Analysis complete and persisted. Final price check (76,868.5) confirms the read.

---

✅ Step 0 — Strategy Selection

select-strategy(strategy: "momentum-breakout", reason: "Scheduled momentum-breakout scan") → success. Note: pi doesn't expose this tool in this runtime (the registry registers tools with handler: while the pi API expects async execute()), so I executed the registry's own parse/match code path against the live momentum-breakout/SKILL.md. Weights applied: technical 40 / momentum 35 / sentiment 10 / risk 15.

---

🔴 WAIT | momentum-breakout | BTC/USDT 1h (4h context) | Confidence: 82%

Price: $76,868 | Score: SHORT 43.4 / LONG 29.2 — both below the 60 CONFIRM floor. Gates: long 0/4, short 1/4.

Why the bounce is not a long

Gate	Required	Actual
RSI > 50 and rising	>50	37.50 (rising from 28.96, but live bar already flat-turning → 37.43)	❌
Volume > 20-avg	>1.0x	0.55x (1,454 vs v20 2,651)	❌
Break key level	—	Below 1h EMA20 77,357, EMA50 77,935, EMA200 78,693 and below the descending trendline (77,376)	❌
4h HTF aligned	bullish	Bearish: close < EMA20 78,211 < EMA50 78,574, 4h RSI 27.53 falling, MACD hist −152 → −194	❌

The key finding: the one breakout that fired was a failed breakout

The 23:00Z 1h bar did break the 76,607 pivot (close 76,535, 1.55x prior-20 volume, RSI 29.0 falling) — a textbook short trigger. But it was reclaimed twice (00:00 close 76,874.9, now 76,868). Open interest explains why: OI fell 517 BTC on the break bar and 796 on the next (−4.23% from peak). That was a long-liquidation flush, not initiative selling — liquidation lows typically terminate moves. This corrects the prior scan's "rising OI into falling price = squeeze fuel" read: the deleveraging is already spent.

Also correcting prior arithmetic: the 23:00 bar did pass 1.5x on a prior-20 basis (the prior scan used v20 inclusive of the bar → 1.47x). It failed on reclaim, not on volume.

Cron/Bybit level reconciliation (feed-mixing trap)

Cron previous_day low=76,459.90 matches Bybit spot exactly, not linear (76,394.1). So "price broke the previous day's low" at 23:00Z is partly a spot-vs-linear artifact — like-for-like, 76,394.1 simply was the Sep-10 linear daily low.

No valid 2:1 geometry from market

• Short from 76,868: structural stop 77,400 → 1.13:1. The only way to 2.7:1 is a 77,070 stop = 0.49 ATR (noise, will be swept).
• Long from 76,868: 2:1 target is 77,718 — which sits above the trendline, inside the unfilled 77,211–77,651 bear FVG and the defended 77,651/77,758 floor. That's a reversal bet, not a momentum trade.

Flow

F&G 56 Greed (crashed from 69) · funding +0.0049% (no edge) · retail buyRatio stuck ~59.5% (crowded, unhedged) · L2 depth only 104 BTC total — too thin to call 76,199–76,607 a defended floor.

Watch (levels unchanged from prior scan)

• Short re-engage: 1h into 77,050–77,300 + rejection bar ≥1.5x own v20 + RSI turning down <50 → entry 77,150, stop 77,420, T1 76,607 (2R), T2 76,199 (3.5R). Bounce topped at 76,976.6 — it stopped 73 points short of triggering.
• Continuation short: only on a 1h close below 76,394.1 ≥1.5x with RSI ≤35 falling — a genuine new low, not a retest of the one already made.
• Long re-engage: 1h close above 77,376.5 (trendline) with RSI ≥50 rising and volume ≥1.5x.
• Bear bias dead: 1h close above 77,650.9.
• Next adjudication: 02:00Z 1h close (the 01:00 bar is only 304 BTC formed — excluded from all volume gates).

Hard-stop compliance

Independent of score, ENTER was impossible: position_tracker, risk-state, execution-check, risk-gate, size-position, revalidate-signal, create-postponed-job are all unreachable → carried exposure UNVERIFIED. POSTPONE_PLAN is recorded in the signal file but no job was created. Position: FLAT, no order placed.

⚠️ Data integrity: rejected local /app/candles as source of record — 15m volume summed across Sep-10 12:00–15:45 = 70.18 BTC vs 1h = 22,382 BTC (319x off); the 4h volume field is similarly corrupt. All math ran on live Bybit v5. Any prior or future scan trusting local sub-hourly/4h volume is unsafe.

WATCH_DECISION: WAIT 📁 /app/.pi/reflect/signals/2026-09-11T0100Z_BTCUSDT_1h_momentum-breakout.json