Three Losses in 41 Minutes. Two Were Taken Before the Plan Said Go.
Three shorts on Thursday, three stops, exactly 3R given back from a +5.46R Wednesday peak. Two of the three were approved ahead of conditions their own session
Before the trade, meet the system.
SkyAnalyst is not one AI trader. It is four specialist agents, each with its own data pipeline, each maintaining state between evaluations, and each required to agree before a position is sized. They don’t chat in prose. They write structured messages to a shared state object that each reads on every evaluation cycle.
This is a short losses report, and the brevity is honest. The week had three losing trades, all on Thursday, all shorts, and each cost exactly the 1R it was sized for. From Monday to Wednesday the desk took six trades and won all six, riding a rise in yields and the dollar. By Wednesday's close the week stood at +5.46R. On Thursday morning it opened three more shorts in the same direction inside forty-one minutes, NAS100, EURUSD and GBPUSD, and all three stopped. The window gave back 3.0R, 6,000 dollars on a simulated 100,000 dollar account at 2% risk, and closed at +2.46R. Against the year to date ledger, the scale is clear. The system has banked +28.75R YTD from Jan 12 inception, sealed at the August close, which puts that same simulated account at $157,519.50. The desk gave back 3R this week against +28.75R YTD. What makes the week worth writing up is not the size of the loss. It is that two of the three entries were approved before the conditions their own plans had set.
Monday to Wednesday: six for six
The losses only make sense against what came before them. Six trades in three sessions, all six winners, five of them run to the third target. Cable was sold on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The Dow and the Nasdaq were sold on Wednesday. The one long of the week, a Nasdaq pullback on Tuesday, reached its second target.
By Wednesday's close the simulated account sat at its weekly peak of 110,921.79 dollars. Every book that could sell a rising dollar and a rising 10-year yield had done so, and been paid.
Thursday: three shorts in forty-one minutes
The Nasdaq had gapped roughly 400 points lower overnight and was bouncing. At 14:23 UTC the desk sold that bounce at 30,342.5. At 14:49 it sold EURUSD at 1.13759. At 15:04 it sold GBPUSD at 1.32142.
Cable went first, stopped at 1.3231 at 16:16 UTC, seventy-one minutes after its fill. The Nasdaq followed a minute later, stopped through 30,420 at 16:17 after trading as low as 30,232.4. The euro held overnight.
Friday: the last stop
The EURUSD short stopped at 10:18 UTC on Friday, at 1.14002, nineteen and a half hours after it filled. That closed the week's losses at three, and no new position opened on Friday.
The drawdown curve shows it plainly: six steps up from Monday to Wednesday, then three even steps down, each worth 2,000 dollars. A peak to trough of 5.41% on the simulated account, and the balance never fell below where the week began.
Every trade the system took.
| Date | Time | Instrument | Dir | Model | Setup | Grade | R | $ Sim | Result | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 24 | 14:23 UTC | NAS100 | Short | NAS100 SHORT, VWAP Rejection / Failed Rally into Resistance | C+ | -1.0R(SL) | -$2,000(SL) | Stop hit | - | |
| Sep 24 | 14:49 UTC | EURUSD | Short | EURUSD SHORT, VWAP Rejection / Trend Continuation | C+ | -1.0R(SL) | -$2,000(SL) | Stop hit | - | |
| Sep 24 | 15:04 UTC | GBPUSD | Short | GBPUSD SHORT | C+ | -1.0R(SL) | -$2,000(SL) | Stop hit | - |
Dollar figures are simulated on a $100,000 account at 2% risk per trade. Actual subscriber P&L varies with account size. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
Pattern of the week
The pattern is correlation, and it has a specific shape this week.
A NAS100 short is a bet that US equities fall. EURUSD and GBPUSD shorts are both bets that the dollar rises. In a week driven by rising yields, those are the same trade. The desk evaluates each instrument separately, scores each against its own charts, and sizes each at 1R because each cleared its own gate. So three positions opened inside forty-one minutes, and when the dollar move paused, all three failed within a day of each other.
This is the second week running that the losses report lands on the same observation. Last week four of six losses were correlated dollar and risk trades. This week all three were. It is no longer a one-week curiosity. It is a structural property of how the desk sizes.
The other half of the pattern is location. The Macro Agent's read on Thursday was, if anything, stronger than earlier in the week: EURUSD at strong bear with 87% confidence, GBPUSD bearish at 80%. But a pullback sell pays when the trend has room to run, and by Thursday the dollar had already carried DXY from about 100.52 to 101.33. The same setup, taken late in a move, had less room and less margin for an early entry.
Decision highlights
The Nasdaq approval is the decision we would take back. The session plan asked for entry only after 10:30 ET, and two earlier evaluations, at 10:07 and 10:10 ET, declined the trade on exactly that ground. At 10:16 ET a third evaluation approved it on an alternative trigger, two closes below VWAP, at 62% confidence, and wrote in its own reasoning that the entry was slightly early on timing.
The Cable approval is the same judgment, faster. At 15:03 UTC the evaluation declined the short at 84% confidence because the rejection candle the plan required had not closed. Eighty-seven seconds later it approved the same trade at 62% confidence, calling it tradeable but not fully confirmed, and the candle was still forming. The confidence went down and the answer went from no to yes.
Taking the EURUSD short is a decision we would repeat. Two evaluations declined it while price sat below the entry zone, and the approval only came after a completed five minute candle wicked to 1.13763 and closed at 1.13733, below the 1.13750 line the plan named. It is the one Thursday loss that followed its plan exactly, and it still lost.
Six instruments, six stories.
One loss, the Thursday short at 1.13759. It came within a tenth of a pip of its first target, held overnight, and stopped Friday morning.
All EURUSD this week →One loss, the Thursday short, stopped seventy-one minutes after filling. The fastest failure of the week, after three straight winners on the same book.
All GBPUSD this week →No losses this week. The Dow's only trade was Wednesday's short, which ran to its third target.
All US30 this week →One loss, the Thursday short at 30,342.5. It traded 110 points in our favor and missed its first target by 2.4 points before stopping.
All NAS100 this week →No losses this week because there were no trades. The yen book did not produce a qualifying setup.
All USDJPY this week →No losses this week because there were no trades. The S&P book placed orders on Wednesday and Thursday, but none of them filled.
All US500 this week →No losses this week because there were no trades. USDCAD is the newest book and has not yet produced a qualifying setup.
All USDCAD this week →Loss of the week: GBPUSD Short · -1R
Losses worth learning from
GBPUSD Short, Thursday, -1R, grade C+
This is the loss of the week, and the teardown is about eighty-seven seconds.
The plan wanted a closed five minute rejection candle on the retest of 1.32150. At 15:03 UTC the evaluation said no at 84% confidence: the breakdown had printed, but the two candles after it reclaimed the zone and the current bearish candle was still forming. At 15:04 the same check said yes at 62%, on the same forming candle.
The trade itself was sound on paper. Entry at 1.32142, stop at 1.3231, first target at 1.3195, so 16.8 pips of risk against 19.2 to the first target, about 1.14R. The Macro Agent had the pair bearish at 80%.
It went 5.3 pips our way and then stopped seventy-one minutes after it filled. One trade proves nothing about the rule. But the rule was written for exactly this situation, and it was read, weighed, and set aside inside a minute and a half.
EURUSD Short, Thursday, -1R, grade C+
This one did everything the plan asked, and it has a different flaw.
The trigger required a wick into 1.13760 to 1.13785 and a five minute close back below 1.13750. Two evaluations declined while price sat under the zone. Then the 14:35 candle wicked to 1.13763 and closed at 1.13733, and the position filled at 1.13759.
The problem is the ladder. Stop at 1.13998, first target at 1.13594: 23.9 pips of risk against 16.5 to the first target, roughly 0.69R. On the TP1 baseline, a winning version of this trade books less than the loss it risked.
Price reached 1.13595, a tenth of a pip from that target, held overnight, and stopped Friday morning at 1.14002. It is the second week running that a losing currency short carried a first target below 1R. That is now a pattern, not a one-off.
On a $100k account at 2.0% risk per trade.
Each trade risks +$2,000 (1R). The system's actual scale-out behavior may differ, see disclaimer.
| Scenario | R-multiple | Profit on $100k |
|---|---|---|
| Window drawdownActual | -3R | −$6,000 |
All six agents combined.
From the desk
The week gave back 3.0R, or 6,000 dollars on the simulated 100,000 dollar account, and still closed at +2.46R and 4,920 dollars because of the six winners in front of it. The peak to trough on the week's own equity curve was 5.41%.
The year to date ledger reads +28.75R across 220 trades at a 56.82% win rate, sealed at the August close. On a static 100,000 dollar account at 2% risk that is $157,519.50. Compounding the same trades, where each position is sized off the balance it actually had, gives $169,638.84. The gap between the two, a little over 12,000 dollars, is not extra edge. It is the same R banked in an order that lets each winner size the next trade larger, and it holds only because no single position is ever allowed to be bigger than the rest. This week's 6,000 dollar give-back is under 4% of the static figure, and fixed fractional sizing is the reason it stays that small.
One note on scope. September is still open, so it is not in the year to date figure. The ledger has +6.39R recorded for the month so far, including this week, and it joins the year to date number when the month closes.
What we're tuning
We are looking at making timing and candle-close conditions in a session plan binding at the approval step, rather than inputs the approver can weigh against a strong directional read. Both of Thursday's early approvals wrote down that they were early. A condition the approver can read and then set aside is a preference, not a gate.
Two older questions came back as well. Three correlated shorts inside forty-one minutes is the same portfolio-correlation gap last week's report named, and a first target at 0.69R is the second below-1R ladder on a losing currency short in two weeks. Neither change ships on the strength of one week, but both now have two weeks of evidence behind them.
What the numbers actually mean
Six winners followed by three losers feels like a turn. The arithmetic says it is ordinary.
Across 220 trades since inception the system has won 56.82% of the time, for +28.75R, a little over 0.13R per trade. At that win rate roughly 43% of trades lose, so the chance of any three particular trades in a row all losing is about 8%. Over hundreds of trades, three-loss runs are expected many times a year. Last week produced a four-loss run. This week's three is shorter, not longer.
Van Tharp built the R-multiple around the idea that a system is a distribution of outcomes measured in units of risk, not a win rate. The average winner in this window's panel is 0.91R, drawn from the week's six winners at their first targets. A 0.91R average winner needs a win rate above roughly 52% to break even, which is why a first target below 1R, like the EURUSD trade's 0.69R, deserves scrutiny: every such trade raises the win rate the system needs to stay positive.
Jack Schwager's Market Wizards interviews return to the same point from the other side. The traders who last are not the ones who avoid losing runs, but the ones whose losing runs are uniform and small. Three losses at exactly 1R each, and a 5.41% peak to trough on the simulated account, is that kind of run.
One caveat on sample size. A single week is nine trades, and the drawdown figure in the panel comes from this window's equity walk alone. The 220-trade record and the 56.82% win rate are the numbers with weight behind them. This week is one slice of that record, and it looks like the record.
At a Glance
Drawdown questions
Six winners and then three losers. Did something break on Thursday?
No. The direction, the setups and the macro read were the same as earlier in the week. What changed was how late in the move the entries arrived and, on two of the three, how strictly the approval held to its own plan. Every loss was exactly 1R, the designed size.
Two of the losses nearly hit their first targets. Why are they still full losses?
Because a trade only counts as a win once its first target is actually reached, and the broker closes the whole position there. The Nasdaq short missed by 2.4 points and the euro short by a tenth of a pip, then both reversed to the stop. Nearly reaching a target pays nothing, so we score them as the 1R losses they were.
Why take three shorts inside forty-one minutes?
Because each instrument is evaluated independently and each cleared its own gate. They were also the same bet in three forms, long the dollar and short risk, which is why they stopped together. The desk does not currently size open positions against each other for correlation, and this is the second week that gap has shown up in the losses.
Why does this report say minus 3R when the weekly recap says +2.46R?
They measure different things. This report covers only the losing trades, so it totals 3.0R across three losses. The recap covers all nine trades in the window and nets those losses against six winners. Neither number is the other one adjusted.
Why publish a losses report for a week that finished positive?
Because we publish it on a fixed schedule whenever a week contains a loss, not only when a week goes badly. The quality gate on this report tried to skip it, since every loss graded C+ and low-grade losses are assumed to teach less. We overrode it, because two approvals that went ahead of their own plans are exactly the kind of loss worth showing.
Trade with the system that publishes its drawdowns.
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Dollar figures are simulated on a $100,000 account at 2% risk per trade. Drawdown trajectories shown reflect a small window sample size and are not projections of forward performance. Past performance, including losses, is not a guarantee of future results. Actual subscriber P&L varies with account size and execution. YTD context: +28.75R YTD across 220 trades, see stats strip.
From the SkyAnalyst Journal
Six Winners by Wednesday. Thursday Sold What Was Left.
Nine trades, +2.46R. The desk rode a dollar bid and a yield spike for three sessions and banked six straight winners, then opened three more shorts on Thursday after the move had already been made.
Take TP1 Aggressively: The GBPUSD Short That Ran to TP2 Anyway
Cable had fallen for three hours when SkyAnalyst sold the bounce at 1.3263 and told itself to bank TP1 fast. TP2 printed 1 hour 43 minutes later for +1.63R (TP2); the record books +0.74R (TP1).
Yields at 5.054%, RSI at 13.8: Why SkyAnalyst Sold the Nasdaq Bounce
The 10-year broke to a 5-day high and the Nasdaq was already oversold. SkyAnalyst would not buy it or sell the low. It sold the bounce at 30,550.5. TP3 printed overnight for +3.02R (TP3); the record books +0.81R (TP1).