SYNAPSE
LAST SESSION · THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15

A backtested edge in 0DTE SPX. One clear call all session. Trades when the edge is there.

Subscribers get the engine's call on SPX all session, in five plain words, plus the engine's own backtested trades the moment it buys. Most days it doesn't trade, and you won't hear from it. This is the last session, replayed.

Backtested results are hypothetical and don't guarantee future results. Not investment advice.

$0 today, and the trial keeps going until you've seen a trade. Founding price $99.50/mo for 12 months, 13 of 25 seats left, through Oct 31.

SESSION REPLAY
Thursday, October 15 · Eastern time
09:30
09:3011:0012:3014:0016:00
put sidechopcall sidecallstrade
09:30The session opens. The first call posts once the engine has a read.
09:30:00sessionsynapse_recordOPENengine scanning
Every call the engine made this session, as members saw it, on a compressed clock over the SPX tape. Darker is a TREND, lighter a LEAN. Tap the ribbon to scrub. What the engine called, not a recommendation.

Not ready for a trial? Get the call by email.

Free, no card. One email after each session's close: every call the engine made, and its trade if it made one.

LAST SESSION
Thursday, October 15
STOOD DOWN
09:40SIGNALCall signal: the session's first confirmed trend.
09:40BLOCKEDBlocked. The 09:35 open-interest pin was a headwind.
09:46EXPIREDThe entry window closed. No trade.
16:00CLOSEDSession closed. One signal, no entry.
Straight from the engine's record, published after the close. Times are Eastern. Prices, strikes and P&L are left out on purpose.
WHAT YOU GET

Two things, live, all session.

THE CALL
The engine's read of SPX, as it changes

One call at a time, in five words: PUT TREND, PUT LEAN, CHOP, CALL LEAN, CALL TREND, with a strength meter. A new call posts once it holds a full 5-minute bar. A call describes the market; it isn't a trade.

09:31CHOP
09:50CALL ●○○○○
10:00CHOP
The first 3 of 3 calls on Thursday, October 15.
ENGINE TRADES
Backtested, and only when it buys

When the engine trades, you get one alert:

TRADE · SPX CALL (or PUT). Bought one strike in the money, held to the 15:58 close.

Most days it doesn't trade, and you won't hear from it. A trade is what the engine did, not a recommendation.

Every closed trade is on the record. The live account

A strength meter

One to five bars on every call: how big and how clean the move is right now. Not a probability.

The full record

Every call on the SPX chart, every session, kept, so you can watch how it behaves before you trust it.

Your account stays yours

Synapse never places orders or touches anyone's account. What to do with a call, if anything, is the member's decision.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK

We tested the indicators you were taught.

Each one below was run point in time with no look-ahead and judged on sessions it never saw; the recent studies were pre-registered in writing first. We publish the failures because that is where the rigor shows.

chart_patterns0 pass

Engulfings, stars, wedges, double tops: no pattern's out-of-sample range sits above a coin flip, even where a single rate looks high on a small sample. The textbook bearish ones fade more often than they follow through (evening star: 37.7%).

1,249 /ES sessions · 59,954 prints · 2021 to 2026
rsi · macd · stoch · adxdead

The RSI gate that looked brilliant was just picking puts (134 of 143 fires). And at a 0DTE entry, MACD(12,26,9) usually isn't defined yet: it was on only 104 of 360 entries.

point in time on 5-minute /ES · three regime splits
combine_everythingAUC 0.502

Fifteen signals in a machine-learned model, walk-forward. In sample it looked like a printer. Out of sample its accuracy fell below simply being long.

857 out-of-sample sessions
auction_market_theory8 of 8 coins

Value areas, acceptance, rejection: eight independent constructions of AMT direction on /ES, every one a coin flip. Its range read survives; its direction read does not.

built, tested, closed
the_strat · ictcoins

The Strat's 2-1-2 called direction 53.6% of the time, ICT fair value gaps 51.6%, liquidity sweeps 45.9%. Re-tested on real trade outcomes, as a filter and as an entry signal: dead both ways.

2024 to 2025 /ES · 360 trades
direction_breakeven59% needed

A 15-minute at-the-money 0DTE trade needs 59% direction accuracy to break even. No read we have measured gets there, ours included.

n = 1,212 sessions

What survives is structure and timing, not prediction. The one signal that passed, a chop filter on how efficiently price is moving, runs in the engine today. That is what Synapse is built on, and why it tells you when it is standing down.

Don't take our word for it.

We figured you'd be skeptical, so the desk runs your favorite systems live. Turn on the Strat, ICT, opening-range breakouts, VWAP, EMA clouds or auction market theory mid-session, and their entries land on the same chart as the engine's calls. Compare them yourself while the day plays out.

Recorded session, Thu Oct 1, 2026, replayed. Entries only, nothing scored. Not advice.

HOW A CALL HAPPENS

Gates decide. Every one is on the record.

No language model decides a trade. The engine reads the tape, runs each gate in the same order every time, and publishes the verdict either way.

every minute, all session /ES + SPX tape order flow open-interest pin Russell cross-check GATES in order, every time CALLside · strike · window · exit STAND DOWNwhich gate, and why THE RECORDevery decision,kept and published
every minute, all session /ES + SPX tape order flow open-interest pin Russell cross-check GATES in order, every time CALLside · strikewindow · exit STAND DOWNwhich gate,and why THE RECORDevery decision,kept and published
01

Read the tape

/ES futures and SPX, minute by minute: trend, order flow, the auction. Microstructure, not chart patterns.

02

Run the gates

Session trend strength, the SPX open-interest pin at the open, a Russell cross-check, and an entry model that prices the odds.

03

Call it

When every gate passes: side, strike relative to the money, a short entry window, and the exit rule. Same message, same moment, for everyone.

04

Or stand down

When a gate says no, the stand-down publishes too, with the gate that decided it. A quiet session is still a decision you can see.

FOR THE QUANTS

How we found the edge, and what it looks like in the backtest.

If you build models for a living, this is the part the rest of the site skips: the data, everything we tried, how the rules were chosen, and the hypothetical numbers that came out the other end, year by year, with the caveats next to them.

01 · The datacounted from the store, Oct 1, 2026
Dense era from May 2022 Earlier, thinner years 2026 to date, captured live about once a minute since August
spxw_chains1,704 sessions of intraday SPXW option chains, Jun 2018 to Oct 1, 2026. About 100 strikes a snapshot, calls and puts, bid and ask, every five minutes.
open_interest1,719 sessions of prior-day open interest, the input to the 09:35 dealer-pin read.
es_tape/ES futures candles drive every directional read. SPX direction is never inferred from SPY.
02 · Everything we triedRead the full study log →
The Strat · ICT53.6%, 51.6%, 45.9% on direction. Dead on real trade outcomes.
58 chart patterns59,954 prints. No range clears a coin flip out of sample.
RSI · MACD · ADXThe RSI “edge” was just picking puts.
Machine-learned ensembleFifteen signals, walk-forward. AUC 0.502.
Auction market theoryEight constructions of direction. Eight coins.
Dealer vanna · charm0 of 24 pre-registered cells.
GEX walls as filters6 of 6 fail out of sample.
Selling static premiumCondors and flies at the open: about zero gross, negative after fills.
Straddles · convexityDead out of sample on conservative fills.
/ES order book depthNo directional edge in book imbalance.
Breadth leads SPXNo lead. /ES leads breadth instead.
Overnight carryFails as an entry tilt.
Leg-in butterflyWings first, the body sold only when the sale covers the wings. Phoenix’s structure.
Chop filterNet move over path length. A session that goes nowhere stands Phoenix down. The one survivor of the Strat/ICT track.
IV bandPhoenix trades only inside a band of at-the-money implied vol: too quiet or too wild, it waits.
09:35 pin gatePeregrine waits when SPX sits above the open-interest pin.
One strike in the moneyPeregrine’s strike, with a RUT adverse-only veto. Adopted Sept 2026.
CVD vetoOrder flow that disagrees vetoes a Phoenix fire. Kept for drawdown, not return.

Tested and closed Survived and runs in the engine

03 · How Phoenix's rules were chosenone SPXW lot · 2021-01-04 to 2026-07-15 · 1,263 sessions
ConfigurationTotalWorst drawdownCalmarFlies
Baseline, no filters$87,051−$9,8268.86684
+ chop filter$85,236−$7,67811.10661
+ CVD veto alone$87,756−$9,5879.15661
Live: both filters$83,914−$6,41413.08632

The filters cost about 4% of the total and cut the worst drawdown by 35%. That trade, return for path, is the one we keep making. Pricing every fill at the ask instead of the mid takes another 15.6% off the total.

04 · Year by year, both bookshypothetical · one unit each · Jan 3, 2022 to May 13, 2026
Swipe the table for Peregrine →
Phoenix · butterflyPeregrine · directional
YearTradesWin rateAvg / tradeProfit factorTradesWin rateAvg / tradeProfit factor
20226275.8%$3323.105547.3%$1811.23
202316977.5%$181.096055.0%$4091.80
202413282.6%$931.484252.4%$3521.63
202511083.6%$2051.803964.1%$2,155*6.92
2026 YTD5682.1%$1401.47666.7%$2,0975.51
All52980.3%$1261.5820254.5%$7222.28

*One session carries Peregrine's 2025: Apr 9, 2025 made $36,439 on one contract. Without it, 2025 averages $1,253 a trade at 63.2%, and the full window $545.

05 · Performance ratioshypothetical · both books at one unit, combined
1.92Sharpe, annualized on daily P&L
4.91Sortino
−$15,339Worst drawdown
71.9%Winning days, of days traded
81.1%Months positive

Phoenix wins often and small

Payoff ratio0.39
Average win / loss$427 / −$1,105
Largest loss−$3,378

Peregrine wins half and big

Payoff ratio1.91
Average win / loss$2,364 / −$1,240
Largest loss−$3,201
06 · How fragile is itPhoenix · 10,000 bootstrap paths of 1,263 sessions
0.02%of paths end below zero
15.4%see a drawdown worse than $15k
59% vs 52%Direction accuracy a 15-minute ATM 0DTE trade needs, vs our best read. The edge isn't a forecast.

Now on trial: a language model. It reads the morning's news and gives a second opinion on each day's call, in shadow, with no say in the trade. It can only be judged going forward, because a model trained on market history may remember the answers to a backtest. Its test was written down before its first verdict, and the result gets published either way.

Read these as a hypothetical backtest. Fills are modeled from historical quotes at the ask, fees included, and no account traded these results. Peregrine's filter is refit each January on prior years only, and its 2022 fit is thin. Some rules were chosen on this history, so read the results as optimistic. Past performance, hypothetical or otherwise, is not indicative of future results. Since October 6, 2026 both books trade a small real account; each closed week posts to the live account page. Tearsheet built Sep 25, 2026; Phoenix ladder and bootstrap from the Sep 23, 2026 edge report.
The working paperOut-of-sample tests of retail technical signals on 0DTE SPX options: the data, the method, every family that failed, and the pitfalls that fooled us along the way. October 2026.
Download the PDF
Going deeperThe study log, the pre-registrations, the failure list and the run behind every number on this page. Glad to walk a researcher or allocator through any of it.
Get in touch

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