Operator's Manual

Tracking a name, a pair or an expression

Hit the green ＋ Track button on any Hedge Ideas card, on the Hedge idea row of a symbol ticket, or on the compare chart (＋ Track pair, including pairs you assemble yourself), or Track expression on a Relative ticket, and the trade is frozen exactly as it stood, legs, sizing, entry day. The chart remembers too: a dashed tracked marker appears on the True strength chart at your entry day for tracked names, and from that day to today the chart's background wears a verdict: green when the call is paying, red when it's losing, amber when it's sideways within a point or two, thesis-signed so a short that fell reads green. If the tested exit has fired on a bullish call (Alpha closed back under 60), a red dashed tested exit · α<60 marker shows the exact day it happened; and the spread lane wraps a tracked pair's holding in a green band from entry, brighter through the tested days 10–21 (bracketed >…<): all of it staying only as long as the tracking does. Click the marker to jump straight to that trade in the tracker below, and it works both ways: tracker tickers are links back up to the chart, with pairs loading both legs and the spread lane. Track the same name more than once and the chart marks only your latest entry (a +1 notes the earlier ones), the tracker groups them together newest-first, and the ticket lists every tracking that involves the name, directional dates, hedge pairs on either side, expressions it anchors or hedges, each as its own link to the tracker row. (Expressions don't mark the chart: their hedge legs aren't drawn on it.) That freezing is the point: the live cards keep evolving as conditions change, but your trade doesn't, so the tracker measures what you'd actually be holding, not today's reshuffled idea.

Sized for your account, and told when to leave

Every trade line shows the shares for your account, not a round number. Set two things once in Account, the person icon in the top bar, or the sizing dialog, if you are not signed in: your account size and the per-position percentage. A full-size line is account × per-position; a half-size line takes half. The default is $10,000 at 5%, $500 a line, twenty slots, the same shape as the house book. The size column shows the shares; open a row and the Size-it card shows every leg, and lets you try a one-off amount without changing the setting. When a leg rounds below one share the number turns amber, raise the setting or skip that line rather than trade a hedge you cannot buy.

Exit alerts. Two kinds, both in Account (the person icon in the top bar, grey for a free account, blue for Pro, amber for admin). Browser: a desktop notification the moment the tracker sees a new exit, while the desk is open in a tab; your browser asks permission once when you switch it on. Email: one message the evening a tracked trade's tested exit fires: Alpha back through its line, three Narrowing days in a row, or the day-21 cap, listing every trade it fired on. It is sent after the close is settled, so it says exactly what the tracker's Exit tier will say, and each trade is alerted once. The number on the line assumes you take the exit; the alert is there so you do not have to look every evening to find out that you should.

Auto-track the desk

Turn it on in Settings → Sizing and every line the desk posts appears in your tracker at the settle, the same object the Track button would have made, sized for your account, with a blue house tag. Nothing is traded for you: the tracker is a list of what the rules said, and you decide what to do with it. From then on your book is the house's trades plus your decisions. Skip one (remove the row), add one of your own, close one early, the closed view's you vs the house shows what each of those choices earned or cost. A follower who does exactly what the house does has the house's record at their size, minus their fills.

The rows arrive after the close is settled, around 16:40 ET, so you place them the next morning. Each row shows the legs and the shares; the exit is on the row and in the alert. Take the exit when it fires, the number on the line assumes you do.

Placing a trade line at your broker

A trade line is at most three things: a stock to buy, a stock or fund to sell short, and a share count for each. The tracker row has all three. What follows is where those go in four common brokers; the button names are the brokers', the shape is ours. Two rules first: use the whole-share counts on the row (rounding is already done), and unless you have a reason not to, place the entry as a market-on-open or plain market order at the next open and the exit as the same when the rule fires, the tested numbers are close-to-close and do not assume a better fill than that.

Interactive Brokers (Client Portal or TWS). Open Trade, type the symbol, choose Buy or Sell, enter the shares, set the order type to Market (or MOO for the open), and Submit. For a two-leg line, place the second order the same way straight after, or, in TWS, use BasketTrader to enter both legs at once and transmit together. To short, the Sell order on a stock you do not own is a short sale; IBKR shows the borrow availability on the ticket. Margin account required for any short leg.

Charles Schwab (schwab.com or thinkorswim). Trade → Stocks & ETFs: symbol, action (Buy · Sell Short), quantity, order type Market, timing Day, Review, Place. Two-leg lines are two tickets, one after the other. In thinkorswim the same happens on the Trade tab's order entry; short sales need a margin account and the stock must be shortable that day.

Fidelity. Trade → Stocks/ETFs: symbol, action (Buy · Sell Short), quantity, order type Market, Preview, Place. Short sales require a margin account; Fidelity's ticket shows whether shares are available to borrow. Place the hedge leg immediately after the stock leg.

Robinhood. Robinhood does not support short selling, so hedged shorts, cycle pairs and bounces cannot be placed there, only the long runs. For a long line: search the symbol, Trade → Buy, switch the order to Shares, enter the count, Review, Swipe up to submit. If most of what you want to follow is hedged, this is the broker to move from.

Exits. When a row's exit fires (the tracker's Exit tier, the email, or the browser notification), close every leg of that line: sell what you bought, buy back what you shorted, same share counts. Then hit ✓ close on the row so your book freezes the result. Closing at the broker and not in the tracker leaves your book grading a trade you no longer hold.

Costs to know about. Short legs carry borrow fees and need margin; hard-to-borrow names cost more and can be recalled. Wherever a number on the desk is after costs, the house book, the replay curves, the comparison with buy-and-hold, it charges the same average trading costs on every leg, in and out: 2 basis points a side on a stock, 1 on a fund, and nothing for borrow. They are included for fairness, so a shape that trades often is judged against one that trades rarely on equal terms; they are averages for large-cap names at a commission-free broker and your own will vary with your broker and the name's liquidity. The edge table's per-trade cells are before costs. A hedged short on an expensive-to-borrow name will do worse than its line says; the broker's ticket tells you the borrow rate.

Reading a tracked row

Each tracked row then reads its own health against the tested findings: the spread since entry at your frozen sizing, which day of the measured 10–21 payoff window you're in, the current Widening / Flattening / Narrowing state, with a tested exit flag when a three-day Narrowing run appears, and the Alpha gap then and now (Δ59 → 50), colored by one question only: is the thesis still ahead of you? When the gap is mostly spent, a chip says so in words and names your quadrant, gap converged: unpaid (edge gone for nothing), gap converged: paid (story ended your way; what remains is luck), or gap inverted when the ranking has outright flipped. Chips obey a strict hierarchy, one verdict speaks (tested exit, spread shock, or a gap verdict) and the plain trend chip yields, so a green chip never argues with an amber one on the same row, and an amber review note when the entry conditions have changed (leader faded, laggard recovering, for pairs you assembled yourself, the review instead measures how far each leg has drifted from where you entered it). An earnings flag appears when either leg reports inside the window, the one calendar risk a spread can't diversify away, and when a report lands today or tomorrow, the whole tracker row turns amber with the legs and dates named: the one deadline a position can't wait out. A spread shock flag fires when the spread breaks hard against its own trend in a single outsized day: in testing, moves that size behaved like news rather than noise, smaller counter-trend jerks faded and the trend resumed, but past a point the trend can no longer be presumed alive. Review promptly; the three-day Narrowing run remains the tested exit. Review means look; the Narrowing run makes the call. Directional outlooks carry the same idea: a thesis weakened or thesis flipped flag when today's read no longer supports the call you snapshotted, and for bullish calls, the tested exit itself: Alpha under 60: tested exit, which ranks the row into the Act tier exactly like a pair's Narrowing run. ◆ on a card or a hedge leg marks true peers, legs that genuinely co-move once the market is removed.

The chips on a row

The header of every tracked row carries up to three small chips, each answering one question. trade · long · exit: Alpha closes under 60 · day 6 says this came off the desk's list: its shape, the exit it was tested with, and the session it is on. A row without this chip is something you assembled yourself (a board pair, a custom pair, a plain outlook) and is read by the general findings instead. house means the house book took the same trade and it arrived here because auto-track is on. The generation chip (Archimedes, Bernoulli) names the engine that stands behind the row: a desk trade keeps the generation that posted it and is graded by that generation's exits for as long as it is open, nothing re-graded when the rules change; anything you assembled yourself takes the generation that was live the day you tracked it, since its reads came from that engine. The tracker shows generation chips only while your trackings span more than one generation; when everything is from the current engine there is nothing to tell apart, and they stay out of the way. Click any chip to open this page.

Two colors, two directions of time

Two colors, two directions of time. The Δ's color looks forward, is there still a thesis ahead of you? Green: the legs still rank far apart, the reason for the trade is intact. Amber: the gap has partly closed, winding down. Red: the legs now rank about the same, the story is over. The spread's color looks backward, did the trade pay?, and always keeps its own sign coloring. They never blend, which is the point: a red Δ beside a green spread reads "over, and it paid"; red beside red reads "the reason is gone and holding is hope." All six combinations, at a glance:

The scoreboard on top

The scoreboard on top. With three or more trackings the tracker opens with its own composite strip: winners vs losers with the hit rate, the average and the median result (read them together, a single big winner can carry the average; the median can't be fooled), and the best and worst positions by name, each a click from its chart. The numbers are equal-weighted across your open trackings, each measured from its own entry at frozen sizing, a health snapshot of what you're holding now, not a portfolio return, and removing a tracking removes it from the math.

Sorted by tested severity

The tracker sorts itself by tested severity. When any tracked position trips a signal that earned its rank in testing, the list reorganizes into sections: Act, the three-day Narrowing exit has fired, or a directional thesis now reads the opposite way; Review, a hard deadline or structural change (earnings today or tomorrow, an outsized spread break, hedge drift into a real lean, a position past the tested payoff window, or a pair whose Alpha gap has mostly converged, or inverted, without paying: the red-Δ-beside-red-spread quadrant from the examples above); and Holding steady, everything with no tested signal against it. Ordering inside Review follows the same logic: deadlines first. When nothing is urgent there are no sections at all, a quiet tracker stays a plain list, because a warning tier that's always occupied teaches you to ignore it. A sort control offers other orders too, Winners and Losers (pairs and expressions by their move since entry, directional outlooks by thesis-signed Alpha change), Newest, Oldest, and A–Z, and in every mode, repeat trackings of the same thing stay grouped together, ranked by their best-qualified member.

Your page

The account icon in the top bar opens your desk (trademath.com/me): your book against the market and the house, your trades with notes, the exit calendar, the feed, the watch list, achievements and settings. It has a chapter of its own.

When the data is off

The desk says so rather than quietly showing an old list. One line under the strip appears when live prices stop arriving during the session (the scores on screen are as of the last update; exits are judged at the close, which is not affected), when the price feed cannot be reached (the last close stays on screen), or when a close has not settled by the evening (the list and the house book are still from the close before; it usually clears within the hour). No line means the data is current. On a phone, where there is no hover, tapping a chip, a column header or a cell shows the same note a desktop shows on hover.

Your tracker follows you

Signed in, your tracker follows you: the list syncs to your account, so a pair tracked at the desk is waiting on your phone, and removing a tracking on one device removes it everywhere. Anything you track while signed out lives on that device and joins your account the next time you sign in there. One safety net: an account that's been emptied: say, a misclicked Delete all trackings, heals itself, because any signed-in device still holding your list restores it in full on its next visit. Deliberate deletions of individual trackings still propagate normally.