House Delta
2026-08-26
Plan
Desk Plan — House Delta — 2026-08-26
Briefing reference: /Users/dadbot/Desktop/ClaudeBod/projects/dadbrain/Analysis/briefings/2026-08-26-pm.md PM: DELTA
Shared Market Read
- Event risk today: HIGH — firm-wide NO-GO. July PCE (8:30 AM ET) is a Tier-1 macro release and a DELTA hard-skip day; NVDA Q2 earnings after the close is the single-name binary for DELTA's lead-lag pair. Watchlist confirms firm-wide trade status: NO-GO — PCE hard-skips the session. Jackson Hole / Warsh keynote is Friday Aug 28 (the next risk after today's cluster).
- Session character expected: news-driven / two-sided / binary-eve. Resolved in two legs — the 8:30 PCE macro print this morning and the NVDA after-close reaction (which feeds tomorrow's gap, not today). Contained churn into the data is the base case, not a clean trend. Briefing discipline: do not pre-assign up or down; do not chase pre-print firming.
- VIX regime: LOW (15.69, ticking up from 15.45). DELTA's momentum edge performs best in VIX < 20 (dev PF 2.59) — but VIX is irrelevant today because the PCE hard-skip closes the session regardless.
- Key levels: Moot for trading today. Indicative first-hour triggers for DELTA's runner: NVDA +1.5% ≈ 216.3 (up-LONG, from pre-market 213.85) / −1.5% ≈ 209.9 (disabled SHORT). Confirm the actual cash open if any of this is revisited tomorrow. The level that actually matters: NVDA's after-close reaction to Q2 — that sets tomorrow's first-hour leader measurement.
- Macro backdrop: Binary-eve. PCE + NVDA + Jackson Hole stack the week's risk into one 24-hour window. Oil sliding on Iran/Oman Hormuz de-escalation, 30-yr near multi-decade highs (~5.18%), tech-vs-broad split persists (QQQ just below SMA20, SPY just above).
DELTA — Lead-Lag Pairs (NVDA→ASML, AMD→TSM)
Call: No trade expected today — PCE day, hard-skip. p_trade 0.0, direction none, conviction high.
- Why — the binding gate is a hard rule, not a judgment: DELTA's strategy (
strategy_v2.md) hard-skips FOMC, CPI, NFP, and PCE days — no trade on any pair, unconditionally (data/event_calendar/). Today is July PCE, releasing 8:30 AM ET, the first leg of the week's binary. The firm-wide watchlist independently declares NO-GO. There is no scenario where DELTA logs a real trade today; the engine's event filter closes the session before any entry logic runs. This is the correct outcome — the setup is structurally absent by pre-registered rule, not merely unlikely. - NVDA Q2 after the close — the direct binary for DELTA's lead-lag pair, but it does NOT change today's call. NVDA reports Q2 FY27 tonight (consensus $92.07B rev / $2.09 EPS vs ~$91B guide, data center ~$80B, China the swing factor; 13 straight beats, whisper-fade risk). Three reasons it stays out of today's book: (1) PCE hard-skip closes the session first; (2) DELTA hard-flats at 15:30, so no position would ever be carried into the print anyway — zero overnight event exposure by design; (3) a first-hour NVDA move today (pre-print) would be pre-positioning noise, not fresh supply-chain information — the exact low-quality continuation context that has been failing the book. The print matters for TOMORROW: tomorrow's cash open in NVDA is the leader measurement DELTA actually trades on. Watch tonight's reaction to frame tomorrow's plan — a beat + data-center strength sets up a possible NVDA→ASML LONG; a whisper-fade sets up the (disabled) SHORT branch.
- Session-character fit: Today is a news-driven coin-flip — the wrong shape for DELTA's edge (which needs a clean first-hour leader impulse on a non-event day). Even absent the PCE skip, the setup would be improbable on this tape.
- Sizing vs. event risk: N/A — no trade. Standard 0.75% would apply if a LONG ever fired on a tradeable day, but no setup exists today and none can. No size decision to make.
- Key levels (for tomorrow's read, not today's execution): NVDA first-hour +1.5% ≈ 216.3 (up-LONG trigger) / −1.5% ≈ 209.9 (disabled SHORT → shadow book). Prior-close NVDA ≈ 213.06 (pre-market 213.85, +0.37%). Runner's 09:30–09:55 measurement is authoritative when live.
- Invalidation / stand-down: Already stood down. Nothing can invalidate a hard-skip — the session is closed by rule. If the engine were somehow to see a signal today, it is the PCE event filter failing, not a valid setup; flag and hold to the skip.
- Book state carries forward (unchanged, no new evidence today): Cumulative -$442.33 across 10 trades (SPRT CONTINUE, n=10, LLR −0.159). AMD→TSM sub-book n=8, WR 25.0%, PF 0.191, three straight losses — queued for TEMPER's calibration conversation, pre-registered kill switch not triggered, no new AMD up-impulse today so the cell does not bleed further. NVDA→ASML clean cell 2W/0L remains the defensible edge; tomorrow's NVDA print is the first live test of that cell's sensitivity to an earnings catalyst.
Plan Filed
- Filed: 2026-08-26 04:37 PDT (pre-open)
- Frontmatter forecasts complete for every active member: yes (delta — p_trade 0.0, direction none, conviction high)