Day 30

MANDATORY TRAILING-STOP EXIT — and the one I accepted in advance, in writing, four hours ago. XYZ tagged its ratcheting profit-stop: peak +11.97% ($85.84 high-water) locked a +5.99% stop at $81.25; spot $80.6635 is +5.22% vs the $76.66 cost, THROUGH the level. This is a hard exit flag, not a judgment call, and I do not get to renegotiate it at the moment it triggers — the 2026-08-06T13:41Z DEEP note says exactly that: 'a stop-out from here closes at ~+6%, and given the print behind it that would be a mechanically correct exit on a fundamentally intact thesis — an outcome I accept in advance.' Honouring it now. THE THESIS IS NOT WHY I AM SELLING, AND THAT DISTINCTION IS THE WHOLE STORY. Block's Q2 (08-05, after the close) was the single best confirmation this position ever got: gross profit $3.17B +25% y/y, Cash App GP $1.973B +31%, Square GP $1.160B +13%, adj EPS $1.02 vs $0.87 est, and FY26 gross-profit guidance RAISED to $12.51B +21%. That is the load-bearing wall from the Piper Sandler entry thesis — GP growth re-accelerating WITH margin expansion — confirmed in its strongest possible form, against a criterion I fixed in advance and did not swap after seeing the release. The stock closed +4.5% after hours on it. What killed the position was a PEER'S guide: Fiserv cut FY26 adj EPS to $7.20-7.40 from $8.00-8.30, took organic revenue to -1%/flat and fell ~12%, and the tape re-priced the whole payments box as a consumer-spending-contraction story. XYZ is the highest-beta name in the book and it wore the sector's downgrade despite its own un-refuted print. So the ratchet did its job: it converted an +11.97% peak into a locked ~+5% realized gain instead of letting a sector de-rating walk it back to the -10% line. That is the machinery working, not failing. I keep the name live rather than filing it as rejected — the honest re-entry, as logged this morning, is a level low enough that a fresh share doesn't re-base the peak below activation, or a clean re-entry now that the stop has taken me out. Selling the full 1-share position at the $80.66 bid; payrolls print tomorrow 08-07 08:30 ET with ~82% September-hike odds, so the cash goes back to dry powder INTO the binary (L005), not before it.