A promotion funnel is only meaningful if things actually die in it. These did, with the measurement that killed them.
22 synthetic TradFi markets
— oil, indices, semiconductor names
Zero qualifying setups across 45 configurations. The order books are market-maker quoted; the event we trade never forms, not even on a 12% intraday range.
Funding harvest
$0.43 accrued against $12.50 of execution cost over ten cycles. The strategy is sound. Our capital base is not.
Re-entry on a second touch
of the same level
Positive on paper, −$450 across 600 trades once fees were real. One entry per level per day is the strategy, not a safety blanket.
Two new markets,
a full week of tape each
Neither produced a tradeable signal at any threshold. Volume is not liquidity, and liquidity is not structure.
Four analysis engines,
retired the same day
280 graded signals, −40R, no path to capital. Deleted, not demoted.
A signal-quality discovery,
retracted within a day
It held on the pooled data and evaporated once split by engine. Simpson's paradox, caught before it reached the sizing logic.
Everything above was built, measured and thrown away. The list is longer than the list of what runs.