.35% | +1.57% | | IOVA | Relative Strength | Sep 11 | $8.15 | +34.97% | +34.05% | | RNG | Relative Strength | Sep 14 | $69.55 | +9.50% | +8.13% | | TWST | Relative Strength | Sep 15 | $135.76 | +34.67% | +32.83% | Five signals this week — all five passed through the filters and came out as watchlist days, not entries. The Relative Strength Engine is running this show. Every open position in the book is an RS name.

Trades we closed this week

Nothing closed this week, so there are no completed trades to pull apart. What we can do is look honestly at what's working in the open book — and where the cracks are starting to show. IOVA and TWST are the stories of this experiment so far. IOVA entered at $8.15 on September 11 and is sitting at +34.97% fifteen days in. TWST entered at $135.76 on September 15 and is already +34.67% eleven days later. The Relative Strength Engine flagged both when they were quietly outperforming their sectors — no fanfare, no breakout headline, just persistent relative strength against a market that wasn't doing much. That's exactly the setup it's built to find. RNG is up 9.5% from a $69.55 entry on September 14. TEAM has two entries from September 9 and 10, up 4.38% and 3.35% respectively. All four of these newer positions are beating the market by meaningful margins. Then there's CRNX. Fourteen separate entries between August 5 and August 31. The earlier ones — August 5 through August 14 — are showing positive alpha, as high as +1.34% on the August 13 entry. The later ones, August 18 through August 31, have flipped negative on alpha. The August 31 position is actually in the red at -0.05% P&L. To be straight about it: the CRNX positions opened in the back half of August are treading water or sitting slightly underwater relative to SPY. Not disasters — but they're not working the way the earlier entries worked. That's worth watching.

What we tuned this week

No new entries this week — no levels to detail, no triggers to walk through. The system was in watchlist mode for all five trading days. That's actually meaningful information. The Relative Strength Engine saw signals it almost liked, ran them through the filters, and passed every time. We don't override that. On the tuning side: no parameter changes this week. What we are reviewing internally is the cadence of CRNX re-entries. Fourteen positions in a single name across 26 trading days is a level of concentration we didn't fully anticipate at the start. The engine kept seeing relative strength and kept entering — which is exactly what it's supposed to do. Whether that's a feature or a flaw is genuinely unclear to us right now. The early positions are in fine shape; the later ones, less so. We're not going to post-hoc rationalize it either way. We'll let it play out and report what happens.

What we're cautious about next week

A few things we're watching as we head into next week. First, IOVA and TWST both sit on gains near 35% in under three weeks. Positions that move that fast can give back just as fast. The system hasn't signaled an exit on either one, and the rules are the rules — we follow exit signals, not gut feelings. But our eyes are open. Second, the late-August CRNX positions are the weak link in the book right now. The August 31 entry is -0.05% on P&L and -0.61% on alpha. Small numbers in absolute terms, but worth naming. If CRNX starts losing ground relative to the market, those positions become the first real losses in the experiment. Third, the win rate is still 0% — not because we're losing, but because nothing has triggered an exit yet. That clock is running. We need to see how the system handles its first close, whether it lands as a win or a loss, before we truly understand how this thing performs end-to-end.

Looking ahead to Monday

Sixty days in. No closed trades. Two positions up more than 34%. A string of CRNX entries that range from quietly working to quietly not. The Relative Strength Engine is carrying all the weight right now — and next week, we may finally find out what happens when one of these positions closes. The question isn't just which side of the ledger it lands on. It's how the system gets it there.