Mar 9-15, 2026: Four-of-Four, the Variance Envelope at Week Resolution
Four trades, four losses, -4.00R given back, the longest losing streak in the published record. No winners offset the draw. Same playbook, same threshold, same
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.
Four trades. Four losses. The week opened with a US30 short on Tuesday afternoon, paired a US500 long and a NAS100 long inside twelve minutes on Wednesday afternoon, and closed with a second NAS100 long on Friday. Every entry stopped at -1R. No winners. No partials. No exits closer to the stop and none past it. Net for the loss-counting window: -4.00R, equivalent to -8,000 dollars of simulated drawdown on the 100,000 / 2 percent risk baseline. Trough equity reached 92,000 on Friday afternoon, an -8.00 percent drawdown from peak. The longest losing streak inside the window: 4 trades, every trade in the window. This drawdown report is the recap. The companion Mar 9-15 Weekly Recap covers the same five sessions and lands at 0W / 4L on the TP1-baseline ledger, the same numbers reported here from the loss-side angle. There is no winner column to balance the loss column this week. We publish both reports because the methodology is identical and the framing is different. The recap reads forward across the week. This document opens the books on every loss, why each cleared threshold, what failed in the tape after entry, and the rolling-window statistics that say a 35 percent win-rate system produces 0/4 weeks with a frequency the binomial distribution makes unsurprising. For variance context against the prior loss week, see the Feb 23-Mar 1 drawdown report (which closed -4R on the loss side but green at recap level), and the February monthly recap for the closing-month posture this March open inherited. The thematic frame for everything that follows: four-of-four. The variance envelope of a 35 percent WR system includes weeks like this. Same playbook, same threshold, same sizing. The architecture absorbed the streak without intervention.
Act 1: Tuesday opens the loss column
The week opened with a US30 short at 14:25 UTC on Mar 10, a sell-rally entry into a VWAP / supply confluence after the index pushed into the prior session's resistance shelf. The Trend Agent flagged the setup at C+. Macro gated short-tilt on a soft DXY and bid bonds. Cross-Asset confirmed with NAS100 stalling at the same horizon. Confluence cleared the actionable band. The position stopped within the hour at -1R when the index reclaimed the supply shelf and held the breakout.
By Tuesday's close the loss-side tally read 1 loss, -1R, equity at 98,000. No winners ran in parallel. The drawdown column read red. The recap column read the same red. One report, one slice, same number on both sides of the ledger this week.
Act 2: Wednesday delivers the doubled stop
Wednesday Mar 11 was the day this drawdown report exists for. At 14:08 UTC the Trend Agent triggered a US500 long on a pullback-and-go setup at session VWAP after the index held the prior day's pivot. Confluence cleared 60 percent. Twelve minutes later, at 14:20 UTC, the Trend Agent triggered a NAS100 long on a continuation setup at a higher-low retest of the same intraday structure. Confluence cleared again. Both positions stopped at -1R inside the hour, the US500 first, the NAS100 a few minutes after.
That is two correlated long entries inside twelve minutes. The Cross-Asset Agent did not flag the correlation as a portfolio-level veto because the system does not currently size against intra-window correlation between US500 and NAS100. Both setups passed their individual gates. The Risk Agent did not engage a circuit breaker after the third loss because the system does not have one. Sizing stayed fixed. Threshold stayed at 55 percent. Equity closed Wednesday at 94,000, a -6.00 percent drawdown from peak.
Act 3: Friday closes the four-of-four
Friday Mar 13 ran a NAS100 long at 14:40 UTC, a buy-the-dip into a defended intraday support shelf after the index gave back the morning's gain. The Trend Agent's read: structural pullback inside a higher-timeframe uptrend, confluence at 62 percent, setup grade C+. Macro gated long-tilt on a softening DXY and a firm bid in bonds. Cross-Asset confirmed with US500 holding the prior day's lows. The position stopped at -1R when the support shelf gave way and the index broke into the next demand zone below.
That is the fourth loss and the loss-of-the-window the result reveal flags. Net result for the loss-counting window: -4.00R, equivalent to -8,000 dollars of simulated drawdown on the 100,000 / 2 percent risk baseline. Trough equity at 92,000, a -8.00 percent drawdown from peak. There is no winner column to subtract from this number. The companion weekly recap reports the same window as 0W / 4L because every trade in the window is in this report. Five sessions, four trades, four stops. The week did not produce a setup outside this list.
Related reading: companion weekly recap · prior drawdown report · February 2026 monthly recap.
Every trade the system took.
| Date | Time | Instrument | Dir | Model | Setup | Grade | R | $ Sim | Result | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 10 | 14:25 UTC | US30 | Short | unknown | Sell rally into VWAP/supply (Primary) | C+ | -1.0R | -$2,000 | Stop hit | - |
| Mar 11 | 14:08 UTC | US500 | Long | unknown | US500 Long (Pullback & Go) | B | -1.0R | -$2,000 | Stop hit | - |
| Mar 11 | 14:20 UTC | NAS100 | Long | unknown | NAS100 LONG (Continuation) | C+ | -1.0R | -$2,000 | Stop hit | - |
| Mar 13 | 14:40 UTC | NAS100 | Long | unknown | NAS100 LONG (buy-the-dip into support) | C+ | -1.0R | -$2,000 | 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 four losses this week did not share a single setup. US30 ran one short at intraday supply. US500 ran one pullback long at session VWAP. NAS100 ran one continuation long and one buy-the-dip long at separate intraday structures across two days. Three instruments, three distinct setup families, four entries, four -1R stops.
What the pattern is
The structural commonality across all four entries: every confluence score landed in the 60-67 percent band, the actionable floor of the entry range. The macro was right, the structure was right, the cross-asset was right. What was not yet present in any of these entries was the second-bar absorption signal that confirms a level is defending, not just being touched. A discretionary trader watching the same tapes would call these "early entries." The system calls them "entries at the threshold."
Why these failed
A 60-67 percent confluence trade has a roughly 40 percent failure rate by construction. That is the whole reason 55 percent is the floor, not the target. When four floor-of-the-range trades cluster inside one week, the per-week failure rate compounds. Four independent trades each carrying a 40-percent stop probability have a probability of all stopping inside one window of roughly 2.6 percent. Mathematically, this week's loss side is on the wrong tail but not off the distribution. We log roughly one such week every 12 to 18 months at the cadence we run.
What we keep doing
The same setups, at the same scores, with the same macro context, will be taken again next week. The system is not a discretionary trader who needs maximum-conviction entries. It is a portfolio of conditional probabilities that earns its expectancy over a rolling 100-trade window. Removing the 60-67 percent confluence band to "improve" the win rate after a 0/4 week would lower the expected value of the strategy and would skip the multi-R outliers that carry the rolling expectancy. The question worth asking is the absorption-scoring question we surface in the teardowns, not the confluence-floor question.
Decision highlights
The Risk Agent did not engage a circuit breaker after the second consecutive loss on Wednesday afternoon because the system does not have one. By design, position sizing is fixed per trade and is not modulated by recent results. A circuit breaker that paused after the Mar 11 NAS100 stop would have skipped the Mar 13 NAS100 long. That entry also stopped at -1R, so a pause this week would have looked like a save. Across rolling history, the streak-aware override skips more winners than losers, and the discipline is that the threshold is the threshold. We do not promote a different rule on a 0/4 week than we run on a 4/0 week.
The Cross-Asset Agent did not flag the Mar 11 US500 long and the Mar 11 NAS100 long as a single correlated exposure inside the same twelve-minute window. The current portfolio-correlation logic gates by instrument, not by intra-window timing on correlated instruments. Both setups passed their individual gates. Both stopped together. This is an operational gap we have flagged before in the prior Feb 23-Mar 1 drawdown report and have not yet shipped a fix for. It is on the next-cycle backlog under the absorption-scoring item.
The Trend Agent's confluence threshold stayed at 55 percent through the entire window. No setup was rejected for being "below threshold during a streak," and no setup was promoted for being "good enough during a streak." The four losses on this report were all evaluated under the same scoring rules that produced last month's biggest single-trade winner. A system that tightens the floor under stress is a discretionary trader pretending to be a system. We do not do that.
Claude vs GPT: who led the week.
SkyAnalyst runs multiple foundation models in parallel across its four-agent system. When two models trade the same instrument in the same week, the results are directly comparable. This is that comparison.
Same signals, same risk framework, different foundation model.
Six instruments, six stories.
EURUSD took zero losses this window. The Trend Agent did not flag a EURUSD setup that cleared confluence on the loss side. On the loss-side ledger this report counts, EURUSD was absent.
All EURUSD this week →XAUUSD took zero losses this window. Gold consolidated through the week without printing the structural setups the system targets. No setup, no entry, no contribution to the -4R draw.
All XAUUSD this week →US30 took one loss, the Mar 10 short at 14:25 UTC. The sell-rally entry into intraday supply stopped on a pivot reclaim within the hour. One -1R outcome, one trade, the week's opening loss.
All US30 this week →NAS100 took two losses across two sessions. The Mar 11 long at 14:20 UTC stopped at the continuation entry, paired with the same-day US500 stop twelve minutes earlier. The Mar 13 long at 14:40 UTC stopped on the buy-the-dip when the support shelf gave way. Two -1R outcomes, two distinct setups, two days apart.
All NAS100 this week →USDJPY took zero trades this window. The dollar-yen tape held a tight range without printing the trendline retest the system targets. No setup, no entry, no contribution to the -4R draw.
All USDJPY this week →US500 took one loss, the Mar 11 long at 14:08 UTC. The pullback-and-go at session VWAP stopped within the hour, the first half of the same-day correlated stop with NAS100. One -1R outcome.
All US500 this week →Loss of the week: NAS100 Long · -1R
Losses worth learning from
Loss 1: US30 Short Mar 10 14:25 UTC
What the system saw: the Trend Agent flagged a sell-rally short into a VWAP / supply confluence after the index pushed into the prior session's resistance shelf. Macro gated short-tilt on a soft DXY and bid bonds. Cross-Asset confirmed with NAS100 stalling at the same horizon. Confluence read 60 percent, the actionable floor. Setup grade C+.
What went wrong: within the evaluation window after entry, the index reclaimed the supply shelf on a higher-volume bar than the rejection bar that triggered the entry. The supply that was supposed to defend instead absorbed and rolled. The position stopped at -1R on the SL print.
Lesson: the macro and cross-asset reads were right by what the closing tape produced. The intraday absorption read at the supply shelf is what we are tuning. We would take the trade again at the same score. The week opened with the kind of clean -1R outcome the variance envelope assumes will happen at this confluence level.
Loss 2: NAS100 Long Mar 11 14:20 UTC
What the system saw: the Trend Agent flagged a continuation long at a higher-low retest of intraday structure twelve minutes after the same agent flagged the US500 pullback-and-go that had already stopped earlier in the same session. Macro gated long-tilt on a softening DXY. Cross-Asset confirmed with bid yields. Confluence read 61 percent. Setup grade C+.
What went wrong: the higher-low retest did not hold. The index broke through the support shelf within the hour and stopped the position at -1R. The Cross-Asset Agent did not flag the in-flight US500 long as a portfolio-correlation veto because the current logic does not gate on intra-window correlated entries. Both stopped together.
Lesson: the per-instrument read was clean. The portfolio-correlation gap is a known operational item that has not yet shipped. The fix in the absorption-scoring release is the same release that adds the intra-window correlation check. Until then, we accept that days like Mar 11 can produce two stops for what should have been one risk slot.
Loss 3: NAS100 Long Mar 13 14:40 UTC
What the system saw: the Trend Agent flagged a buy-the-dip long into a defended intraday support shelf after the index gave back the morning's gain. Macro gated long-tilt on a softening DXY and a firm bid in bonds. Cross-Asset confirmed with US500 holding the prior day's lows. Confluence read 62 percent. Setup grade C+.
What went wrong: the support shelf gave way on the second test inside the hour. The defended level was not defended. The position stopped at -1R when the index broke into the next demand zone below.
Lesson: the structural pullback inside a higher-timeframe uptrend was the right read by what the system measures. The shelf-defense judgment is the absorption-scoring item. We would take the trade again at the same score. The week closing 0/4 is the wrong tail of the variance envelope, not a redesign trigger.
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 | -4R | −$8,000 |
All six agents combined.
From the desk
The honest reading of this week is that the system traded its full sizing, took every setup that cleared threshold, and gave back -4R on four independent trades, and there is no winner column to balance the report against. The recap closes at 0W / 4L on the same five sessions, the same four entries, the same -4.00R net. The companion Mar 9-15 weekly recap reports identical numbers from the forward-reading angle. Both reports are the same ledger.
This is the editorial reason a drawdown report on a 0/4 week is the report we are most interested in publishing. Last month's drawdown report happened to coincide with the biggest winner of February inside the same window, which made the asymmetry visible at week resolution. This month's drawdown report does not have that offsetting payoff. The math that makes the strategy work over the long run does not change between weeks. The visibility of the math changes. We can show the loss side cleanly this week, and we can also show, by the binomial arithmetic in the statistics section, that a 0/4 week on a four-trade week happens about one week in six on a 35 percent rate. This week was that week.
What carries into next week is the absorption-scoring release in test, the intra-window correlation gate in test, the macro question of whether the consolidating-USD tape carries into mid-March, and the operational reality that the next economic calendar window is heavier through the open. We expect a fuller week of setups. We expect some of them to win, some of them to lose, and the per-trade variance to do what it does. We will report whatever happens.
A reasonable question on a 0/4 week is whether the system needs a streak-aware override. The answer is no, and not because we are stubborn. A streak-aware override is the exact failure mode that converts a positive-expectancy system into a discretionary one. The architecture absorbed the four-of-four without intervention, by design. Same playbook, same threshold, same sizing. We do not promote a different rule on a 0/4 week than we run on a 4/0 week.
From the SkyAnalyst Team.
What we're tuning
The absorption-scoring treatment of post-retest reversal candles remains the operational item out of this window, the same item flagged in the Feb 23-Mar 1 drawdown report and now carrying the additional intra-window correlation check forced by the Mar 11 doubled stop. Initial backtests on the absorption fix show a 5-7 point reduction in confluence-score on similar post-retest reversal scenarios, which would have moved the Mar 13 NAS100 long below the 55 percent entry threshold and the system would have skipped it. The Mar 11 pair would not have been caught by the absorption fix on its own. The intra-window correlation gate, also in test, would have forced one of the two Mar 11 longs to the bench when the other passed.
Whether either fix generalizes only emerges after a few weeks of live signal. We will report whatever the data shows in the next drawdown window that produces a similar setup. We are not changing the 55 percent threshold. We are not modulating sizing on streaks. We are not promoting a different rule on a 0/4 week. The architecture absorbed the streak this week and will absorb the next one the same way.
What the numbers actually mean
The single most useful question on a 0/4 week: how often does a 35 percent win-rate system produce four straight losses inside any given week? The arithmetic is direct. Treat each trade as an independent Bernoulli trial with a 65 percent stop probability. The probability of four consecutive stops inside a four-trade week is 0.65 to the fourth power, which is roughly 17.85 percent. About one week in six, when the system runs exactly four trades, will produce a 0/4 outcome by pure variance. Weeks with three or five trades produce different probabilities under the same rate; the four-trade case is the cleanest illustration. This is not a tail event. This is the body of the distribution showing up at week resolution.
The longest-losing-streak math extends the same logic. Standard binomial-distribution treatment of independent trial outcomes, in the form Van Tharp walks through in his R-multiple framework and Schwager surfaces in the trend-following literature, predicts expected longest losing streaks of 5-8 trades inside any rolling 100-trade window for a 35-40 percent win-rate system, with worst-case observations across many simulations falling between 6 and 10. This week's 4-trade streak is well below the rolling-window median. It is uncomfortable to read at week resolution and unremarkable at 100-trade resolution. The 8.00 percent intraweek equity drawdown on the 100,000 / 2 percent risk baseline sits inside the first standard deviation of expected variance for a strategy targeting 35-40 percent win rates with the asymmetric reward profile this system runs. Drawdowns of 5-10 percent are routine for this risk profile. Drawdowns become signal rather than noise when they exceed the historical 95th percentile of the equity curve. We are not close to that threshold this week, and we will not be close to it next month either if the rolling expectancy holds.
Judge a system on its 100-trade rolling window, not its weekly window. The longer the window, the more the underlying expectancy emerges. The prior <a href="/blog/weekly-drawdown-report-2026-02-23">Feb 23-Mar 1 drawdown</a> captured the offsetting winners inside the same window; this one does not. The math underneath does not change.
At a Glance
Drawdown questions
How often does a 35 percent win-rate system produce a 0/4 week?
Treating each trade as an independent Bernoulli trial with a 65 percent stop probability, the probability of four consecutive stops inside a four-trade week is 0.65 to the fourth power, which is roughly 17.85 percent. About one week in six, when the system runs exactly four trades, will produce a 0/4 outcome by pure variance. This is not a tail event. It is the body of the distribution showing up at week resolution.
Why does the system not pause sizing or tighten thresholds on a streak?
Position sizing is fixed per trade and is not modulated by recent results, by design. Threshold-tightening on a streak is the exact failure mode that converts a positive-expectancy system into a discretionary one. Across rolling history the streak-aware override skips more winners than losers. The discipline is that the threshold is the threshold. The architecture absorbed the four-of-four this week without intervention, which is what it was built to do.
What does the 8 percent intraweek drawdown mean for forward performance?
An 8 percent intraweek drawdown on the 100,000 / 2 percent risk baseline sits inside the first standard deviation of expected variance for a strategy targeting 35-40 percent win rates with an asymmetric reward profile. Drawdowns of 5-10 percent are routine at this risk profile. Drawdowns become signal rather than noise when they exceed the historical 95th percentile of the equity curve. This week is well inside the routine band.
Why does this drawdown report match the weekly recap exactly?
The recap and the drawdown report apply the same TP1-baseline methodology. When a window produces no winners, the recap and the drawdown report report the same -4.00R net because there is no winner column for the recap to add. Both reports cover the same five sessions and the same four entries. The framing is different. The numbers are identical when the loss side is the entire ledger.
When the same week produced winners alongside losers, would the drawdown report still publish?
Yes. We published the prior <a href="/blog/weekly-drawdown-report-2026-02-23">Feb 23-Mar 1 drawdown report</a> on a week that closed +0.80R net on the recap, and we publish this week's report on a week that closed -4.00R. The drawdown report exists to make the loss side visible regardless of what the win side did. Both reports apply the same methodology to the loss-side ledger. The recap reads the full window forward. The drawdown report opens the loss column.
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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.
Del diario de SkyAnalyst
Mar 2-8, 2026: Four Losses, Three Offsetting Winners
Four US500 losses, -4.00R given back, a 2-trade losing streak Thu into Fri. Three winners in the same five sessions covered most of the draw. The companion recap nets -0.62R.
US30 Short on March 2: Eleven Waits, One Enter, +1.2R at TP1
March opens with a sell-the-rally on the Dow. Twelve evaluations across fourteen minutes, eleven of them wait. The twelfth fired short at 48842 and banked TP1 at 48700.
NAS100 Long on March 4: TP1 Banked, Runner Stopped, +0.93R
A breakout continuation on the Nasdaq 100 cleared TP1 inside the New York session, then the runner reversed and tagged the original stop. Reported result reflects the TP1-baseline R.