AMZN Amazon

Signal: Measured from the fill, direction was right (+0.47%), but measured from the rationale's reference point — the 258.58 prior close the "drift" was supposed to continue from — AMZN finished the window lower (255.09), so the earnings-drift thesis itself did not play out; the gain came from a fill 1.8% below the quoted reference, and the data doesn't explain that gap (overnight gap, stale decision timestamp, or slippage all fit). Timing: the decision-time context shows price flat vs prior close, so the move hadn't "already happened" in the bullish direction — if anything, the unexplained drop into the fill is the dominant factor here, not the earnings story. Exit: the scheduled next-close exit captured +0.47% of a +0.64% best, well off the −1.96% worst, so execution of the exit rule was fine; the open question is why entry printed ~470 bps-of-dollars below the reference close, which this record cannot settle.

Signal: wrong — the bullish AWS-backlog thesis didn't play out; price went from 258.72 to 253.93 (−1.85%), with a worst unrealized of −2.30% against only +0.27% best, so the trade was underwater almost the entire time. Timing: the data doesn't settle this — price was flat versus prev close (−0.01%) and the last 30m (−0.06%) at decision time, so the move hadn't visibly happened before entry, but we can't tell from these numbers whether the earnings news was already priced in earlier. Exit: fine relative to what was available — the exit at −1.85% sits between the +0.27% best and −2.30% worst, and there was essentially no upside to capture. Dominant factor is signal: the predicted direction was simply wrong.

Signal: wrong — the rationale predicted upward overnight drift on the M&A headline, but AMZN closed the next session at 253.86, −1.8% from the 258.48 entry, so the predicted direction did not materialize. Timing: the data doesn't settle it — price was essentially flat at decision time (−0.14% from prev close, +0.01% last 30m), so the move hadn't already happened, but whether the headline was already priced in before this snapshot can't be determined from what's here. Exit: the fixed next-close exit gave back −1.79% against a best unrealized of +0.98% and worst of −2.21%, so it neither captured the brief upside nor avoided most of the drawdown; the dominant factor is a failed directional signal — a $7B acquisition rumor for a ~$2T+ company was not a catalyst for drift, and the acquirer traded down.

Signal was right in the sense that AMZN did move up as high as +1.10% while open, and timing was fine — price at decision was flat to slightly down versus prev close with no 30m move, so the M&A pop had not already happened. The dominant factor is the exit: the trade rode from +1.10% unrealized back through to roughly the worst (-0.47%) and closed at -0.57% on entry (258.43 vs 259.9), surrendering the entire favorable excursion. Whether the news itself was the driver of the intraday rise versus general drift can't be settled from this data, but the gap between best unrealized and realized P&L is unambiguous.

Signal: Wrong on a close-to-close basis — the acquirer-side M&A headline did not produce a sustained positive drift; AMZN finished the holding window down 0.39% from entry (259.46 → 258.44). Timing: The move had not already happened — the stock was down 0.40% at decision time and the fill (259.46) was lower still, roughly 1.1% below the prior close of 262.43, so entry was not chasing (the gap between decision-time price and fill isn't explained by the data here). Exit: The fixed next-close exit left the available +1.27% on the table and landed near the middle of the +1.27% / -0.79% range; the up-move existed only transiently, so the dominant factor is signal — the catalyst did not carry through the full window, and the mechanical exit had no mechanism to capture the intraday high.

Signal — wrong, and dominant. Long AMZN on the Decart M&A headline never traded above the 263.25 fill (best unrealized -0.00%) and closed at 259.45, -1.44%; the acquirer-buys-target thesis simply didn't produce upside, which is the whole story here.

Timing — partly adverse at fill, otherwise unsettled. Decision-time context was flat-to-down (-0.19% vs prev close 262.43 ≈ 261.93), yet the fill printed at 263.25, about +0.5% above the decision price, so some pop occurred between decision and fill; whether the news itself had already been absorbed earlier can't be determined from this data.

Exit — near the worst but nothing better existed. -11.40 USD (-1.44%) versus a worst of -1.49% and a best of 0.00%: the exit gave back almost the full drawdown, but with no positive excursion at any point there was no profit to capture — the loss is a signal failure, not an exit failure.

Signal: Direction was right — AMZN fell 2.16% from fill (259.89 → 254.28), and the stock had been up ~1.05–1.4% versus the prior close at decision/fill time, so the short entered against a mild intraday rally rather than after a decline. Note the rationale itself is a generic tech-news roundup headline with no AMZN-specific bearish thesis, so the data here doesn't establish why the signal worked, only that it did.

Timing: The move had not already happened by entry — the last 30m was flat (+0.05%) and the fill was at or above the decision-time price, which is favorable for a short.

Exit: The close-to-close exit captured essentially the entire available move (+2.16% realized vs +2.26% best unrealized, with only −0.26% worst drawdown). Dominant factor: correct direction with a fixed exit that happened to land near the low — a clean win, but the thin news basis means it reads as a favorable overnight drift rather than evidence the rationale had predictive content.

Signal was wrong — and the rationale was thin to begin with. The article is about Oracle's cloud growth relative to AWS, not a fresh negative catalyst for Amazon, and AMZN rose ~2% against the short after entry; the direction call simply failed. On timing, AMZN was already down 0.95% from the prior close when the decision was made, so whatever bearish drift existed had largely played out before the fill at 254.77 (slightly above the decision-time price), though the data here can't confirm the dip was news-driven rather than noise.

Exit captured the worst of it: the realized loss (−5.15/share ≈ −2.02%) matches the worst unrealized (−2.03%) almost exactly, while the best available was only +0.56%, so the trade was closed at effectively the low point of its own range with little upside ever on offer. Dominant factor: bad signal on a non-catalyst article; exit at the bottom made the loss as large as it could have been.

Signal: Wrong — the bearish call on AMZN never materialized; the stock went from 253.54 to 256.31 against the short, and the best unrealized was only -0.19% (never positive). The article (Paramount/WBD merger) is also a weak, indirect driver for Amazon, which makes the premise itself questionable, though this data can't prove why price rose.

Timing: Not the dominant issue — AMZN was up only +0.91% on the day with a +0.21% last-30m drift at decision time, so the short wasn't chasing an exhausted move; the entry at 253.54 vs. known ~253.5 context shows no notable fill slippage.

Exit: Decent given a losing trade — closed at roughly -1.09% versus a worst unrealized of -1.21%, so the exit was near the trough rather than letting it run further, but there was nothing available to capture upside-wise. Dominant factor: direction was simply wrong (signal failure).

Signal: the bullish call was directionally right — AMZN rose as much as +1.12% while the position was open against only a -0.32% drawdown. Timing: entry was fresh, not late; price was flat into the fill (-0.08% from prev close, +0.04% over 30m), so the move had not already happened. Exit is the dominant failure: the trade closed at +0.02% (+$0.12), capturing essentially none of the +1.12% that was available, so a correct signal with good timing was wasted by the exit. The journal doesn't show why the exit fired (time stop, trailing rule, or signal reversal), so the exit mechanism itself can't be identified from this data.