How to read a Swing Deck card in 5 minutes

Every card on Swing Deck is the same shape. Once you've read one, you've read them all. Here's the 5-minute version — what to look at, in what order, and what each chip is actually telling you.

What you'll know by the end of this

• The five things to read on every card, top to bottom
• The five different ways a card can land in ARMED state (and why they're not interchangeable)
• What to do when two chips disagree
• Which chips to trust when

The five-thing read

Every audit row produces five state badges that together answer "is this tradeable right now?" Read them top to bottom. Each is independent. A green ARMED at the bottom with a yellow bias at the top is the card saying yes and no at the same time — and yes-and-no resolves to no in this framework.

That's the ideal: all five green. Now let's break down each chip's vocabulary so you can read any state.

Chip 1: Score & Grade

Composite 0–100 with letter grade. The framework's overall conviction in the row.

Pro tip: watch the trend, not just the absolute number. A score going from 82 to 78 while the price goes up is the framework telling you the move's quality is decaying. A score from 70 to 78 over three days is the framework warming up to it. The DIRECTION matters as much as the value.

Chip 2: Bias — what the framework wants you to do

The bias chip is six states. It tells you what action the framework would take with this row, if it had your portfolio.

A bias flip from HOLD to DE-RISK 50% mid-session is a regime-warning state. The framework saw something change between cycles that materially affected the trade quality. Re-read the flags row — something there is new.

Chip 3: Structure

Three primary states plus one overlay. The market's price-action shape.

Structure has to agree with setup type. A "breakout" setup on Ranging structure is contradictory — the framework's hysteresis usually prevents that mismatch, but if you see it, the row is in transition.

Chip 4: Setup type

Eight kinds, ordered roughly by tradeability. The "if it's actionable, what KIND?" answer.

Chip 5: Entry trigger — five paths to ARMED

The chip everyone wants to see green. There are five different ways a card can land in an actionable trigger state. They are NOT interchangeable.

Decoding "WAIT — 4/5"

Each missing criterion is a different reason to wait. Read it specifically — the named lever is what has to change before the trade becomes tradeable.

When two voices disagree — ARMED + AUDIT GATE REFUSES

This is the most important pattern to learn. The trigger chip can be GREEN while a RED banner says the audit gate refuses. Below is the canonical example — the actual modal from DXCM on 2026-05-20.

What this means: the entry mechanics fired, but the composite gate doesn't approve. Score might be below 80. R:R might be below 2.0. Weekly might not be aligned. A trap flag might have fired.

The trigger is necessary, not sufficient. If the audit gate screams "below the floor," the trade isn't authorized regardless of how green the trigger chip looks.

The R:R chip — three states

The R:R chip shows the displayed ratio from current entry / SL / TP1 levels. Color-coded by how it relates to the 2.0 structural floor.

Sometimes you'll see a separate R:R RELEASE chip when chip math says one thing but the gate sees another — usually because the canonical reader uses different anchors. When this chip is present, the framework is being transparent: two valid R:R readings exist, they disagree.

Trust the gate read for the entry decision. Trust the chip read for sizing math. Don't tighten the stop just to make the chip math read 2:1 — that's the gate-bypass anti-pattern. The stop usually breaks at the first normal pullback.

Trap flags — the veto layer

On top of everything else, the framework can fire a trap flag that vetoes the whole row. A score-90 row with a chase-the-top flag is a no-go regardless of how good the other chips look.

Trap flags trump the score. Match this against your own willpower honestly: if you'd be tempted to override the trap, you've already lost the discipline argument. The first override is the most expensive trade you'll ever make.

The bottom row — the 11-point audit grid

At the very bottom of every card there's a 10-cell grid showing the sub-scores that roll up into the composite. The label says 11-POINT AUDIT (10 sub-scores + 1 composite); the composite is the headline score at the top of the card and the 10 cells below are how it got there.

Each cell is a 0–10 sub-score. The 10 categories are the framework's "areas of investigation" — trend confirmation, momentum, vix context, volume nodes, whale flow, manipulation traps, execution guard, position sizing, macro correlation, and hidden tape. Scan for amber and red. A single 5 on Vol or 4 on Manip is the framework telling you exactly which part of the setup is the weak link — the composite hides that detail; the sub-scores show it.

Where the 13 risk pillars (E1–E13) come in: those are the framework's backend gate layer — exposure caps (Armor Cap 15%, Sector Cap 40%, Hard-Cash Floor 10%, etc.), regime-conditional caps (war exposure, oil shock), and gating rules (Earnings Proximity, Pre-Market Firewall). They don't render as a chip row on every card; they show up as trap flags when triggered (⚠ R:R < 2:1 = E4 + the R:R floor; ⚠ Weekly unconfirmed = E7) and as cap-status notes in the position sizer ("CAPPED at 15%"). The sub-score grid is what's on the card; the pillars are what veto the trade behind the scenes.

The sizer — the third lens

After the card itself, the position sizer is the third lens on every ticker. It assumes you ignored the audit gate and asks "okay, but if I DID take it, what would it cost?"

The sizer prints the math conditionally — "If authorized..." When the audit gate says no, the sizer still shows you what the trade would have looked like, but with an ENTRY BLOCKED chip up top. That's intentional: you can see the trade you didn't take.

The sizer shows you the math at the structurally honest stop. The stop where your trade thesis is actually invalidated, not the stop where you wanted the math to look better. If you find yourself wanting to manipulate the stop to get the chip R:R to 2:1, the sizer is the voice asking "and what does that buy you?"

The AND-gate — how every entry gets gated

A useful mental model: every entry decision passes through a series of gates. The trigger gives you the trade idea. The score gate, the R:R gate, the weekly gate, the trap gate, the pillar gate, and the sizer cap each get a separate veto. Any one of them blocks, the whole trade blocks.

The fastest way to lose money

Find one good signal and ignore the others.

Swing Deck cards show you multiple signals on every row by design. The trigger, the gate, the bias, the structure, the trap flags, the pillars, the sizer. Each one is checking a different failure mode.

Read them all. Trust the one that says no.

The expensive trade is the one where one chip is yellow and you tell yourself "it's just one thing." It's never just one thing. The yellow chip is the framework predicting which way the trade will break when the green chips disappoint. They will disappoint. They always do.

TL;DR

1. Read the card top to bottom: score → bias → structure → setup → trigger
2. Five paths to ARMED — three are live alerts, two are watch states
3. WAIT — N/M means N criteria met; hover to see what's missing
4. ARMED + AUDIT GATE REFUSES = framework default is no-trade
5. Trap flags trump everything
6. RED pillar chip = hard veto
7. Sizer math is honest at the structural stop, not the engineered one
8. When chips disagree, trust the red

Five minutes. Read every card the same way. The discipline takes care of itself.

Adjacent reading: I almost bought DXCM today. The card stopped me. (the same framework walked through a live decision-stress-test) · The deep guide (every chip, every threshold, every edge case).