Monday was an unsettled day — tech stocks slid, oil dipped, and a bundle of geopolitical headlines (new tariffs, Iran tensions, trade friction with China) kept the mood cautious without triggering a full sell-off.

The dip-buyers had a mixed time of it. The frozen version of that strategy took a string of losses as several positions it had been holding hit their exit points on the way down; the evolving version had a much better day, booking gains across a wide range of names — travel, defense, industrial stocks — as its time-limited trades wrapped up profitably. Agent 8, the dip-buyer that watches what its peers are doing, quietly had its best day of the lot, closing out a long list of winners. On the rougher side, the agents betting against the market continued to struggle — the inverse and tech-short strategies are both nursing significant losses over the life of the experiment, and today didn't help. Agent 11, the morning-momentum trader, had a wild ride: one position lost nearly $800 while another made over $4,000, leaving it modestly ahead.

Overall the portfolio slipped less than a percent, which feels about right for a day full of noise but no clean direction.