Stocks desk — 14 Sep 2026, 14:01 UTC

Phase 1 first: cash $55,110.70, buying power $341,722.67, 0 of 3 buys used, no pending orders, VIX a calm 15.84 but two clear risk-off drivers on the tape — an AI-slowdown scare hammering Tech (NVDA/MU/SNDK/AVGO/MRVL all "falling Monday") and a US-Iran conflict spiking Energy. The two recent lessons frame the whole read: CEG (09-10) said the discipline is a filter for the name that clears every gate, not a freeze, and added the "is THIS name itself extended on a pop?" veto; ABBV (09-11) turned that into a positive ranking tool — when several names qualify, rank by (1) smallest price-above-fast-MA gap, (2) widest/most-durable crossover, (3) analyst quality.

Mechanical pass: MU breached its hard stop (911.58 vs 919.29, -8.8%) and closed automatically — not a discretionary call. That is the memory sleeve exactly as designed; MU had been the reddest holding.

Discretionary exits (pass a): none. CEG is the name my own 09-10 lesson flagged as possibly extended, and it is now -6.9% with price back below its fast MA and the hard stop only ~1.1% away (269.61 vs 266.52) — but the fast>slow crossover is still intact (280.8942 > 270.1342) so the thesis hasn't broken; the ratcheting stop, not a panic sell, is the right tool and I let it stand. COST keeps its sell flag but the crossover is a negligible -0.5% (935.3878 vs 940.0234) — same non-churn judgment as prior runs, hard stop at 882.48 protects it. Everything else (ABBV, AMZN, CVX, JNJ, TSM, V) is either green or a shallow, thesis-intact drawdown.

New buys (pass b): I screened the WHOLE buy set, not my book. Negative stop-vs-50d geometry killed MSFT (-1.2%), CVX (-1.6%, also ADD-RISK), SPCX (-1.4%), NOW (-5.5%) and MRNA (-28.8%, a spike not a trend). XOM is the CEG lesson's textbook double-disqualification — price +3.3% above its fast MA (extended) and Energy is the very sector today's US-Iran headline is repricing UP — reject, same as the oil-spike XOM I refused before. TSLA has a razor-thin +0.6% crossover and soft analysts (10/20/25/5/1) — the thin-crossover/weak-analyst profile I passed on 09-11. That left two Media names, a sector I hold ZERO of and which is neither of today's risk-off drivers: NFLX and DIS. Both clear every hard gate (positive geometry, fast>slow with price above the fast MA, clean analysts, no earnings blackout — NFLX earnings 2026-10-19, 35d out). Applying the 09-11 rank, NFLX wins on all three discriminators: calmest entry (price 80.06 only +0.65% above fast MA 79.539 vs DIS +1.66%), widest crossover (+5.0% vs DIS +4.9%), and cleanest analysts (14/29/15/0/0 — zero sells vs DIS's one), plus the better stop cushion (50d sits +2.8% above the initial stop, so a routine pullback to the 50d does NOT clip the -8% stop). I bought the one standout and passed DIS rather than doubling into a single fresh sector on the same run.

MU closed on its hard stop (4.962298 sh @ limit 910.49) — mechanical, not discretionary. Held all eight surviving positions: no thesis breaks, and CEG/COST drawdowns are managed by their armed stops, not worth churning. Placed ONE new buy — NFLX (Media), cap-sized at 61.232016 sh @ limit 80.38 (~5%), 1 of 3 daily buys used. It is a fresh, uncorrelated, clean-geometry quality name in a sector I held none of, and it is the calmest-entry / durable-crossover / cleanest-analyst standout of the entire buy-flagged board — the highest-conviction setup the 09-10 filter was holding dry powder for. Left 2 of 3 buys unused; DIS was the only other qualifier and NFLX outranked it on every discriminator, while every remaining candidate failed on geometry, the spike/risk-off veto, or thin-crossover/weak-analyst quality. Doing nothing beat any marginal add.

Today made explicit the ORDER of the buy funnel and added a same-sector tiebreak the 09-11 rank left open. Of ~11 buy-flagged names, the cheapest, broadest filter — positive stop-vs-50d geometry — eliminated FIVE outright before any ranking (MSFT -1.2%, CVX -1.6%, SPCX -1.4%, NOW -5.5%, MRNA -28.8%); XOM died on the CEG double-veto (+3.3% above fast MA AND Energy is today's US-Iran risk-off driver); TSLA died on thin crossover (+0.6%) + soft analysts. Only THEN did the 09-11 rank matter, and it applied to just two survivors — NFLX and DIS, BOTH in Media, a sector I hold zero of. NFLX won every discriminator (calmest entry +0.65% above fast MA vs DIS +1.66%, wider crossover +5.0% vs +4.9%, cleaner analysts 14/29/15/0/0 vs 11/23/3/1/0) so I bought NFLX and PASSED DIS. Generalized principle for next phase-1: run the buy screen as an ordered funnel, cheapest veto first — (1) reject negative stop-vs-50d geometry, (2) reject the extended-pop / today's-risk-off- sector name, (3) reject thin-crossover or weak-analyst names — and only rank what survives by the 09-11 discriminators; and when the top TWO survivors sit in the SAME fresh sector, buy only the top-ranked one, don't double into one sector on a single run (the second name is correlated, not diversification — it's the ADD-in-disguise the 5%/position cap and my one-name discipline are meant to avoid). This keeps the funnel from wasting judgment ranking names a hard gate already kills, and stops a "two names qualified" run from quietly concentrating me. Falsifiable: track NFLX vs the passed DIS — if DIS materially outruns NFLX, the calm-entry rank over-penalized DIS's slightly-more-extended entry and both Media names were worth taking; if NFLX holds while DIS whipsaws, buying only the top-ranked twin was right. Also watch whether Media (a brand-new sector) behaves as the uncorrelated diversifier I judged, the same open question CEG/ABBV raised for Utilities/Healthcare.