QCOM Qualcomm

Signal was wrong and is the dominant factor. The trade was labeled bullish, but QCOM fell from entry (174.24 → 172.56, −0.96%), and the only article text in the journal — the headline "The Narrative Shift Sending Capital Out The Door" — reads as bearish framing, so the bullish direction call looks contradicted by its own source (the full article isn't here, so I can't confirm beyond the headline). On timing, the move had not pre-happened in the predicted direction: price at decision was roughly flat (−0.26% vs 176.86 prev close), yet the fill came at 174.24, already ~1.5% below prev close, meaning the stock was sliding against the thesis between decision and fill. On exit, the −0.96% result sits between the +0.77% best and −1.78% worst unrealized; the exit neither captured the brief upside nor rode to the trough, so it was a middling exit on a trade whose direction was simply wrong.

Signal was right: the short went into profit immediately and never traded against the position (worst unrealized only +0.06%), ending with a 1.34% favorable move. Timing was fine — entry at 179.56 was only ~0.8% below the prior close despite a +0.84% uptick in the preceding 30 minutes, so the bulk of the decline occurred after the fill rather than before it. The dominant factor is the exit: the trade banked 1.34% against a best unrealized of 2.28%, capturing roughly 60% of what was available and giving back about 0.9% from the peak; whether the "lags industry" thesis actually drove the drop can't be determined from this data.

Signal: Direction was right — QCOM fell about 2.1% from the 181.0 short entry to the 177.21 exit, and the worst unrealized drawdown was only -0.15%, so the position was essentially never against you. Note the rationale itself ("overnight drift" plus a generic article headline) states no directional thesis, so the data confirms the outcome but not why the short was expected to work.

Timing: Entry was not late — the stock was only +0.60% on the day and flat over the prior 30 minutes at decision time, and the trade filled near the high of its holding window, so the move happened after entry, not before.

Exit: The mechanical next-close exit captured ~2.1% of a 3.06% best unrealized gain — roughly two-thirds of what was available, leaving about a point on the table. Dominant factor: a correct signal with clean timing; the only slippage is the fixed-time exit giving back part of the peak, which is a modest leak rather than a flaw in the thesis.

Signal: Direction was nominally right — QCOM drifted down ~0.33% from the short entry — but the rationale is an open-ended "what to watch" piece, not a bearish catalyst, and the move stayed within a ±0.6% band, so this doesn't validate a bearish thesis so much as record noise that happened to land on the right side.

Timing: No evidence the move had already happened — price was only +0.6% on the day and flat over the prior 30 minutes at decision time, and the fill (181.63) was roughly at the quoted level, so entry wasn't chasing.

Exit: The +$3.00 (+0.33%) captured about 60% of the best unrealized (+0.52%) and avoided the -0.61% drawdown, which is a reasonable exit given what was available. Dominant factor: a weak, non-directional news signal produced a tiny, essentially random outcome — the P&L is too small to attribute to anything but noise.

Signal: Right — the bullish call played out, with QCOM rising ~0.45% from entry (180.82 → 181.63) and the worst drawdown while open only -0.36%. Timing: Not stale — at decision time the stock was only +0.09% vs. prior close and flat over the preceding 30 minutes, so the entry wasn't chasing an already-completed move. Exit: The +0.45% realized captured most of the +0.54% peak unrealized, which looks efficient, but the exit was incidental — the position was netted out by an outranking S1 short, not closed on the long's own logic — and nothing here shows what QCOM did afterward, so whether the forced close left money on the table is unsettled. Dominant factor: the entry thesis worked, and the P&L is a byproduct of a portfolio netting rule rather than a judged exit.

The signal was wrong: the rationale called for a bullish repricing, but QCOM never traded meaningfully above entry (best unrealized only -0.12%) and finished -2.51%, so the predicted direction simply didn't materialize. Timing contributed only modestly — the stock was already +1.34% from prior close at decision time with a flat last 30 minutes, meaning the entry bought into an existing small gap rather than ahead of a move, though the data can't say whether that gap was the full "repricing" the podcast reference implied. The exit at -2.51% is essentially at the worst unrealized (-2.59%), so there was nothing better to capture; the dominant factor is a failed directional signal, not exit management.

Signal: Direction was right — QCOM finished the holding window above entry, and the data center guidance headline didn't reverse on the stock (worst drawdown only -0.47%). Timing: Unclear from this data — the stock was already +0.59% on the day at decision time, but the fill at 182.66 landed ~1.4% below the decision-time price and below the prior close, so either the fill wasn't at the close or price dropped into the fill; the journal doesn't say which, and that discrepancy flatters the P&L relative to the strategy as described. Exit: The mechanical next-close exit captured +1.26% of a +3.30% peak — roughly a third of what was available — making the fixed exit the dominant factor: the trade worked, but it gave back about two-thirds of the maximum move before closing.

Signal: the bullish call was wrong — QCOM finished the holding period down about 1.3% from entry, and the move spent most of its range below the fill (worst -1.23% vs. best only +0.76%), so the direction didn't materialize. Timing: the stock was only +0.59% from prior close and flat over the last 30 minutes at decision time, so there's no evidence the move had already run before entry; entry was not chasing. Exit: the exit at -1.26% is near the worst unrealized (-1.23%), meaning the trade gave back the small +0.76% that was briefly available and closed roughly at the bottom of its range — the dominant factor is a failed signal, with the exit compounding it by capturing essentially the worst of what the trade saw.

Signal: Wrong, or at least inert — the bullish repricing thesis never materialized; the stock managed only +0.58% at its best while open and spent more time underwater (worst -1.65%). The data here can't confirm whether the news was already priced in before entry, but the -1.97% slide in the 30 minutes before entry suggests the market wasn't treating it as bullish. Exit: Reasonable given what was available — the -0.10% realized loss sits well above the worst unrealized (-1.65%) and only modestly below the peak (+0.58%), so little was left on the table. Dominant factor: signal failure — a patent renewal effective in 2027 simply didn't move the stock, and no exit could have captured meaningful profit from it.

Signal (dominant factor): The bullish call was simply wrong — the trade never went positive (best unrealized was -0.30%), so the predicted upside from the M&A news never materialized in the holding window.

Timing: The data doesn't show a pre-entry pop (price was down -0.96% since prior close, flat last 30m), so this wasn't a case of chasing a move that already happened — the move just didn't come.

Exit: The -0.75% realized loss sits between the best (-0.30%) and worst (-2.61%) unrealized, so the exit gave back little and avoided the worst; there was no upside available to capture. Note: whether the news itself was stale or already priced in before the decision window can't be settled from this data.