TSM TSMC

Signal was wrong: the bullish call on TSM's AI-capacity leverage never produced upside — the best unrealized was -0.03%, so price was never above entry while open, and it closed at 413.82 for -0.91%. Timing is the dominant factor in a specific sense: the stock was already soft (prev close 422.23, -0.38% at decision, then filled at 417.62, roughly 1.1% below prev close), meaning the "FRESH" verdict was being faded by the tape before entry even completed, though this data can't settle whether the article was actually stale news. Exit was reasonable given what was available — -0.91% landed between the -0.03% best and -1.66% worst, so the exit neither captured gains (none existed) nor rode the full drawdown.

Signal: The predicted upward overnight drift didn't materialize — TSM closed next day at 444.78 vs. 445.58 entry (−0.18%), essentially flat-to-down, so the direction was wrong, though marginally; the rationale is an anticipatory headline ("to get 6th straight record quarter"), and nothing here shows whether the actual report hit or what the stock's reaction was, so whether the thesis was priced-in versus simply not reacting isn't settled by this data.

Timing: No run-up had occurred — the stock was down 1.01% on the day at decision time, and the fill (445.58) came in another ~0.7% below the decision-time price (~448.65 implied), so if anything entry was at a weaker level than planned, which rules out "move already happened" as the problem.

Exit: The trade never went positive (best unrealized −0.06%, worst −1.80%), and the mechanical next-close exit at −0.18% captured close to the best available, so exit execution is not the issue. Dominant factor: signal — the expected post-earnings drift simply didn't show up.

Signal was wrong: the rationale called for a bullish move on the record-profit story, but TSM went nowhere positive after entry (best unrealized only -0.06%) and drifted down to a -1.53% exit. Timing is not the issue — pre-entry price context was essentially flat (+0.19% vs prev close, +0.12% last 30m), so the move hadn't already happened; the stock simply never rallied. The exit captured roughly the full worst unrealized (-1.59%), so the loss wasn't exacerbated by exit handling — the dominant factor is a failed directional call on a widely anticipated earnings headline, though whether the article was already stale/priced-in before the decision isn't settled by the data here.

Signal was wrong: the bullish repricing thesis never materialized — TSM never traded above entry (best unrealized was -0.23%) and the trade was underwater from essentially the first tick to a -2.07% exit. Timing was poor as well: the stock was already up +0.77% from prev close at decision time on a widely-reported earnings headline, and the fill at 461.88 came another ~0.8% above the 458.17 reference while the last-30m momentum was already negative (-0.90%), so the entry bought into a fading pop. Exit was reasonable — the -2.07% realized sits well above the -2.56% worst unrealized and there was no meaningful upside to capture — so the dominant factor is a failed signal compounded by a late, chasing entry, not exit management.

Signal was wrong: the rationale called TSM bullish off a Samsung profit headline, but the stock fell about 2.6% from entry to exit, and the headline itself notes "Chips Retreat," so the bullish read of the article is questionable. Timing wasn't the problem — price was already down 0.81% from prior close at decision time, so the long was buying a dip rather than chasing a move, but the dip kept going. On exit, the trade closed near the worst unrealized (-3.37% vs. the -2.56% realized) and the best available was only +0.46%, so there was essentially nothing to capture; the dominant factor is a wrong directional call on a signal that was weak to begin with.

Signal: Wrong over the holding window — the short was entered on a bearish "repricing" read of an article headlined blowout earnings, and TSM drifted up from 467.05 to 468.70, with unrealized never better than +0.15%. Timing: The stock was already -1.10% from the prior close (472.27) at decision time and had ticked +0.37% in the last 30 minutes, so whatever downside the thesis anticipated had largely occurred before the fill and the near-term tape was already turning against it. Exit: The -0.35% realized loss sits roughly mid-way between the +0.15% best and -0.70% worst, and the close wasn't a price-driven decision at all — it was netted out by a higher-ranked opposing long on the same name (decision 27483), so the exit captured neither the small available gain nor avoided the loss; the data doesn't show what happened after exit, so whether holding would have helped is unsettled.

Dominant factor: signal. A bearish call on a "blowout earnings" article, placed after a -1.1% move had already printed, had nothing left to catch; the forced netting exit is secondary noise.

Signal (dominant): Wrong. The thesis was positive overnight drift on the record-revenue headline, but TSM fell ~2% from entry to the next close; the best it ever showed was +0.24%, so the predicted direction simply didn't materialize.

Timing: The data doesn't show a prior run-up — at decision time the stock was flat vs. the previous close (-0.04%) — so the move hadn't "already happened" in the usual sense. However, the fill at 482.84 was ~0.66% below the ~485.85 decision-time price, meaning the stock was already sliding into the close between decision and fill; whether the revenue news had been out for hours or days (and thus priced in) isn't determinable from this material.

Exit: The mechanical next-close exit realized -1.98%, close to the -2.38% worst unrealized and far from the +0.24% best; with only +0.24% ever available, the exit rule left little on the table — the loss is a signal failure, not an exit failure.

Signal: wrong — the bullish call on the TSMC record-revenue news did not play out; the stock drifted down from 484.8 to 482.45 and never rose more than +0.05% while the trade was open. Timing: the data doesn't settle whether the move had already happened — pre-entry drift was flat (-0.04% vs prev close, -0.08% last 30m), but note the entry fill at 484.8 was already ~0.26% below the 486.05 prev close used in the rationale, so the stock was slipping into the fill. Exit: the -4.70 USD loss (~-0.48%) sits between the +0.05% best and -0.65% worst unrealized, so the exit neither captured upside (there was essentially none) nor hit the floor; the dominant factor is simply a wrong-direction signal on a headline that produced no bullish move.

Signal: the bullish call was directionally right — TSM went from 456.18 to 457.47 (+0.28%) and never fell more than 0.20% against the position. Timing: the stock had already run +0.68% from prior close and +1.22% in the prior 30 minutes before the decision, so a good chunk of the move preceded entry, and the underlying thesis (a Taiwan nuclear restart driving a same-day TSM repricing) is a loose, second-order link that the data here can't confirm was actually the driver. Exit: the trade captured +0.28% of a +0.70% best unrealized — about 40% of what was available — so the dominant factor is the late entry into an already-extended move, which left only a small residual to harvest and made the modest give-back at exit proportionally significant.

Signal: Direction was right, but only marginally — TSM rose 0.19% from entry and never traded below entry (worst unrealized was +0.17%), so this was a small, steady drift up rather than a decisive move. Note the rationale cites a Synopsys article to justify a TSM long, so whether the "bullish" call was actually a TSM-specific signal or just a sector-adjacent guess isn't settled by this data.

Timing: Not a stale-entry problem — price was only +0.33% off the prior close at decision time and had dipped 0.33% in the last 30 minutes, so the entry wasn't chasing a move that had already happened.

Exit (dominant factor): The exit captured +0.19% against a +0.56% best unrealized, leaving roughly two-thirds of the available gain on the table; the $1.74 result is a rounding-error win on a trade that was never underwater and had more to give.