Position Ladder

Position Ladder — Staged Entry & Cost-Basis Management

⚠️ Data Verification — Do This Before Any Analysis

Before running any analysis, always retrieve the latest market data for the ticker:

1. Fetch current price — use web search or ask the user for the live price, 52-week range, and market cap. Never assume a price from training data.
2. Confirm key figures — recent earnings, revenue, key ratios (P/E, P/S, etc.) as applicable to this skill.
3. State your data source — fill in the Data & Sources header (next section) so the origin, as-of date, retrieval path, and confidence of every figure are explicit at the top of the output.
4. Flag stale data explicitly — if live data is unavailable, display this warning before proceeding:

⚠️ Live data unavailable. The following analysis uses training-data estimates which may be significantly out of date. Verify all prices and metrics before making any decisions.

Never silently substitute training-data estimates for current prices. When in doubt, ask the user to paste the latest quote.

📋 Data & Sources Header — Open Every Output With It

The first thing in the output is this provenance block, filled in — never left as placeholders. It is the standard documented on the Data & Accuracy page and the first thing result-validator looks for:

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Data & Sources
  As of:      <date the figures represent, e.g. 2026-06-30>
  Source:     <primary docs — SEC EDGAR 10-K/10-Q, company IR, FRED, exchange data …>
  Retrieval:  <pasted by user | web/tool retrieval | model memory>
  Confidence: <HIGH | MEDIUM | LOW>

• Retrieval: model memory must be paired with Confidence: LOW — memory is a placeholder until confirmed against a primary source.
• Mixed sources: list each with its own as-of date rather than blending them.
• Sources disagree on the same figure (a closing price, a deal term): prefer the primary source (SEC filing, company release, exchange data) over an aggregator, then the most recent dated one. Show both values with their sources and dates, say which you used and why, and never average them.
• Data the user pasted is reported as pasted by user; do not upgrade its confidence beyond what the user's own source supports.

⚠️ Read This First — This Is Scenario Modeling, Not a Recommendation

This framework is more prescriptive than the rest of the InvestSkill catalog: it outputs specific price levels and share counts. Every number it produces is a conditional plan under stated assumptions, not an instruction to trade.

Three honest claims must appear in every output:

1. Lowering average cost is not the same as making money. Average cost is an accounting anchor and a psychological one — it is not a return metric. Trimming a high-cost lot mechanically lowers the number without creating a dollar of wealth. Always report total return and realized P&L alongside average cost, and show the buy-and-hold comparison.
2. This is volatility harvesting. The strategy monetizes oscillation around a level. It outperforms in a range-bound / mean-reverting tape and underperforms in a strong trend — in either direction. A stock that only goes up leaves the ladder underfilled; a stock that only goes down fills it and keeps falling.
3. Position control is the actual edge. The hard ceiling on share count — "stop adding at N shares, no matter what" — is what converts averaging down from an unbounded liability into a bounded, pre-sized bet. Without the cap, this is not a strategy; it is a mechanism for concentrating capital into losers.

State all three, then produce the plan. Never present the ladder as a way to guarantee a recovery.

Overview

Answer the question the rest of the catalog does not: "I own this — now what is my execution plan?"

The other frameworks decide what to own (stock-eval, fundamental-analysis), what it is worth (stock-valuation, dcf-valuation), and when to enter (technical-analysis). None of them manages a position across its life. This one does. It takes a holding — or a planned holding — and produces:

• A share-count band: a floor (core position you always keep) and a ceiling (the hard cap on adding).
• An entry ladder: pre-committed rungs between today's price and the bottom of the build zone, with the size of each.
• A trim/re-add cycle: sell the highest-cost lots when price trades above blended average cost, buy them back below it, oscillating inside the band.
• The accounting truth: capital at full deployment, blended average cost at each stage, realized vs. unrealized P&L, wash-sale exposure, and the total-return comparison against simply holding.
• A thesis-break gate: the conditions under which the correct action is to stop laddering and exit.

This is distinct from portfolio-review, which operates across holdings (allocation, drift, concentration, tax-loss harvesting). This one operates inside a single holding. Use portfolio-review to decide how big the position may be; use this skill to decide how to get there and how to manage it once there.

1. Inputs

Collect these before modeling. Ask for anything missing rather than assuming — the plan is only as good as the position cap.

2. Phase 1 — Position Control (控倉): Set the Bounds First

The bounds are set before the first share is bought, and they are the part of the plan that does not move.

Derive the ceiling — take the most restrictive of:

• Concentration cap: single-position weight ≤ 10% of portfolio for a large-cap, ≤ 5% for a high-beta or single-product name (align with portfolio-review's flags).
• Capital cap: total dollars you will commit if every rung fills. Compute this explicitly — the most common failure is discovering the full ladder costs more cash than exists.
• Loss-tolerance cap: ceiling shares × (bottom rung − plausible bear-case price). If the position filled completely and then fell to the bear-case target, is the dollar loss survivable? If not, the ceiling is too high.

Derive the floor — the share count you would still want if the stock did nothing for two years. Typically 50–70% of ceiling. The floor exists so the trim leg can never sell you out of a name you want to own.

The cap rule (state it verbatim in the output):

At the ceiling, adding stops. Further weakness is not a reason to add beyond the cap — it is a reason to re-run the thesis gate in Phase 6. Raising the ceiling mid-drawdown is the single most common way this plan fails.

3. Phase 2 — Build the Entry Ladder

Rung spacing

Rungs spaced tighter than ~0.5 × ATR will all fill on a single day's noise, which defeats the purpose. Rungs wider than ~2 × ATR rarely fill at all.

Rung sizing

Required ladder math

Always compute and show:

• Blended average cost at full fill — Σ(rung price × rung shares) ÷ total shares.
• Total capital at full fill — the cash the plan demands in the worst case.
• Drawdown to full fill — (bottom rung ÷ current price) − 1. This is the decline the plan expects to sit through, stated up front.
• Unrealized loss at full fill if price stops at the bottom rung — ceiling shares × (bottom rung − blended average). The number the user must be able to hold without abandoning the plan.
• Dry powder remaining — capital not committed to this ladder, so the user sees the opportunity cost.

The underfill problem (and its fix)

A ladder on a name in a durable uptrend never fills. The position ends at 10–20% of target and the analysis was wasted — a real cost, not a hypothetical one. Two mitigations, both stated as explicit choices:

• Starter tranche: deploy 30–40% of the target position at market immediately, ladder the remaining 60–70%. Guarantees meaningful exposure; costs you the better average if the dip arrives.
• Time-based backstop: if the ladder is still under X% filled after the stated time budget and price is above the top rung, either re-anchor the ladder upward to current price or accept the smaller position. Decide which in advance — this is exactly the decision emotion makes badly in the moment.

4. Phase 3 — The Trim / Re-Add Cycle

Once the position is built, it oscillates inside the band.

Trim leg — when price trades above blended average cost:

• Sell the highest-cost lots first, one lot per pre-set level, working down toward the floor.
• Never sell below the floor share count.
• Each trim level should sit at or above the cost basis of the lot being sold, so the trim is not a forced loss.
• Recompute blended average cost after each trim and show it.

Re-add leg — when price trades below the new blended average cost:

• Buy back toward the ceiling using the same rung discipline.
• Re-add levels are set fresh from the current average cost, not the original ladder.
• At the ceiling, stop. Again.

Cycle table — the primary deliverable of this phase:

Show at least one full cycle: build → trim to floor → re-add to ceiling. The end state of a completed cycle in a range-bound tape is the same share count at a lower average cost — that, and only that, is where the strategy's edge comes from.

5. Phase 4 — Lot Accounting, Taxes & Wash Sales

This is the phase most retail versions of this strategy omit, and it is where real money leaks. Treat it as mandatory for any taxable US account.

Lot selection matters

"Sell the highest-cost lot" is a specific-identification instruction. Under a broker's default FIFO, the oldest lot is sold instead — which may be the lowest-cost lot, producing the opposite tax outcome and a different average cost than the plan modeled. Flag this explicitly:

⚠️ This plan assumes specific-lot identification. Confirm your broker is not defaulting to FIFO, and select lots at the time of sale. FIFO will produce different realized P&L and a different post-trim average cost than modeled here.

Wash sales — the structural conflict in this strategy

The trim leg can realize a loss (selling a high-cost lot below its cost). The re-add leg then buys the same security back at a lower price. If the repurchase happens within 30 days before or after the loss sale, the loss is disallowed under the US wash-sale rule and is instead added to the basis of the replacement shares.

The trim/re-add cycle is, by construction, a wash-sale generator. Handle it:

• Flag every trim that realizes a loss, and state the 30-day window in which a re-add would trigger a wash sale.
• Note the practical consequence: the loss is deferred, not destroyed — basis moves to the new shares and the holding period carries over. Cash-flow timing suffers; the economics mostly do not.
• Options: wait out the 31 days (risking the re-entry level), accept the deferral, or size the trim so it realizes a gain rather than a loss.
• Wash-sale rules also reach across accounts, including a repurchase in an IRA — where the loss is permanently lost, not deferred. Warn on this specifically.

Holding period and account type

Every trim resets the holding-period clock on any re-added shares. A strategy that cycles quarterly will hold mostly short-term lots — a real, quantifiable cost in a taxable account that a naive average-cost calculation hides entirely.

6. Phase 5 — Reality Check: Total Return vs. Average Cost

Mandatory section. Produce this table for the completed plan under three price paths:

Run it for: (a) price recovers to the original entry, (b) price rallies well above the top rung, (c) price stays below the bottom rung.

The expected pattern — state it plainly:

• Round trip (price returns to where it started): the cycler wins. Same shares, lower basis, positive return where buy-and-hold is flat.
• Strong rally: the cycler loses, because the trim leg sold shares that then kept appreciating. Lower average cost, fewer shares, less money. Quantify the gap in dollars — do not describe it qualitatively.
• Continued decline: both lose; the cycler loses more than a partial position but less than an uncapped averaging-down plan. The ceiling is what bounds the damage.

Also report opportunity cost: the capital parked waiting for lower rungs earned nothing (or T-bill yield) while committed to this plan.

7. Phase 6 — The Thesis-Break Gate

A ladder is only legitimate on a name still worth owning. Without this gate, disciplined averaging down is a machine for concentrating capital into deteriorating businesses.

Hard stop — abandon the ladder and consider exiting, do not add — if any of these fire:

• The original investment thesis has been falsified, not merely delayed: structural margin compression, permanent demand loss, a broken product cycle, or the moat breached.
• Accounting or governance red flags surface (run bear-case; a restatement, auditor change, or aggressive revenue recognition ends the ladder).
• Leverage deterioration: covenant risk, a distressed refinancing, or dilutive emergency financing.
• The decline is fundamental, not technical — consensus estimates are being cut as fast as the price is falling, so the stock is not getting cheaper.
• The position has already breached the portfolio concentration cap.

Do-not-ladder list — asset types where this framework should refuse to produce a plan and say why:

• Leveraged and inverse ETFs — daily rebalancing makes them path-dependent with structural decay; averaging down compounds the decay.
• Binary-event names — single-drug biotechs, litigation-outcome stocks, pending all-cash acquisitions. There is no mean to revert to; the distribution is bimodal.
• Anything where the bear case is solvency, not valuation.

Regime fit check — the strategy needs oscillation:

Ladder Suitability Score (0–10) — the skill's headline number:

8. Scenario Presets

Match the preset to the situation, state which was applied, and show the parameters used.

9. Worked Example

Position: 20 shares bought at $128. Price now $122. Target band: floor 60 shares, ceiling 100. Equal shares, $3 rungs, taxable account, specific-lot ID.

Ladder

Full fill: 100 shares, $12,200 capital, blended average $122.00. Drawdown to full fill is −4.9% from today's $122 (116 ÷ 122 − 1) — that is the further decline the plan is signing up to sit through, and $4,700 of the $12,200 (rungs 4–5) is still uncommitted. Equal-dollar sizing of the same $12,200 would instead yield ~100.1 shares at $121.85 — mechanically lower, always.

Trim to floor — price recovers: sell the $128 lot at $125, then the $125 lot at $128.

• Cash back: (20 × $125) + (20 × $128) = $5,060
• Realized: −$60 on the first lot, +$60 on the second = $0 net
• Remaining: 60 shares at $122 / $119 / $116 → average $119.00
• ⚠️ The $125 sale realized a $60 loss. Any repurchase within 30 days is a wash sale — the loss is disallowed and added to the replacement shares' basis.

Re-add to ceiling — price falls back; buy 20 at $117 and 20 at $115.

• 100 shares, total cash out $11,780, average $117.80 (down from $122.00)

Reality check at three prices

The middle row is the honest cost of the strategy: the lower average cost was purchased with forgone upside. The first row is the edge. Which row you get is decided by the tape, not by the discipline.

10. Input Formats

Format 1: Manage an existing position

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User: /position-ladder AVGO — I hold 20 shares at $128, now $122. Target 60–100 shares.

Claude builds the ladder, the trim/re-add cycle, and the total-return comparison.

Format 2: Plan a new position from scratch

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User: /position-ladder MSFT — new position, max 5% of a $200k portfolio, ETF-style autopilot.

Claude derives the ceiling from the concentration cap and lays out the rungs.

Format 3: Pasted holdings, multiple positions

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User: /position-ladder — here are my holdings: [paste]. Which of these should I be laddering?

Claude scores each position's Ladder Suitability and produces a plan only for those that pass the gate.

11. Output Format

1. Assumptions Stated — every input used, every default applied, and what was assumed because it was not supplied. First section, always.
2. Position Snapshot — current shares, average cost, market price, unrealized P&L, weight in portfolio.
3. Position Bounds — floor, ceiling, and which of the three caps was binding.
4. Entry Ladder Table — rungs, sizes, capital at full fill, blended average, drawdown to full fill.
5. Trim / Re-Add Cycle Table — one complete cycle with running average cost and realized P&L.
6. Lot Accounting & Tax Notes — lot method assumed, wash-sale flags with dates, holding-period effects.
7. Reality Check — total return vs. buy-and-hold across all three price paths, in dollars.
8. Thesis-Break Gate — the gate checklist, regime table, and the conditions that end the plan.
9. Ladder Suitability Score — 0–10 with the component breakdown.
10. Investment Signal Block.

Round share counts to whole shares (or state that fractional shares are assumed) and round rung prices to levels that can actually be entered as resting orders.

Notes

• Complements, does not replace: run stock-eval or fundamental-analysis first to establish the thesis, technical-analysis for the support levels that make the best rungs, bear-case for the gate in Phase 6, and portfolio-review for the concentration cap that sets the ceiling.
• The strategy is regime-dependent, and the regime is not knowable in advance. Present it as a bounded, rules-based way to build a position — not as an edge that works everywhere.
• Do not raise the ceiling mid-drawdown. If the analysis concludes the position should be bigger, that is a new decision requiring a fresh thesis, not a ladder adjustment.
• Fractional-share brokers change the math — equal-dollar sizing becomes exact. Say which assumption is in force.
• Tax treatment is modeled at a high level for US taxable accounts only. It is not tax advice; recommend a tax professional for anything material.

Signal Output

This skill measures execution suitability, not price direction — so state the mapping explicitly. The Ladder Suitability Score drives the block: a high score means staged accumulation inside the band is appropriate and the plan should be executed as modeled; a low score means the thesis, regime, or concentration test failed and the correct action is to stop adding. Action: BUY here means "continue laddering within the stated cap" — never "buy without limit." Action: SELL means the gate failed, not that a short is warranted. Read the direction of the underlying stock from stock-eval or bear-case, not from this block.

All analysis concludes with this standardized block:

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## Thesis Invalidation

After delivering the analysis signal, specify what would reverse it:

**If signal is BULLISH — thesis breaks if:**
- Price closes below the bottom rung on above-average volume with fundamental deterioration
- Consensus estimates are cut faster than the price falls (the stock is not getting cheaper)
- The position reaches its ceiling and the thesis gate no longer passes

**If signal is BEARISH — thesis breaks if:**
- The falsified thesis element is restored: margins re-expand, demand returns, guidance is raised
- The regime turns range-bound again (ADX falls below 25) with fundamentals stabilized
- Valuation resets low enough that a fresh-money buyer would want the full position today

**Re-run this analysis when:**
- [ ] Next earnings release
- [ ] Price moves ±15% from current level
- [ ] Any rung fills or any trim executes
- [ ] 60 days have elapsed
- [ ] Material news event (acquisition, leadership change, regulatory decision)

╔══════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║              INVESTMENT SIGNAL               ║
╠══════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║ Signal:      BULLISH / NEUTRAL / BEARISH     ║
║ Confidence:  HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW             ║
║ Horizon:     SHORT / MEDIUM / LONG-TERM      ║
║ Score:       X.X / 10                        ║
╠══════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║ Action:      BUY / HOLD / SELL               ║
║ Conviction:  STRONG / MODERATE / WEAK        ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════╝

Score Guide: 8.0–10.0 Strongly Bullish | 6.0–7.9 Moderately Bullish | 4.0–5.9 Neutral | 2.0–3.9 Moderately Bearish | 0.0–1.9 Strongly Bearish Confidence: HIGH (strong data, clear signals) | MEDIUM (mixed signals) | LOW (limited data, conflicting signals) Horizon: SHORT-TERM (1 week–3 months) | MEDIUM-TERM (3 months–1 year) | LONG-TERM (1+ years)

Note: The Score above is the Ladder Suitability Score, mapped onto the standard scale for cross-skill comparability. It rates how appropriate staged accumulation is right now — not how attractive the stock is. Pair it with /stock-eval for the directional view.

Disclaimer: Educational analysis only. Not financial advice. All price levels and share counts are scenario models under stated assumptions, not trade instructions.