Plan
desk: house-mneme date: 2026-09-16 forecasts: mneme: p_trade: 0.05 direction: none conviction: low trace: p_trade: 0.04 direction: none conviction: low
Desk Plan — House Mneme — 2026-09-16
Briefing reference: /Users/dadbot/Desktop/ClaudeBod/projects/dadbrain/Analysis/briefings/2026-09-16-pm.md PM: MNEME (desk-blind: this desk's own members only; GHOST stays frozen, no plan)
Shared Market Read
- Event risk today: HIGH — and it is MY OWN calendar. The FOMC decision + SEP/dot plot + Warsh presser is TODAY, Wed Sep 16, 2:00 PM ET, ~88–92% priced for a 25bp hike to 3.75–4.00% (first increase since 2023, first under Chair Warsh). Aug Retail Sales at 8:30 AM ET is the pre-Fed swing item (cons +0.8%, prior −0.6%). Firm-wide status: NO-GO (FOMC). The hike is nearly free information; the tradable variable is the median 2026 year-end dot (one-and-done vs. cycle-start) and Warsh's presser framing (he refuses forward guidance — amplifies repricing risk). This is a hard-skip day for BOTH of this desk's stacks — FOMC decision day is in each stack's hard-skip set regardless of the 2:00 PM timing. Neither stack trades today.
- Session character expected: Event-driven and two-sided — direction NOT pre-assignable. The briefing is explicit: a contained, low-conviction morning and mid-day, then a volatility expansion on the statement at 2:00 PM and a second on the presser at 2:30. Both tails are live and roughly symmetric — a hawkish dot plot into a 10-yr at ~5.00% and $100+ oil re-opens the discount-rate shock; a dovish-relative surprise relieves the pressure and could squeeze the semi complex. Trade the event's character (contained → expansion), not a pre-assigned side.
- VIX regime: 16.97 — LOW (<18) (−0.23 vs 17.20 close). LOW VIX is each stack's best-backtested regime (MNEME VIX<20 PF 2.39; TRACE VIX<20 PF 2.46) — but that is a red herring today because the hard skip fires first. VIX is not a KNN gate input; the binding constraint today is the calendar, not vol. The LOW print reflects compression into the binary, not a clean tradeable tape.
- Key levels: SPY prior close 757.42, prior range 756.18–760.32, SMA20 765.30 (SPY closed below its 20-day — pullback/consolidation intact), ATR(14) 5.82. QQQ prior close 704.60, range 703.63–709.52, SMA20 713.34 (sub-SMA20; semis >20% off highs, the day's bounce candidate), ATR(14) 7.70. DIA is not in the briefing price block — confirm the gap at the open for framing only. 10-yr eased to ~4.99–5.00% (the pause that permits the modest pre-market bid); watch its hold-or-reject of 5.00% as the transmission check. Both stacks' standing >1.5% open-gap invalidation is moot today — the hard skip means no entry logic runs.
- Macro backdrop: Stagflation-tilted, FOMC-gated, into a hawkish regime shift — oil above $100 (Hormuz bypass shut, Libya disrupted), a 10-yr at a 19-year high, and the AI-capex boom under profitability + discount-rate scrutiny. The Fed is about to raise the discount rate on purpose; the BOJ tightening and a failed crypto-clarity vote tighten liquidity on two continents.
- Desk-wide stance — NO TRADE EXPECTED on both stacks: FOMC hard skip. This is the cleanest read of the day for this desk. Both MNEME (SPY) and TRACE (DIA) carry FOMC in their pre-cleared, calendar-anchored hard-skip sets, and the Scanner's hard-skip-exception note is explicit: the 2:00 PM SEP/dot plot is not a Tier-1 data release — the skip fires because FOMC decision day is a hard skip regardless. Do not read this as a soft day. Forecasts are near-zero and honest (MNEME 0.05, TRACE 0.04, both direction
none, low conviction) — the tiny residual reflects only a calendar-check edge case, not a live setup. GHOST stays frozen (Phase 2, Decision D2) — no plan, no forecast.
MNEME — SPY KNN (p_trade 0.05, none, low)
No trade expected — FOMC hard skip. FOMC decision day is in my pre-cleared hard-skip set (FOMC/CPI/NFP/PCE). My mechanism is healthy (SPRT CONSISTENT-WITH-BACKTEST — 23 trades, 47.8% WR, +$1,041.36, LLR +3.793 as of the last reflection), but it does not run today: the skip fires before any entry logic is evaluated, because a 2:00 PM Tier-1 decision lands inside my trading day. The briefing's own call — direction undefined until the SEP prints, both tails live and symmetric — is exactly the class where a long-only KNN broad-index continuation has no valid library-relevant setup anyway. My forecast is p_trade 0.05, direction none (no directional lean — there is no trade to lean on), conviction low. The residual is not a setup: it reflects only the edge case of a calendar-check mislabel. A contained morning and two-sided post-decision expansion is the antithesis of the clean single-directional continuation my library needs. Stand down by rule, not by judgment. What I'll still watch for the record: whether SPY holds 756.18 off any morning drift and how the 10-yr reacts to 5.00% — but none of it can fire me today.
TRACE — DIA KNN (p_trade 0.04, none, low)
No trade expected — FOMC hard skip. FOMC decision day is in my pre-cleared hard-skip set, so my entry gates never run today regardless of data flow. My 09-05 fetch_today_sip_embargo fix is now 3-for-3 live (full three-window reads on 09-08/09-09/09-10 with real past samples) — but observability is moot on a skip day; the data arriving is exactly the unrepresentative pre-print session the briefing and Scanner flag for KNN stacks. My DEGRADED clock (LLR −2.057, −0.888 from the −2.944 boundary after the 09-09 C-fire stop-out) is explicitly not a force/suppress input and is irrelevant today — there is no fire to force or suppress. DIA = the Dow's fragile value/consumer leg is not even reachable today: no position, no lean. Forecast p_trade 0.04, direction none, conviction low. Stand down by rule. Watch for the record whether the Dow's energy members (XOM/CVX) offset the yield-sensitives under a 5% 10-yr — but that is tomorrow's framing, not today's trade.
Pooled note (Family 5)
Both stacks are hard-skipped on FOMC decision day — the rare clean read: neither stack trades, so there is no co-fire, no clustering concern, no pooled significance question to manage. The pooled always-long baseline monitor and the SPRT/DEGRADED clocks all sit idle by rule (a skip logs no trade, so no monitor moves). I do not let the 10-yr/5.00% level or the semis' bounce candidate talk me into a "maybe" on either stack — a hard-skip day is a hard-skip day, and the briefing's own discipline (don't call a coin-flip; the honest pre-decision position is no position) is the same rule my strategy already encodes. Forecasts near-zero and honest (MNEME 0.05, TRACE 0.04, both none, low conviction) — plans are scored, never binding. GHOST stays frozen (Phase 2, Decision D2) — no plan, no forecast. Next Tier-1 after today: PCE Sep 30; the FOMC's path read sets the character for the sessions in between.
Plan Filed
- Filed: 2026-09-16 04:31 PT
- Frontmatter forecasts complete for every active member: yes
- GHOST: FROZEN (Phase 2) — not planned for
- Firm-wide status: NO-GO (FOMC) — both active members HARD-SKIP FOMC decision day; no trade expected on either stack