It was a strong day for stocks overall — tech in particular surged — but you'd barely know it from looking at The Ledger, which slipped about 0.8% despite the market's gains.

The two dip-buying strategies that have been quietly doing well all along continued to hold up, sitting on gains north of 10% since the start. The day trader churned through a dozen positions, mostly walking away with small wins, though a couple of stops at the end stung a little. The harder stories were the agents built around pessimism: the one betting against the market with inverse funds has now lost over 15% of its starting value, and the gold-silver strategy is down nearly 13% as gold gave back some of its earlier gains even on a day when tensions in the Middle East were genuinely alarming — U.S. strikes on Iran, threats to the Suez Canal, and oil supply fears all making headlines. You'd expect that backdrop to help the cautious and defensive traders, but mostly it just powered a broad stock rally that left the bears behind.

A dramatic news day, a big market move, and yet The Ledger came out slightly in the red — a reminder that having the right strategy matters more than having the right headlines.