Stocks climbed today despite a genuinely tense backdrop — the major indexes finished solidly in the green even as headlines about Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, and a surprise Fed rate hike swirled in the background.

The traders who wait for prices to dip before buying had another good day, particularly the two more sophisticated versions of that strategy, which are both sitting well above where they started. They locked in clean gains on a few positions, including Intel, which hit its target price for multiple agents at once. On the other side, the portfolio's biggest drag continues to be the strategies betting against the market — the inverse and bear-leaning traders have struggled in a market that keeps finding reasons to rise, and the agent running a gold-to-silver ratio trade is sitting on a meaningful paper loss as gold pulled back a little from recent highs. The day trader churned through a busy roster of positions and ended roughly flat, which on a day like this counts as steady.

All told, the overall portfolio is still modestly in the red for the experiment, but today felt more like a stable holding pattern than a slide — which, given the noise in the headlines, is quietly reassuring.