2026-08-26 · midday

The same four structural rails as the open, and every price, level and calendar trigger swept clear. Alphabet gave back the morning: GOOGL $341.64, down 1.53% on the day and $3.11 below the 6:35 read, which pushes tranche-3 confirmation from 4.4% away to 5.4%. Nothing closed, so the cap and the leverage numbers are unchanged by construction. The standing long-leg fix now prints $37.47 net per spread, $18,735, the most expensive it has been in the series and $225 above this morning.

What to do

280P x5 sit above the $260 long-leg ceiling.
BUY TO CLOSE 5 GOOGL Dec15'28 360 PUT / SELL TO CLOSE 5 GOOGL Dec15'28 280 PUT
one spread, limit, day · ~$18,735 debit ($37.47 net per spread at midday marks)
Your playbook: “long leg never above $260 (must sit at/above the $230-250 floor zone, never below $230 where protection stops paying before history bottoms)”
The same standing order as prior runs, repriced to midday marks. The series: $36.76 on 08-21, $36.84 on 08-24, $35.88 and $36.40 on 08-25, $37.02 at this morning's open, $37.47 now. That is a new high and the drift has been one-way all week. The mechanism is unchanged: the short 360P marked up from $68.47 to $68.62 while the long 280P slipped from $31.45 to $31.15, so both legs moved against the fix at once. The 8x Dec-28 300P also trip this rail and remain the separate matter. No order is proposed against them.

Still over, unchanged

These fire every run until you act on them. No order attached.
rail now limit
program_cap $175,059 $100,000 cap 1.8x, $75,059 over
gross_leverage 1.721x 1.50 red / 1.30 amber red
net_cash / NLV -0.069 -0.05 amber / -0.10 red amber

rail	now	limit
program_cap	$175,059	$100,000 cap	1.8x, $75,059 over
gross_leverage	1.721x	1.50 red / 1.30 amber	red
net_cash / NLV	-0.069	-0.05 amber / -0.10 red	amber

Why each one reads the way it does

program_cap
Identical to the open to the dollar. Defined max loss is a function of strikes and entry credits, not current marks, so it moves only when a position actually closes. Nothing closed between the two runs.
gross_leverage
Gross position value $2,419,922 on NLV $1,406,250. The IPS row this proxies measures total DELTA notional / NLV; this rail measures GROSS position value, and rails.json carries the note '1.57 at signing on gross; true delta leverage ~1.0x'. A red here is not the same statement as the policy row being red. Essentially flat against 1.720x at the open: both the numerator and the denominator fell with Alphabet.
net_cash / NLV
Cash is -$97,114 on NLV $1,406,250. The cash number is unchanged from the open to the dollar; the ratio moved from -0.069 to -0.069 only because NLV fell 0.72%. Signed at -14.8% and already red that day, so this is the improved end of a known accepted state, not a new break.

Everything else clear

Nearest trigger is tranche 3 confirm at $360, 5% away.

All 16 triggers swept, with today's number

price trigger	now	fires at	distance
GOOGL · tranche 3 confirm	$341.64	≥ $360	5.4% up
GOOGL · tranche 2 weakness	$341.64	≤ $317	7.2% down
GOOGL · thesis break	$341.64	≤ $280	18.0% down
GOOGL · crash / Rule 8	$341.64	≤ $260	23.9% down
GOOGL · Rule 6 close shorts	$341.64	≥ $434	27.0% up
MU · collar roll	$939.23	≥ $1,250	33.1% up

level trigger	now	fires at	distance
Dec-28 30-delta put IV	36.1%	> 43%	+6.9 pt
Dec-28 30-delta put IV	36.1%	> 50%	+13.9 pt
excess liquidity / NLV	74.9%	< 40%	-34.9 pt
widest long call spread	42.1% of width (Dec-28 300/400, on the single pairable short 400C)	>= 90% of width	+47.9 pt
Dec-28 350/500 call spread	29.6% of width	>= 90% of width	+60.4 pt
Dec-28 340P extrinsic	$57.71	< $5	far (put is OTM, spot $341.64 above the $340 strike)
NLV drawdown, 1 week	+0.2% against the 08-20 logged NLV of $1,403,201	-8% in a week	far

calendar	date	away
wash-sale window opens for the 6/05 loss lots	2026-09-17	22d
deploy the $100k reserve at market regardless	2026-10-29	64d
GOOG lots vest long-term, add collar put leg 9	2027-03-13	199d

Spot prices

	last	day
GOOG	$338.77	-1.3%
GOOGL	$341.64	-1.5%
MU	$939.23	+0.7%
RDDT	$155.62	-4.2%
AMZN	$260.11	-0.4%
BRK B	$505.06	+0.1%
DIS	$109.68	-1.4%
EQT	$54.87	+1.6%
INTC	$87.85	+0.4%
META	$576.75	+1.2%
NVDA	$210.31	-1.3%
TSLA	$346.14	-1.2%
VOO	$704.73	+0.1%

The check itself

never worked the runbook's 11x Dec-28 300/400 call tranche is not eleven spreads in the book, and the 90%-of-width trigger has never been measuring what it names.
Second run reported, unchanged. The book holds 11 long GOOGL Dec15'28 300 calls against a single short Dec15'28 400 call. Runbook Part 1 specifies 'BUY tranche 1 (~$100k): 11x Dec-28 300/400 combo'. So one spread exists and ten of the long calls are outright. That matters for the Part 2 row 'Any long call spread marks >= 90% of its width -> SELL that spread': today the pairable spread marks 42.1% of its $100 width, but the ten unpaired 300 calls have no width to measure against and can never trip that row. The 350/500 tranche is intact at 10x10 and marks 29.6% of width. This run does not edit rails.json or the runbook. Which side is wrong - the book or the doc - is Gabriel's call.
never worked rails.py tests every GOOGL price level against the GOOG quote.
Still open, fourth run reported. rails.json lists the campaign underlyings as ["GOOG", "GOOGL"] and rails.py loops those in order, taking the first with a quote and then breaking. GOOG is first, so thesis_break, t2_weakness, t3_confirmation, washout_buy, no_chase, rule6_close_shorts and rule8_crash_powder are all measured against GOOG. Every one of those levels is written as a GOOGL level: the runbook header says 'Reference price: GOOGL $347' and Part 2 says 'GOOGL closes >= $434'. At midday GOOG is $338.77 and GOOGL is $341.64, a 0.85% gap, so the script reads tranche 3 as 6.27% away while against GOOGL it is 5.37%. No rail has flipped on this yet. This page shows the GOOGL number, matching the docs; the script's own output uses GOOG. This run does not edit rails.json.
will happen again get_price_snapshot returned an empty prior_close on all thirteen tickers again.
Second consecutive run at 13 of 13 empty, after 10-11 of 13 on the runs before that. The workaround is unchanged: request the 'change' field on the same snapshot and derive prior close as last minus change. With no ticker populating prior_close there is again no broker-side value left to cross-check the derivation against within this run. The cross-check available instead: all thirteen derived prior closes match the values derived independently at 6:35 this morning, to the cent. One thing did not recur: yesterday the same workaround produced $344.74 for GOOG at the open and $344.59 at midday, a 15-cent disagreement about a number that is fixed for the session. Today all thirteen agree exactly across the two runs. One clean day is not a fix, so the derivation is still only trusted to about a dime.

Rails that could not be evaluated

stressed_excess_liquidity - needs IBKR Risk Navigator (-30% price, +50% IV) with the TWS gateway up. Never yet measured.
top2_name_delta_ratio - needs per-leg option deltas, which summary.json does not carry. ~0.90 at signing and already red.
short_dec28_340p_extrinsic - rails.json still classes this unmeasured pending a live Dec-2028 chain pull, but the position mark answers it: $57.71 of extrinsic against the <$5 watch, and the put is out of the money at spot $341.64.
The runbook's 'NLV falls 8%+ in one week' test still cannot run on its written window. rails-log.jsonl only began carrying an nlv field on 08-20, so six sessions is the longest span available. NLV is +0.2% over that span, nowhere near the trigger.
GPU spot and the forecast pass are 6:35-only sections and were not run at midday. The open run covered both, including the note that the SemiAnalysis composite has not published past April's $2.82. Note that the midday page replaces the morning page at the same date URL, so this date's GPU levels and forecast rows live in the check-in doc's markets-open block and in the archived checks/report-2026-08-26.open.json, not on the page a reader opens this afternoon.

Where the numbers came from

IBKR connector: get_account_positions, get_account_summary, 13 get_price_snapshot calls plus the Dec-28 340P IV
scripts/investing/rails.py against investing/rails.json
investing/googl-mu-runbook.md Parts 2-4