The Swing Shift

Buys stocks showing real strength — momentum, volume, the works — with a stop-loss and a profit target locked in before the trade is ever placed. No guessing, no chasing.

« All Smart Portfolios
For informational and educational purposes only — not investment advice. Smart Portfolios are simulated (paper-trading) model portfolios that illustrate a rule-based approach; they are not a recommendation to buy or sell any security and do not know your personal financial situation. Do your own research and due diligence, and consider consulting a licensed financial professional, before making any investment decision.
Paper-trading results. Trades shown are real orders placed against a sandbox brokerage account using live market data, but no real capital is at risk. Results do not represent a live account and may differ from real trading due to execution timing, liquidity, slippage, taxes, and fees.
Get an email when The Swing Shift publishes a trade.
Free — one email per trade, plain-English explanation included.
Starting Capital
$100,000
Currently Invested
$0
Unrealized Gain/Loss
+$0 (+0.0%)
Risk Tier
Aggressive
Performance vs. S&P 500 (SPY)
This portfolio's performance history will appear here once it has traded for a few days. Its holdings and starting mandate are shown above in the meantime.
How This Portfolio Picks Its Trades

The Swing Shift looks for stocks that are actually moving: trading above their own moving average, outperforming the broader market, backed by real trading volume. Every entry gets a stop-loss and profit target locked in before the trade is placed, not decided after the fact. A research agent runs the daily screen, a strategist decides what (if anything) to trade, a narrator explains the pick in plain English, and an independent auditor double-checks everything before it's published. Shares its real Tradier paper-trading account with The Wheelhouse.

Every candidate has to clear all of this, checked fresh, before it's ever considered for a trade:

  • Price above the 50-day simple moving average
  • 14-day RSI between 40 and 60
  • Relative-strength rank in the top 20% of the screened candidate universe (trailing ~3-month return vs. SPY)
  • Most recent daily volume at least 2x the 20-day average
  • Average daily volume of at least 500,000 shares
  • 14-day Average True Range (ATR) between 2% and 5% of price
  • A defined stop-loss and profit target set before the trade is placed, sized to no more than 2% portfolio risk
Read the exact rule, in full (revision 2, effective Jul 17, 2026)

Universe: a live-screened pool of liquid, optionable-adjacent large/mid-cap growth and momentum names (re-evaluated fresh against the criteria below every trading day — daily qualifying-list membership is not fixed). Entry criteria (all must be met): price above the 50-day simple moving average; 14-day RSI between 40 and 60; relative-strength rank in the top 20% of the candidate universe (trailing ~3-month total return versus SPY over the same window); most recent daily volume at least 2x the 20-day average; average daily volume at least 500,000 shares; 14-day Average True Range (ATR) between 2% and 5% of the current share price. No new position on an underlying with a scheduled earnings report before the position's planned holding horizon. Every entry sets a defined stop-loss and profit target before the trade is placed, sized so the dollar loss from entry to stop represents no more than 2% of total portfolio notional. Position sizing: no more than 20% of total portfolio notional committed to any single underlying at a time; at least 10% held in uncommitted cash at all times. Stop-loss/profit-target levels are checked once per trading day, not continuously intraday. This portfolio shares one funded Tradier paper-trading account ($200,000 total) with The Wheelhouse — each portfolio is independently budgeted at $100,000, and every trade is checked against both this portfolio's own budget and the real shared account's actual available cash (accounting for what the other portfolio has committed) before it is placed.

See every rule change this portfolio has ever made »
Meet the Research & Trading Team
Casey the Researcher
Runs the daily technical screen against the criteria above and writes a plain-English briefing on what qualified.
Morgan the Strategist
Decides the day's trade, if any, including a required entry price, stop-loss, and profit target — a proposal missing any of the three is discarded before it's ever risk-checked.
Taylor the Narrator
Writes the plain-English explanation for a trade only after it has actually filled at the broker.
Jordan the Auditor
Independently re-checks every trade against the published mandate and re-runs the original technical screen with fresh data, before it's allowed to publish.
Budget & Shared Account

The Wheelhouse and The Swing Shift share one funded Tradier paper-trading account ($200,000 total). Each portfolio is independently budgeted at $100,000, and every trade is checked against both this portfolio's own budget and the real shared account's actual available cash — accounting for what the other portfolio has already committed — before it's placed. One portfolio's activity can never leave the other without enough real cash to operate.

Current Holdings

This portfolio hasn't opened any positions yet.

Trade Log

No published trades yet — every trade this portfolio makes will appear here with a plain-English explanation once it's reviewed and published.

At a Glance
Risk tier
Aggressive
Starting capital
$100,000
Uninvested cash
$100,000
Benchmark
SPY
Inception
Jul 17, 2026
Frequently Asked Questions

A real, rules-based strategy running live on this site — real market data, real orders placed against a funded Tradier paper-trading account. Nothing here is a backtest dressed up as a live result.

No. Every trade is placed against a Tradier paper-trading (sandbox) account — a real broker connection and real market prices, but no real money changes hands.

No. Smart Portfolios are published for education and transparency — a way to watch a rules-based strategy work in public. Nothing here is a personalized recommendation for any individual reader to buy or sell anything.

A small team of AI agents, each with one job: one screens candidates against this portfolio's published criteria, one decides the day's trade within hard, code-enforced risk limits, one writes the plain-English explanation once a trade fills, and one independently re-checks everything before it's allowed to publish.

Tradier, the broker behind this site's paper trading, doesn't support multiple sandbox accounts. Both portfolios trade through the same funded account, each with its own independent budget and its own hard cash checks — see "Budget & Shared Account" above.

Every trade goes through an automatic compliance check and an independent audit before it publishes. An order that's been placed but not yet filled or reviewed shows up separately under "Orders Awaiting Fill" — the explanation appears once it fills and clears review, not before.

Once each trading day, Monday through Friday around 1:00 PM Eastern, the portfolio's research-and-decision process runs. Most days won't produce a trade — a quiet day with nothing worth acting on is a normal, honest outcome, not a malfunction.

You can see exactly what was traded and why, but this isn't a signal service. Always do your own research and weigh your own circumstances before making any investment decision.