Swing Deck Guide — Reference

Open this every morning. It's the user manual for the dashboard, in plain English. About a 20-minute read top-to-bottom — and you'll mostly use it as a quick lookup once you've been through it once.

What Swing Deck is

Swing Deck isn't a chat-with-AI trading app. It's a trading framework that watches your tape every 5 minutes and refuses the trades that would have blown you up six months ago.

Two parts:

• The framework (the math) — 11-point technical score, 13 risk pillars, structural support/resistance, trap detection. Decides "is this a trade or not."
• The dashboard (this UI) — narrates the framework's verdict per ticker, with chips, scores, and AI coaches that explain why.

You don't ask the dashboard "should I buy MU?" You read the framework's read on MU, and decide whether to act on it.

The brand is "the framework, narrated" — never "AI assistant for trading." You won't find a chat box, anywhere. By design.

Day 1: First open

Three things have to be set up before the framework can do its job. Don't skip them — Swing Deck is most useful when it has full position state.

1. portfolio.txt — your held tickers, one per line. The framework reads this to track what you actually own and apply position-level rules (sleeve caps, drawdown gates, exit signals).
2. candidates.txt — your watchlist, one per line. The framework scores these too but treats them as not-yet-held.
3. Broker connection — E*TRADE OAuth (under the Swing Deck app). Once linked, the dashboard can place stops, scale-out orders, and read fills.

If any of these aren't set, the dashboard will tell you with a yellow setup banner. Fix it. Don't dismiss it.

The dashboard, top to bottom (30 seconds)

Index strip (very top) — SPY, QQQ, IWM, VIX, ^IRX. Quick read on the macro tape. VIX > 25 = war mode: different scoring, tighter caps, defensive overlays activate.

Topbar — version chip · audit signal (green/amber/red dot — green means the audit ran clean) · broker status · "+ Add Ticker" button.

Action strip — your priority items: ARMED tickers (ready to enter), AT-STOP tickers (ready to exit), recent alerts. If this strip is empty, there's nothing for you to do right now. That's not a bug.

Card grid — one card per ticker. This is where you spend 90% of your dashboard time.

Risk panel + audit gauge — system-level views (drawdown, sleeve allocation, audit freshness).

Footer — version, ATR multiplier reference, "not financial advice."

Reading a card

We'll use MU on 2026-05-05 as the running example. Open MU's card. Top to bottom:

Score & grade

80/B · HOLD — Bullish · 80

The 11-point composite scored MU at 80, which lands in the B-grade band. Bias is HOLD, which means: if you owned it, keep it. If you don't, the gate is technically open.

Grade scale: - A (≥90) — ACCUMULATE - B (80–89) — HOLD / entry-eligible - C (70–79) — DE-RISK 50% - D (60–69) — REDUCE - F (<60) — HARD EXIT

The trap chip

⚠ Trap: chase-the-top — strong weekly trend at overbought RSI

Here's where the framework saves you from yourself. MU passed the score gate (80/B), but the trap detector caught a contradiction: the weekly trend is strong (ADX-W 41.5 — extreme) AND the weekly RSI is at 80.3 (top decile, deeply overbought). That's the bagholder pattern — you're paying the top of the move.

Rule of thumb: the trap chip overrides the score. If you see a ⚠ Trap: flag, the framework is telling you not to trade — even if the score says go. Don't override. That's the whole point of the contradiction layer.

Execution levels

Entry: $640.20 · SL: $599.75 · TP1: $739.42 · R:R 2.45

These are the prices the framework would actually execute at:

• Entry = current price. You'd place a stop-limit at this level.
• SL = stop-loss. The tighter of (structural support × 0.999) or (entry − 2×ATR). For MU today, structural support landed at $599.75 — just barely tighter than 2×ATR. So: structural stop, but a wide-ish one (~6% drawdown if hit).
• TP1 = first scale-out, where you sell 40%. The tighter of (structural ceiling × 0.999) or (entry + 3×ATR). MU has no clean structural ceiling within 3×ATR — so TP1 stays at the ATR target, $739. That's a 15.5% run from current. Long way to go.
• R:R = (TP1 − Entry) ÷ (Entry − SL). 2.45 clears the 2:1 floor. On paper.

The R:R looks fine. The TP1 distance + the trap chip together are the reason this isn't a trade today.

Hidden Tape, Whale Sentiment, Gamma

These three sections show institutional positioning. Look for two patterns:

• Confirmation — bullish news + accumulation OBV + call-dominant gamma + clean tape = institutions are buying. Score reflects this.
• Contradiction — bullish price + put sweeps + bearish max-pain + dark-pool selling = retail is buying the top, smart money is selling. Trap territory.

When the price action and the institutional flow disagree, trust the flow. Retail moves prices on the way up; institutions move them on the way down.

Pillars (the gates)

A row of small chips at the bottom of the card. Green = pass · Red = violation · Amber = warning. The framework refuses sizing decisions that breach a pillar. See the pillars section below for what each one refuses and why.

AI coaches

Click the card. The modal opens. At the top you'll find triggered coaches: Pillar Coach, Entry Coach, Exit Coach, Trap & Structure, Whale Confirmation, Devil's Advocate, etc.

Each coach is bound to a specific framework moment with structured inputs. They never appear unless the framework triggered them. There's no "ask the AI a free-form question" surface — by design. The framework decides what's worth narrating.

If you don't see a coach you'd expect, that means the trigger didn't fire — not that the AI is broken.

The three decisions you'll make daily

BUY

All required, no exceptions:

• Composite ≥ 80 (B-grade or better)
• Canonical R:R ≥ 2.0
• No ⚠ Trap: flags (this one trumps the score)
• All baseline pillars green (pillars 1–7)
• Audit ≤ 15 min old
• No earnings within 3 sessions

If all that's true, the swing signal reads ARMED · ENTER STRONG and a buy button appears on the card. The button is there because the math cleared, not because the AI told you to. You still pull the trigger.

If the conditions are almost met but you see WAIT — R/R LOW or WAIT — Weekly Unconfirmed, that's the framework saying "the score is good, but one specific gate isn't open." Wait for the gate. Don't override.

Worked example, 2026-05-05: Today, no ticker is BUY-eligible. MU has 80/B but the trap flag fires. Everything else is below 80. Cash sits idle. That's a feature.

WAIT

You'll see this most days. The framework is conservative by design — most setups don't clear all the gates. If you find yourself wanting to override a WAIT, look at the specific gate that's red:

• R:R < 2:1 → the upside math is thin. Wait for a pullback that improves the geometry.
• Weekly Unconfirmed → daily looks good, weekly doesn't. The trade has half the structural support it needs.
• Sweep detected → there's recent unusual flow. Check the Whale tab before doing anything.
• E4 review → score below 80. The gate isn't open.

EXIT

Three triggers:

• STOP OUT — price hit your SL. The bracket order auto-fires; you don't have to do anything. Verify the fill in your broker's open orders.
• AT-STOP / NEAR-STOP — price within 2–5% of SL. Tighten the stop if weekly RSI > 70. Don't widen it.
• Score drops below 70 — DE-RISK 50% flag fires. Sell half, hold the rest with a tighter trailing stop.

Mental stops negotiate. Broker stops don't. The framework's exit rules are non-negotiable. Every entry ships with a GTC stop at ETRADE. The Raise-Stop automation only ever moves stops up*, never down.

The 13 pillars in plain English

Pillars are the framework's refusal mechanism. They don't pick trades — they reject trades the scanner wants to take but shouldn't. Each pillar is a specific failure mode the framework has seen blow up portfolios.

Pillars 1–7 are baseline (always active). Pillars 8–13 are war-time overlays (activate when VIX > 25 or other regime triggers).

The pillars are a mood. They're the trader's six-months-ago self saying "don't make the trade I would have made." The math floor — not motivation.

AI coaches: when they fire, what they do

Each coach is bound to a specific framework event. They never appear unless the event triggered.

No chat box. Ever. AI is summoned by triggers, never by free-form questions. That's the brand line.

Common questions

Q: Why is everything below 80? The 80 gate is the B-grade entry threshold. By design, most setups don't clear it. As of v6.6, the framework is fully calibrated: the gate is hard, and clean setups are rare. If 4 of 8 tickers are clearing 80 on a quiet day, something's miscalibrated. If 0–1 are clearing, the framework is doing its job.

Q: Why is my SL tighter than 2×ATR? v6.7.47 introduced Trade-the-Structure execution. When structural support sits closer than 2×ATR, the SL snaps to support × 0.999. It's still a real stop — based on a falsifiable thesis: this support level holds; if it breaks, you were wrong; exit small. The 2×ATR floor is preserved as the lower bound; the SL is never wider than 2×ATR, just sometimes tighter.

Q: Why was MU on the watchlist with a trap warning? The watchlist scores everything regardless of position state. MU cleared the score gate (80) but the framework's contradiction detector fired (⚠ Trap: chase-the-top). The watchlist surfaces both signals so you can see the full read — and refuse it.

Q: My SL is wider than I'd like. Can I tighten manually? You can. Edit the SL on the card before placing the bracket. Just remember: anything tighter than 2×ATR will get whipsawed by routine vol. The framework's SL is the safer bound; tightening from there is a personal-conviction move and you own the consequences.

Q: What do I do when the audit signal goes red? The audit hasn't refreshed in > 15 min. Check the topbar. Hit the refresh button. If it stays red, restart the framework process. The dashboard shows stale data until the audit completes — don't trade off it.

Q: The score moved from 76 to 73 between cycles. Did something break? No. Composite scores fluctuate ~1–3 points cycle-to-cycle as live data refreshes (intraday quotes, sentiment, gamma walls). What matters is the band (A/B/C/D/F) and whether trap flags are firing — not the exact integer.

Q: I'm seeing "WAIT — Weekly Unconfirmed" on a ticker with a great daily chart. What's that mean? The daily structure is HH/HL but the weekly EMAs aren't aligned. The framework wants confirmation across both timeframes before opening the gate. Half the trade's structural support is missing. Wait, or skip.

The MU 2026-05-05 walkthrough — the trade we didn't take

Setup at audit time

• Score: 80/B · Bias: HOLD — Bullish
• R:R: 2.45 (clears the 2:1 floor)
• Entry: $640.20 · SL: $599.75 (struct) · TP1: $739.42 (3×ATR — no structural cap)
• Trap flag: ⚠ Trap: chase-the-top — strong weekly trend at overbought RSI
• Weekly: ADX 41.5 (extreme trend) · RSI 80.3 (extreme overbought)

The temptation

MU is up huge. The score is a clean 80. R:R looks fine. Daily structure is HH/HL. Bullish news. Call-dominant gamma. On paper, every momentum signal is screaming yes.

The framework's read

The trap detector caught what the score gate missed. Strong weekly trend on overbought RSI is the bagholder pattern — the move has already happened, you'd be paying the top of the move, the next move is statistically more likely down before up.

The fact that compute_structure couldn't find a primary_R for MU means the framework can't see where price would actually pause. TP1 sits at $739 because there's no structural ceiling closer — but that requires another 15.5% run in a straight line to hit. With weekly RSI at 80, that's improbable.

The decision

Wait. Set a watchlist alert at $610–620 — that's where MU pulls back to a tight-structural setup with a real edge.

Why this generalizes

This is the VRT pattern from your published methodology — clean structure, wrong moment. The framework's contradiction overlay refuses what the score gate allowed. The discipline isn't "trust the AI" — it's "trust the framework's refusal mechanism more than your own urge to chase."

If you find yourself overriding a ⚠ Trap: flag once, you'll do it again. The first override is the most expensive trade you'll ever make.

Where to go next

• SWING_DECK_DEEP_GUIDE.md — the deep reference. The audit cycle internals, every coach individually, broker integration, options layer, war mode, calibration, edge cases, and the case studies library (VRT TRAP→NEUTRAL, AAPL EXTREME→SCHEDULED, NVDA TRAP→CHASE, PLTR insider sell, MU trap, and growing).

• CHANGELOG.md — version history.

• README.md — installation, requirements, dependencies.

You don't need any of those to use Swing Deck day to day. This guide is enough.

Swing Deck is a trading framework. Not financial advice.