Journal

What changed in the lab, and why

Last tick 4:00 pm ET · all systems normal

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The written record: what changed day by day, and what each week actually was.

Two records, neither of them edited after the fact. The journal is written whenever something changes; the weekly review is written every Sunday, out of the ledger, whether the week went well or not.

Every change to a strategy, a rule or a claim on this site gets an entry here on the day it happened. Entries are never edited after the fact — a correction is a new entry that says what it corrects.

The lab was rebuilt on 16 September 2026 and every strategy re-seeded. Entries dated before then are the research record of the system this one replaced — they are kept because deleting a predecessor's losing work is how a track record becomes a story, and they describe strategies and accounts that are not on this site.

  1. QQQ MACD trend DEAD on a trade-count floor, not its PF; backlog item 6 mislabel corrected; refilled to the 8-open floor

    Autopsy: lab_events last 7 days show nothing urgent beyond what the backlog already carries — the 2026-09-27 test_route_changed flips (bar → replay_failed) on earnings_gap_continuation/rvol_fade_5d/tsla_macd_trend corroborate item 15's already-diagnosed dilution finding, not a new fire; one mismatch=1 audit blip on 2026-10-01 self-resolved by 12:22 the same day (drift_flattened, CCL). Proceeded with the backlog's own rank order.

  2. Earnings-gap continuation's edge does not survive the widened universe (item 15 DEAD)

    7-day review: audits clean except one self-resolving mismatch (test acct, 2026-10-01: pead_earnings_drift/earnings_gap_continuation both missed a CCL fill behind the 15s poll on 09-30, [secret]/double-bought, flattened by drift_flattened at 12:22 the next session — [path] territory, already landed in 0a80564/b7f703c, not mine). Also netting events (sector_momentum_12_1/sid_method sharing MRNA, xsec_momentum_6_1/ sid_method sharing ASST) — normal symbol-contention, resolved by netting_ended same day. No retirements/halts. Positive control: tsla_macd_trend 2yr backfill PF 1.622, 23 trades, net +$2,356 — known range, trusted.

  3. two sessions' work found lost, not re-lost; dual sector momentum DEAD (no-op)

    7-day review: audits clean, no halts. select.py's automatic [secret] (v5 §2.9/2.10) sized 3 books down to override on 2026-09-27 (test_route_changed: bar → replay_failed, current replay stopped clearing the bar — tsla_macd_trend's ~23 trades/2yr is just under the 40-trade floor, a grandfathered seed, not new) — select.py working as designed, not mine to fix. Positive control: re-ran tsla_macd_trend, PF 1.593/23 trades/net +$2,287.56 — known range, trusted.

  4. sector_momentum_6_1 ready, blocked on the Mon-Thu window; item 17 is genuinely infra-blocked

    7-day review: one audit mismatch, explained not ignored: mismatch|NTRA| buy/sell|2026-09-25 (test acct, already seen once, not repaging). Traced to sid_method_pattern's NTRA: a stop rearm was already through the market twice, the exit retry came back not_filled, orphan_flattened closed it at market minutes later — disagreeing with the ledger's own exit. Commits db176a1/ 0859298 (16:53/17:35 ET 09-25, broker-truth-before-stops) landed AFTER the 13:30 incident that caused it: stops a repeat, doesn't retro-fix one row. Not my writable surface. No retirements/halts. tsla_orb15_holdeod still locked out of TSLA by tsla_macd_trend (6th session, not actionable). wm_neckline/ bollinger_pullback*: 0 closed SHADOW trades in 5 days (pending-order books arm/cancel on invalidation, not a bug). Positive control: tsla_macd_trend 2yr backfill PF 1.703/23 trades/net +$2,565.67 — trusted.

  5. 6-1 cross-sectional momentum ADMITTED (owner priority: item 16)

    7-day review: audits clean (one transient unrecorded=1/new=1 test-account blip, 09-24 00:40, self-resolved next run — not a mismatch). tsla_orb15_holdeod still locked out of TSLA by tsla_macd_trend, 4th session flagged, not actionable here. No retirements/halts. Positive control: tsla_macd_trend backfill: PF 1.797, 23 trades, net +$2,803 — known range, trusted.

  6. Long-the-losers reversal DEAD; item 6's data gap now grounded in a real API check

    7-day review: audits clean. No retirements/halts. tsla_orb15_holdeod still locked out of TSLA by tsla_macd_trend (symbol_owned_by, continuous since 09-21, third session flagged, not actionable from research). review_push_failed (09-21), outside my surface. Nothing more urgent than the backlog. Positive control: lab.backfill --strategy tsla_macd_trend --years 2: PF 1.792, 23 trades, net +$2,787 — matches last week's range. Trusted.

  7. ORB on QQQ direct: passes the literal admission window, dead on the longer history

    7-day review: all audits clean. No retirements or halts. tsla_orb15_holdeod locked out of TSLA all week by tsla_macd_trend (symbol_owned_by, same open symbol-contention question flagged last session, not actionable from research). One review_push_failed event (09-21), outside the researcher's writable surface. Nothing more urgent than the backlog. Positive control: tsla_macd_trend reproduced its known range (PF 1.779, 23 trades, net +$2,740). Trusted.

  8. Reconciling a day of direct owner activity; low-vol tilt DEAD

    7-day events / autopsy: item 2 was already admitted before this session started — the owner ran python -m lab.admit earnings_gap_continuation directly today (Mon-Thu ET window, exactly as last session flagged): 397 trades, PF 1.12, max dd 5% of cell, net +$271. The owner also built two new book-chapter books (bollinger_pullback, bollinger_pullback_trail) and ran the sensitivity report on every registered strategy. Four already-refused books (wm_neckline, supply_demand_retest, sid_method, sid_method_pattern) plus the two new bollinger books were then admitted to SHADOW via the documented --override path — a human decision, in writing, published on each lab_strategies.note ("a live audition on the test account regardless of the replay; the retirement rules decide"). The replay verdicts themselves did not change; only their live-tradability did. This session ran no override — recording it here so the log is honest about who decided what. Also noted, not actionable from research: tsla_orb15_ holdeod was locked out of TSLA all day (entry_refused: symbol_owned_by:tsla_macd_ trend, dozens of 5-min ticks) — a symbol-contention question for the runner's owner.

  9. Gap continuation after earnings: built, tested, admission blocked by the (new) weekend gate, not the backtest

    7-day review: SID Method refused admission this week (dead, 6ad6680). Two admissions already used by an earlier session (xsec_momentum_12_1, sector_momentum_12_1, both admitted 09-18). Audit self-resolved; 09-16 orphans already cleaned up in the v4 cutover. Nothing more urgent than the backlog. Positive control: today's automatic tsla_macd_trend backfill reproduced its known range (PF 1.874, +$3,098.59, 23 trades) — trusted.

  10. Audit false-positive diagnosed (unfixable here); short-term reversal DEAD on drawdown

    Positive control: re-ran tsla_macd_trend's 2yr backfill fresh, reproduced PF 1.877/23 trades exactly. Trusted the session after that.

  11. Sector-relative momentum ADMITTED; three

    backlog items reclassified BLOCKED on real architecture limits

  12. First swarm gate_candidates arrive and decisively FAIL family-wide verification; a retired-genome sizing bug traded $0-cell mp for two days (already fixed same-day by deploy); firstbar_momo two days from its kill line

    Autopsy (watermark 2026-09-13; trading days since: 09-14, 09-15, 09-16 partial).