Diagnosis (why-strategy-loses-naked-stop): the net loss is ONE naked-stop blowup
— NIVF ran to -23% with no stop that fired (-$3,737 = ~111% of the loss); ex-NIVF
the book is +$380. And the exit manager SKIPS any position without a usable stop
(line ~160), so a naked position gets zero exit management and runs to EOD.
New catastrophe stop runs FIRST and unconditionally on every held position,
before the bars fetch and before that no-stop skip: market-exit (via the robust
cancel-legs-then-close path) when price is >= catastrophe_pct below entry (def
10%, TRADING_CATASTROPHE_STOP_PCT) OR >= catastrophe_risk_mult x the intended 1R
underwater when a stop is known (def 1.5x). Independent of the broker bracket, so
a missing/failed stop can't run to -23% again. Long-only; in-profit and bad-price
are no-ops; 0 disables.
Validated: would have CAUGHT NIVF at -10% (~-$1.6k vs -$3.7k), leaves normal -1R
stops (BTBT -4.2%) alone. Pure `catastrophe_triggered` + manage() wiring +
`_is_active`/describe updated. Tests cover pct arm, risk arm, in-profit, disabled.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The backstop behind the EOD-flatten fix: even with the EOD flatten working, a
carry can survive (loop down at EOD, or the held-qty 403 before it was fixed) and
bleed for days — ATPC sat 4 days over the Juneteenth gap, -$651. This closes any
position carried from a PRIOR session, at the open, before it bleeds.
- runtime/flatten.find_overnight_carries (pure, tested): open positions with no
BUY filled today (ET) = carried overnight. Today's fresh names have a buy
today, so they're never touched.
- ExecutionService.flatten_overnight_carries: detects carries from the broker
(positions + filled buys) and closes them via the robust cancel-legs-then-close
path — WITHOUT halting the session (unlike close_session), so today's trading
continues. Emits an open_catchup_flatten risk event.
- run_live_paper step_open_catchup_flatten: once per session, during RTH, gated by
TRADING_OPEN_CATCHUP_FLATTEN_ENABLED (def 1). Loud log when it flattens a carry.
Dry-run against the live book: correctly targets ONLY ATPC (6/18 carry), leaves
today's DAMD/ECX. 38 runtime/safety tests pass. Needs a loop restart to activate.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Diagnosed the ATPC -$651 drag: on 6/18 (last session before Juneteenth) the EOD
flatten FIRED at 15:55 but every close was rejected — Alpaca 403 "insufficient
qty... held_for_orders" because the bracket stop/TP legs reserved the shares.
That root cause was already fixed by 4520c69 (cancel legs before close; verified
the current self-fetch finds the active leg). What remained were two real
naked-carry holes this closes:
- Early-close half-days NEVER flattened: the window was a fixed [15:55, close),
but half-days close at 13:00 (15:55 > 13:00) — and half-days (Jul 3, Black
Friday, Dec 24) are exactly the pre-holiday sessions. The window is now
computed RELATIVE TO THE ACTUAL CLOSE, so it fires on early closes too.
- No margin / silent failure before a multi-day gap. Before a weekend/holiday
closure the flatten lead widens (TRADING_PRE_CLOSURE_FLATTEN_LEAD_MIN, def 20)
so the book is flat with room to retry, and a flatten that can't fully close
before a multi-day gap now SCREAMS ("‼ NAKED-CARRY RISK (N-day gap ahead)")
instead of failing silently like 6/18 did.
New calendar helpers next_trading_day / days_to_next_session / eod_flatten_status
(pure, unit-tested: normal window, pre-holiday widening, early-close firing,
closed-day skip). Normal full days are unchanged (still 15:55-16:00). Dormant
until the next pre-closure session, so no effect on today's behavior.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Completes the Phase 2 loop: the catalyst score now actually reaches the runtime
decision, not just the pure functions. Gated behind its own flag so enabling the
Phase 1 advisory/dashboard never silently changes trade scoring.
- OllamaConfig.catalyst_score_enabled (NEWS_CATALYST_SCORE_ENABLED, default off).
- Watcher accepts an optional catalyst_score_provider (symbol -> 0..1 | None) and
passes it into evaluate_setup; a None provider reproduces today's behavior. The
provider is injected so runtime/ stays free of research/ imports.
- run_live_paper: one TTL-cached catalyst provider shared by the watcher and the
execution service; the watcher gets the score provider only when the blend is
enabled. step_arm gains a gated graded ranking multiplier (bullish catalyst
boosts by 1+gain*score; a confirmed dilutive offering is sunk below the armed
cut), falling back to the existing binary news boost when off.
- Add the enrich task to the run_pass pipeline order so a single --once pass also
runs enrichment (previously only the continuous loop did).
- .env.example documents the new flags; watcher tests cover the blend + the
no-op None-provider case.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01M5HTMkaadGDnAPtXe2hWwg
Day-extension guard (the H1 gap from the prior review): the trigger-extension
ceiling only sees distance above the ORB high, so a name up huge intraday whose
break is itself CLEAN slips through — real example ATPC, entered +1.7% above the
trigger yet +32% above the session open, now a loser. New guard blocks when the
entry is > day_extension_max_pct above the SESSION OPEN. Default 0.30 calibrated
on 22 real fires: normal entries are <=14% above the open, the parabolic tail is
20-83% (ICCM +83/+41, BIRD +36, ATPC +34/+32, NEOV +29). day_open is computed in
step_arm (first RTH bar open), carried on ArmedTrigger, checked in
submit_breakout_now. Env TRADING_DAY_EXTENSION_MAX_PCT; 0 = off.
Percentage breakeven (the "ratchet to a better stop once it works" request): the
broker-side stop ratchet already exists (exit_manager replace_order), but its
earliest move was +1R — a big move for a wide opening-range stop. breakeven_at_pct
moves the stop to entry once price is +this fraction above entry, BEFORE 1R, so a
pop that reverses can't round-trip to a loss (the documented small-cap failure).
Lives in the shared strategy/exits._trail_stop (backtest + live agree), only ever
ratchets up. Default 0.05 live (TRADING_EXIT_BREAKEVEN_PCT); _is_active updated so
the manager runs when it's the only rule set.
tests/unit: 160 passed (+ day-ext block/allow/no-open, + pct-breakeven move/hold/
saves-reverser).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Reject a non-positive last_price ("bad_price") instead of `last_price or
trigger` coercing 0.0 -> trigger, which silently skipped the extension guard
and sized on a phantom price. (latent: fires() guarantees price>=trigger live,
but submit_breakout_now is public.)
- Extract the halt-gap decision to runtime/halt_guard.is_halt_gap() — pure and
unit-tested (the riskiest heuristic had no coverage). Encodes the fail-safe:
None ages (query glitch / session-date mismatch) -> inert, not mass-block;
global-health gate -> a feed-wide lag can't flag the whole book. 7 cases.
- Honest rationale on the extension ceiling: it measures distance above the ORB
trigger (catches the intraday chase / gap-through / halt re-open); overnight
+100% gappers are already excluded upstream by the trigger book's gap_max. It
is not a day-extension metric (a fuller day-move guard is a possible follow-up).
- Fix stale test docstring (15% not 6%); add bad_price test.
tests/unit: 154 passed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The live loop gated trading + EOD flatten on weekday()<5 only, so a market
HOLIDAY read as a normal session. On a full closure the EOD flatten (15:55-16:00
window) would cancel the protective bracket/stop legs and then fail to fill the
market sell (exchange shut) — leaving positions NAKED over the holiday weekend.
Tomorrow is Juneteenth (Fri 2026-06-19, NYSE closed), with 3 open positions.
- runtime/market_calendar.py: NYSE full closures + early closes (no external
dep), is_trading_day / is_regular_hours / session_close_hm. 2026 confirmed.
- _is_rth() now uses is_regular_hours() (holiday + early-close aware).
- EOD flatten skips when session_close_hm() is None (weekend/holiday) and uses
the real close (13:00 on early-close days) — so it only flattens into an OPEN
market that can actually fill the sell, never orphaning the stops.
tests/unit/runtime/test_market_calendar.py: 6 passed. Verified Juneteenth ->
not a trading day -> EOD skipped -> the 3 GTC stops stay in place.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ArmedTrigger stamps price_ts on each update; update_price(None) (a failed batch
price fetch) now CLEARS the price instead of leaving the last value live; and
fires() requires the price to be fresher than max_price_age_s (env
TRIGGER_PRICE_MAX_AGE=12). A stalled feed can no longer fire a breakout into a
name that has already reverted.
Tests: stale price blocks fire, fresh re-enables, None clears; 18 pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Extract the cancel-protective-legs-then-close routine (duplicated in the exit
manager and the execution service after fixing the held-qty 403 in both) into
one shared, heavily-documented helper: runtime/flatten.py. Both callers now
delegate, so the fix can't drift out of sync. Behaviour unchanged; 121 tests
pass.
- Refresh .env.example: document every key added this session (liquidity gate +
sizing, backout cooldown, re-entry guard, managed-exit ladder, EOD flatten)
with the why, and flag MAX_DAILY_LOSS_PCT to revert to 0.03 before live.
- Remove throwaway data/_watch_*.py monitoring scripts (gitignored clutter).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Today's losses were an ENTRY-quality problem: every loser reversed before +1R
(max favorable excursion 0.1-0.7R) — we filled at the top of one-bar spikes on
names too thin to hold the move (WKSP/LNKS/UWMC entered on 100-400 share bars).
rvol is RELATIVE, so 2x of near-nothing still qualified.
- Trigger $-volume floor: ArmedTriggerBook gains min_dollar_vol; step_arm
computes recent 5-bar $-volume per candidate. Thin names go WEAK instead of
arming (env TRIGGER_MIN_DOLLAR_VOL, .env=8000). Skips the untradeable
(APWC $3.8k, WPRT $2.7k).
- Liquidity-aware sizing turned on (.env TRADING_LIQUIDITY_MAX_VOLUME_PCT=0.025):
size caps to a fraction of volume, so thin names get sized down 90%+ while
liquid names are untouched — exactly the asymmetry a small real account needs.
- Breakeven-at-1R enabled (.env): forward give-back safeguard. NB it changes 0
of today's trades (no loser reached +1R) and was a prior OOS 'conservative
backup' — kept as protection for bigger-winner days, not a today-fixer.
Back-comparison (one day, caveated): the two liquidity filters take the day from
~-1,215 to ~+202 excluding the APWC overlap already covered by the naked-stop
fix + re-entry guard. Needs forward validation, not just this back-fit.
Tests: $-vol gate (thin -> WEAK); 50 pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The trail-breach (and first-red) exit called close_position directly, but the
bracket stop/TP legs RESERVE the full quantity (held_for_orders). Alpaca then
rejects the market close 403 "insufficient qty available (available: 0)". The
position can never exit, so the manager retried every pass forever — observed
live: PLUG logged 191 identical 403s while a legitimate trail exit (+286) and
WPRT/ATPC stop-outs were all blocked.
Add _flatten(): cancel the symbol's active protective sell legs to release the
shares, THEN liquidate (retry the close so a not-yet-settled cancel doesn't
hang). Route the two full-close paths through it. Verified live: PLUG flattened
cleanly (0 dangling orders, profit locked), zero 403s after restart, remaining
book still fully stop-protected. Test: _flatten cancels protective then closes;
42 pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Alpaca's orders `limit` keeps only the most-RECENT orders and counts child
legs toward the cap. On a busy day the order list runs to hundreds (every
backed-out entry is an order), so the exit manager's limit=100 snapshot
silently dropped the stop legs of older OPEN positions. A stop-leg lookup then
read "no stop" on a fully-protected position -> broken trailing/profit-lock for
that name (and false-naked alarms in monitoring).
Fix: get_orders gains a `symbols` filter; the exit manager scopes its snapshot
to the handful of held names (no truncation possible). Verified live: an
unscoped limit=100 query reported PLUG stop=None while the scoped query
correctly surfaced PLUG's stop @2.65.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
News (you were right it's relevant): recent_news_map() pulls fresh catalysts per
ticker from the ingested RSS feeds; step_arm tags each armed candidate and BOOSTS
catalyst-backed gappers up the rank (NEWS_RANK_BOOST) — a fresh PR/FDA/offering
is why a small-cap runs, so it surfaces the hotter name earlier and higher. The
board shows a 📰 marker + the headline. Feeds verified live (PR Newswire /
Business Wire / GlobeNewswire) — pulling real catalysts (FDA approvals, offerings).
Forward-tested only (news isn't OOS-backtestable).
eod_replay.sh + crontab: replay at 16:05 (grow dataset), tune at 17:30.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
For going live on a SMALL real account ($300). The sizer assumed a $100k
default -> at $300 it would size $1,000 positions and get rejected. Now:
- _current_equity() reads actual broker equity (cached get_account) and sizes
off it, so a $300 account sizes for $300.
- max_position_value caps each position to ~1/3 of equity (TRADING_MAX_POSITION_PCT)
so N positions fit buying power.
- max_shares liquidity cap (TRADING_LIQUIDITY_MAX_VOLUME_PCT * day volume) wired
through the trigger book -> submit_breakout_now; off at small size, for scaling.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
diagnose_entries.py buckets backtested trades by feature: cheap stocks ($1-5
+0.5R) crush $10-20 (-0.09R), rvol>=5 (+0.79R) beats <5x (+0.15R), and blow-off
gaps >150% fade. sweep_filters.py verifies price/volume/gap-cap combos
train-vs-test: px<=7 + gap<=60% ~doubles OOS expectancy (+0.76 vs +0.39R, win
86% vs 71%).
Add a gap cap to the armed-trigger eligibility (TRIGGER_GAP_MAX) so blow-off
gappers can be excluded; price cap (WATCHER_PRICE_MAX) and volume floor
(TRIGGER_RVOL_MIN) already exist. Final values pending OOS verification.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- strategy/exits.py: percentage profit-lock tiers (TRADING_EXIT_PROFIT_TIERS,
e.g. 8:3,15:9,25:18,40:30). Once a trade has been up gain%, the stop is pinned
to entry*(1+lock%) so a winner can only give back to a locked-in minimum gain
and a fade sells you out IN PROFIT. Shared by backtest + live, active-trades
only (ratchets the broker stop up via replace, never cancel).
- momentum_cli.py: open-positions uPnL was reading 'unrealized_pl' but the sync
stores 'unrealized_pnl' -> always blank. Read the right key (+ green/red).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The single-threaded passes (and the trigger thread) ballooned to 60-120s.
Cause: flaky WSL DNS makes ~1 in 5 Alpaca calls take ~5s to resolve, and each
pass fired ~20 calls (breaker, sync, guard, exit manager all re-reading
account/positions/orders). Fixes:
- client: 2.5s TTL cache for get_account/get_positions (invalidated on any
order mutation) — collapses the redundant per-pass reads to one.
- exit manager: fetch the (heavy) status=all orders snapshot ONCE per pass and
reuse it for every position's stop-leg + entry-time lookup (was 2 calls/pos).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Track entry_ts from the broker entry order's filled_at (not first-sight), so the
high-water mark and R-multiple reflect the move since the real entry — correct
trailing for positions that predate the manager (e.g. across a restart).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two fixes found by running the manager against the live book:
- _stop_leg queried status="open", but a bracket's protective stop is a 'held'
child of the FILLED entry, so it was never found -> stops never trailed.
Query status="all" and match active leg statuses.
- when the trailed stop would sit ABOVE current price (price fell back through
the prior swing low), a sell-stop there is rejected; that IS the trail firing,
so exit at market instead.
Also drop the hardcoded "6" in the board title (armed set is now 10).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Replace the static -1R/+2R bracket with active, parameterised exit management
shared by the backtest and live (strategy/exits.py): move to breakeven, trail
under prior-bar lows or by %, scale out, or first-red exit.
Swept all variants over 187 sessions with a held-out train/test split
(sweep_exits.py), then an adversarial 3-judge workflow picked the robust winner
OUT-OF-SAMPLE: trailLow_a1 (trail under the prior bar's low after +1R) — test
avgR 0.128 vs the old static_2R 0.067 (~1.9x), win 49% vs 38%. The naive
in-sample winner (trailPct10) was correctly rejected as overfit
(train 0.684 -> test 0.085).
- strategy/exits.py: ExitConfig + simulate_exit (backtest) + manage_live (live)
- strategy/backtest/engine.py: simulate the managed exit on entry; Trade.entry_index
- runtime/exit_manager.py: live manager — ratchets the broker stop UP via
REPLACE/PATCH (never cancel = never naked), scales out, first-red exit
- alpaca_paper/client.py: replace_order (PATCH) + partial close_position
- run_live_paper.py: 'exits' step (12s); TRIGGER_MAX_ARMED 6 -> 10
- tests: exits sim/live + manager ratchet-never-cancel
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three fixes from the first live session:
1) Naked-stop bug (critical): the entry-timeout guard cancelled an entry it
thought was unfilled AFTER it had really filled (our order_filled events lag
the 60s sync). Cancelling a bracket parent cancels its stop/TP legs, so the
position went NAKED and bled 22% with no floor. Guard now checks the broker's
LIVE positions (get_positions) before cancelling and never cancels a filled
name. Regression test added.
2) Speed: ingest re-fetched a 240-min window for ~80 symbols every minute (~46s
measured), and the single-threaded loop froze the 4s trigger that whole time
-> breakouts caught once a minute, not in real time. Ingest is now
incremental (heavy first pass covers the session so the opening range is
present; then ~20-min refreshes, closed bars never change). Loop passes
dropped from ~70s to ~2-5s.
3) Threaded trigger: the fast breakout detector/fire loop now runs on its own
thread, fully decoupled from the slow scheduler. EventStore, the execution
service, and the trigger book are made thread-safe (locks) so the thread and
main loop can't race the shared psycopg2 connection or in-memory state.
Verified live: fired EZGO/NEOV, all positions retain active stops.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The "always late / miss the move" problem was structural: entries waited for a
1-min bar to CLOSE above the breakout then walked the ingest->watch->execute
cadence (~2 min), and rested a limit AT the trigger that a runner never fills.
Add a top-6 armed-trigger book (runtime/triggers.py): keep the most-promising
gappers ready with a pre-computed opening-range trigger/stop and FIRE the
instant LIVE price crosses, via TradingExecutionService.submit_breakout_now —
a marketable order (capped above the trigger) that actually fills — reusing the
same risk gates (daily-loss breaker, max-concurrent, 1%-risk sizing, dedup).
- structure.py: opening_range() helper (shared with the ORB detector)
- run_live_paper.py: step_arm (rank + arm, 20s) + step_trigger (price-cross
fire + snapshot, 4s)
- momentum_cli.py: rewrite the watch board — market clock + countdown, loop
heartbeat, the 6 armed triggers with live price / gap / rvol / trigger /
distance / stop, and a plain-English "what it's hunting" line
- tests: opening range, trigger book state machine, submit_breakout_now gates
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- learn_params.py: grid-search the strategy timing/threshold knobs over stored
sessions, ranking by total P&L AND 'entry_min' (minutes after the open the
entry fires) — a learning method to find params that enter earlier while
staying green.
- evaluate_setup(min_bars=...) + BacktestEngine(ready_score_pct/criteria/min_bars)
now tunable; watcher passes WATCHER_MIN_BARS through (was a no-op: evaluator
hard-coded 10).
Sweep finding: even the earliest params enter ~28-30 min after the open
(baseline ~33) because the first-pullback setup waits for a pullback to FORM.
Cadence/min_bars are not the bottleneck — the setup design is. Genuine earliness
needs a fast opening-breakout trigger + more historical sessions to learn from.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- SetupEvaluationResult.criteria_detail: per-criterion {name,passed,reason}.
- watcher CriteriaEvaluatedEvent now carries gap_pct, relative_volume, status,
reason, and the per-criterion detail (was only passed/failed names).
- CLI: 'inspect criteria SYMBOL' shows status + gap/rvol + each criterion reason;
new 'inspect signals' = ready board + per-symbol gap/rvol/status.
Verified on real 2026-06-15 bars: RGNT shows 9/9 with reasons (rvol 26.2x),
'late' explained by the 10:30 ET cutoff. 67/67 tests green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Snapshot before the DuckDB->PostgreSQL migration. data/, archive/, the 232MB
rebuild zip, the Windows .venv, and .env are excluded via .gitignore.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
