Branch Logic — Overflow
Supplemental flow — never hidden recovery trading.
Read this first
Worked example
The three-layer module ecosystem: evidence flows up from the core, authority flows down the deployment rail, context validates from above.
Doctrine
01Participation, not permission.
Overflow is capped at 10% of the default blend and is primarily a static-exit branch. It exists to catch extra flow in strong conditions — not to give a losing week extra at-bats. The moment Overflow becomes a vehicle for making back losses, it has become the thing MARS was built to prevent.
- Red flags from the MAE/MFE Lab: high fee drag, swap exposure, or large negative R inside Overflow.
- Overflow quota compliance is tracked weekly — drift is visible, not silent.
- “Overflow should not become hidden recovery trading” — verbatim doctrine from the lab manual.
The audit
02How Overflow gets policed.
Overflow is reviewed with a prosecutor's eye: trade count against quota, fee and swap drag per trade, R distribution, and — most importantly — timing. Overflow entries clustering after losing days is the signature of hidden recovery trading, and MARS is built to make that visible.
- Weekly Summary tracks Overflow count and contribution separately, so drift can't hide inside the blend.
- Static-exit doctrine keeps Overflow short-duration; extended holds trigger a duration-mismatch review.
- A structurally healthy Overflow week is boring: small count, small positive R, negligible friction.
The tell
03Overflow volume spikes are a behavioral alarm.
Because Overflow exists for supplemental, opportunistic flow, its trade count is one of the cleanest behavioral tells in MARS: a quiet uptick after a losing stretch is the classic signature of recovery trading sneaking in under a legitimate label. The quota system watches Overflow specifically for this pattern and flags the week before the habit compounds.
How MARS uses this
Every decision in MARS is routed through this hierarchy in order. The plan defines doctrine; gate state defines capital posture; the throttle converts posture into deployment numbers; evidence and diagnostics inform from below; R&D stays sandboxed at the bottom until validated. When layers disagree, the higher layer wins - always.
How it benefits you
The system stays coherent under pressure. A confident setup cannot bypass a damaged gate, a green daily EV cannot outrank drawdown authority, and experiments cannot contaminate live rules. That one constraint eliminates the failure mode that kills most complex trading systems: everything modifying everything.
The MARS authority stack. Authority flows down; evidence flows up; nothing lower may override anything above it.
Connected inside MARS
This module doesn't work alone.
Go deeper
Operator briefs on this territory.
Deep dive — 01
The stability branch: why the smallest allocation is not the least governed.
Supplemental flow in strong conditions. Ten percent, static exits, and the tightest behavioral scrutiny in the stack.
Read the full brief →
Deep dive — 02
Certainty at 1R: the only branch whose ladder deliberately stops early.
P(0.75R), then P(1R│0.75R). Two checkpoints, and the second one is the exit.
Read the full brief →
Deep dive — 03
Hidden recovery trading: the failure Overflow was designed to make visible.
Overflow entries clustering after losing days is the signature. The quota system watches for it by name.
Read the full brief →
Every module ships in the complete MARS package.
One price. Eleven workbooks, three TradingView indicators, and the full manual library — $497.