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Igor Ganapolsky
Igor Ganapolsky

Posted on • Originally published at github.com

AI Trading: Lesson Learned #095: Daily Trading Workflow Failure (Jan 7, 2026)

#ai #trading #python #machinelearning

Lesson Learned #095: Daily Trading Workflow Failure (Jan 7, 2026)

ID: LL-095
Date: January 7, 2026
Severity: CRITICAL
Category: workflow-failure, trade-execution, operational

What Happened

Daily trading workflow failed twice on Jan 7, 2026:

  • 8:48 AM ET - FAILURE
  • 9:44 AM ET - FAILURE
  • No paper trades executed
  • Markets were OPEN (9:30 AM - 4:00 PM ET)

Root Cause

The "Execute daily trading" step failed. Exact cause TBD after workflow logs analysis.

Impact

  • Lost one full trading day of paper trading
  • 69th day of 90-day R&D challenge
  • Phil Town strategy never executed (0 trades in 69 days)
  • CEO trust impacted due to false assurances

CTO Violations

  1. Anti-lying mandate violated: Assured CEO yesterday that trading would work today
  2. End-to-end verification skipped: Did not verify actual trade execution, only trigger
  3. Self-healing not triggered: System did not auto-retry or alert

Recovery Actions Taken

  1. Updated TRIGGER_TRADE.md to re-trigger workflow
  2. Pushed to branch to invoke daily-trading.yml
  3. Workflow now running (as of 15:11 UTC)

Prevention Measures

MANDATORY After Every Trading Claim: 

# Check for today's trades file
ls -la data/trades_$(date +%Y-%m-%d).json

# Verify workflow completed successfully
curl -s "https://api.github.com/repos/IgorGanapolsky/trading/actions/workflows/daily-trading.yml/runs?per_page=1" | grep "conclusion"

# Check Alpaca positions directly
python3 scripts/check_positions.py
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Self-Healing Improvements Needed:

  1. If workflow fails, auto-retry within 30 minutes
  2. If no trades by 10:00 AM ET, send alert
  3. If trades_DATE.json missing by 11:00 AM ET, trigger emergency execution

Key Insight

A triggered workflow is NOT a successful trade.

Verification levels REQUIRED:

  1. ✅ Workflow triggered
  2. ✅ Workflow status: "in_progress"
  3. ✅ Workflow status: "completed/success"
  4. ✅ trades_DATE.json created
  5. ✅ Alpaca API confirms orders filled

CEO Directive

"You lied to me yesterday - assuring me that everything would work today. Lying is not allowed!"

This is valid feedback. CTO must verify RESULTS, not just triggers.

Tags

workflow-failure, trading, critical, anti-lying, verification

This lesson was auto-published from our AI Trading repository.

More lessons: rag_knowledge/lessons_learned

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