House Slack — 2026-07-17

desk: house-slack date: 2026-07-17 forecasts: slack: p_trade: 0.02 direction: none conviction: low

Desk Plan — House Slack — 2026-07-17

Briefing reference: /Users/dadbot/Desktop/ClaudeBod/projects/dadbrain/Analysis/briefings/2026-07-17-pm.md PM: SLACK

Shared Market Read

• Event risk today: MEDIUM — busy 8:30 AM ET data block (Import Prices, Housing Starts, Building Permits), plus 9:15 AM (Industrial Production) and 10:00 AM (Consumer Sentiment). No Tier-1 events, but the chip rout is the dominant narrative driver.
• Session character expected: News-driven / gap-down bias — Nasdaq futures -1.6% overnight, risk-off. The macro data provides potential pivot points. VIX at 18.08 (MID regime — shifted from LOW for the first time since July 13).
• VIX regime: 18.08 (MID). SLACK's backtest showed profitability in all VIX regimes (PF 1.28–3.01), strongest in HIGH. The MID regime is well within the strategy's operating range, but the signal threshold is a price-return magnitude gate, not a vol gate — VIX regime doesn't directly affect the likelihood of a flagged run.
• Key levels (IWM): Support ~292.60 (July 13 low), resistance ~300.45 (June 30 high). The 292–300 range has held for roughly a month. IWM is the small-cap proxy — typically more sensitive to macro data and risk sentiment than broad large-cap indices.
• Macro backdrop: The chip rout continues to drive a rotation from tech/cyclicals into energy. The SPY/QQQ divergence is at its widest in this cycle. IWM as a small-cap proxy may benefit from the rotation into cyclicals/energy (broad-based economic exposure), but the risk-off tone is a headwind for small caps in the near term.

SLACK — IWM — 5-Day Swing Mean Reversion

No trade expected. IWM has been range-bound in the 292–300 zone for the past month. The recent 5-day rolling returns logged by the daily runner have been consistently far below the ±4.97% threshold: -0.43% (Jul 13), -1.89% (Jul 14), -0.54% (Jul 15), +0.80% (Jul 16). Even accounting for the overnight gap-down and today's risk-off tone, bridging the gap from +0.80% to -4.97% (or +4.97%) in a single session is well beyond IWM's typical daily range (~1.0–1.5%). The 5-day return would need to stretch ~5.8pp from the current reading to trigger the threshold — a 1-in-100+ event.

Setup present: No. The ±4.97% threshold is far from the current 5-day return magnitude. The strategy's own signal code will log another no_trade:no_signal block.

Sizing vs. event risk: N/A — no position to size. The MEDIUM event risk is irrelevant for SLACK today since there's no entry signal and no open position.

Session-character fit: The gap-down / news-driven character is not a barrier to SLACK's signal — the strategy is agnostic to intraday session character (it checks the daily close-to-close return, not intraday dynamics). But the magnitude required to trigger is not present.

Key levels: The 292.60 support is the level to watch for break vs. hold. A decisive break below 292 could, over the next few sessions, build toward a 5-day return that approaches the threshold — but that's a multi-session outlook, not a today signal.

Invalidation: No invalidation applies — no open position, no entry signal to step back from.

Plan Filed

• Filed: 2026-07-17 07:00 ET
• Frontmatter forecasts complete for every active member: yes
• Position state: flat (no open position)
• Expected action: no trade — paper_trade.py will log a no-trade row

No trades taken.