Checked ON: why the trail must actually obey the coefficient.

The stakes of a checkbox

Unchecked, the volatility architecture becomes decoration.

The session that settled this question put it plainly: the entire volatility architecture — Distance Matrix, Intelligence Panel, authority timeframe logic, coefficient spectrum — was built to determine how many ATR units of breathing room the runner should receive. If the execution tool's trail doesn't take its distance from that coefficient, then the selection ritual still happens, the audit log still fills, and none of it touches the market: you're no longer running the MARS volatility model, just whatever internal trailing logic the tool defaults to. The failure is particularly insidious because nothing visibly breaks — trades still trail, stops still move — and only the coefficient-versus-outcome review would eventually reveal that the coefficient never had a vote.

What ON means mechanically

Distance = ATR × coefficient, breathing with the market.

Checked on, the trail distance is the literal product: ATR(14) at 10 pips with a 1.5 coefficient trails at 15 pips, and — the property the whole design depends on — the distance re-prices as volatility moves. When the cockpit reads low volatility and issues 1.0, the trail hugs; when expansion earns 2.0, it widens; and the adjustment happens in the one place it must, the live order. This is the doctrine's own sentence made operational: coefficient selection based on relative volatility context only works if the coefficient is actually controlling the trail distance. The checkbox is where 'based on' becomes 'controlling.'

The ambiguity problem

Unchecked isn't a known alternative — it's an unread contract.

The analysis that settled the doctrine didn't just prefer ON; it distrusted OFF on principle, because trailing tools implement the unchecked state in incompatible ways. In one common mode, ATR becomes merely a trigger signal while the distance stays fixed; in another, the entered number silently changes meaning from an ATR multiple to a raw point value — 1.5 becoming 15 points regardless of volatility. Without reading the specific tool's manual, the unchecked behavior is a guess, and the verdict was accordingly blunt: I would not trust it. That's a general MARS lesson wearing a checkbox: any execution setting whose behavior you can't state precisely is a setting you haven't actually configured — you've delegated it to an implementation you haven't read.

• The doctrine generalizes: every execution-tool setting on the trail path gets verified against documented behavior, not assumed.
• A fixed-distance trail in expanded volatility is executed by noise; the same distance in compression is a giveback machine. Unchecked risks both.
• If a tool can't be configured to honor ATR × coefficient, it can't run MARS trail management — the model isn't optional trim.

Verification, not faith

The checkbox gets confirmed the way everything else does — by evidence.

Set once and trusted forever is not the standard; the connection between cockpit and order gets verified in the record. The mechanism already exists: the audit log stores the selected coefficient, the trade record stores the ATR state and stop distances, and MAE/MFE in pips reconstruct what the trail actually tolerated. A configured 1.5 coefficient whose trades show trail behavior consistent with a fixed 12-point distance is a broken connection announcing itself in the data — the same coefficient-versus-outcome review that calibrates the ladder doubles as an integrity check on the execution path. The volatility model earns trust the MARS way: not because the checkbox looks right, but because the recorded behavior matches the selected intent.

The key idea

The last link carries the whole chain.

The volatility layer is a long, careful chain — regime, tier, baseline, authority, comparison, decision — and every link of it is upstream of one humble execution setting. Checked ON is what makes the chain load-bearing: the analysis controls the order, the order generates honest evidence, the evidence recalibrates the analysis. Unchecked, the same chain hangs from nothing, and the system runs a volatility model in its documentation only. Small checkbox; entire subsystem.