Conviction is common.
Sizing it is the work.
I bought my first ounce of gold in early 2023 and my first gold contract in August 2025 — two and a half years holding the metal before I held any leverage against it. The thesis has not moved since: gold at ten thousand dollars by 2030. What has been built around it is the discipline. Every rule governing this book is written down before it is tested, and the record is published whether it works or not.
Risk gate
28 Aug 2026Regime
CLASSICAL_INVERSE [HELD]
60-day gold / real-yield correlation ρ −0.176
Decision
STANDBY — 0.00% of equity
3-day real yield +10bp against a −5bp 20-day trend
The gate sizes risk. It never places an order. When it reads STANDBY the clip is zero, whatever I happen to think about gold that morning.
Open positions
Both books, marked to last closeSimulacrum Macro
Named for the sign that comes loose from the thing it was meant to represent — a fair description of a gold price in a debasement regime, and of a crude price in a war. Two things run here, on different clocks. The core is one long-horizon thesis carried in COMEX futures: gold to $10,000 by 2030, long above $4,500, hedged to flat below it with a short in the next contract month rather than a sale, never short outright. Around it sits a short-dated options book — defined-risk structures and directional calls held days rather than years, and fifty-eight of the sixty-four closed trades here. The futures carry the thesis; the options are what funded the first one. An NVDA call bought on 30 April 2025 paid for the gold contract opened that August.
Active positions
| Position | Type | Side | Contract | Size | Entry | Mark | P&L % | Held | Conviction |
|---|
Marked to each contract's last settlement.
Account value
Realised performanceEvery position closed in this book
Closed trades
| ClosedOpened | Symbol | Trade | Held | P&L $ | P&L % |
|---|
Simulacrum Macro — monthly returnsMonth by month
Mimetic Rivalry
A concentrated long-only equity book, run across a Roth opened in November 2020 and a taxable account added in July 2023. Positions are sized by conviction rather than index weight and held for years — the oldest has not been touched since November 2020. Nothing here is traded around; the turnover is five closed positions in almost six years.
Active positions
Current bookEquity book — marked to last close
| Ticker | Company | Side | Theme | Weight | Entry | Mark | Unrealised | Held |
|---|
Gains and losses carry an explicit sign and arrow — colour is never the only cue.
Sector exposure
% of netAccount value
Realised performanceEvery position closed in this book
Closed trades
| ClosedOpened | Symbol | Trade | Held | P&L $ | P&L % |
|---|
Mimetic Rivalry — monthly returnsMonth by month
Framework note
Girard's argument is that desire is borrowed: we want things because others want them, and the wanting spreads before the reasoning does. Applied to a market, that says a crowded narrative makes an asset expensive and fragile at the same moment — the price reflects conviction rather than cashflow, and conviction is the part that can leave overnight. I am not trying to trade the unwind. I am trying to own the position early enough that the convergence, when it arrives, is something I am on the receiving end of.
Daily Technical Analysis
A recorded read of NVDA: structure, the levels that matter, and where the risk sits. When a session is published the marked-up charts and the levels go up with it, before the open — which is the only order that makes a level worth anything.
Session recording
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NVDA — Daily
Last close
Tradable levels
Session ladderLevels are marked R (resistance), P (pivot), S (support).
Marked charts
Drop annotated screenshots — they preview locallyArchivePrevious sessions
| Session | Bias | Open | Close | Range | Level hit | Media |
|---|
P&L Ledger
Every trade in both books, closed and open. Each row carries its dates, size, entry, exit and realised P&L; open positions are marked to the last close and sit in the same table, so nothing is hidden by being unfinished. Multi-leg structures show the net of their legs and open to the individual contracts.
Account value — both books
Trade historyEvery closed and open position
Ledger
| ClosedOpened | Symbol | Trade | Held | Book | P&L $ | P&L % |
|---|
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DISCLAIMER — All performance figures, positions, and trade records shown on this site are for research presentation purposes only. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Nothing here is an offering, a solicitation, or investment advice. Zen Strategies does not manage external capital under this presentation.