Zen Strategies runs two books. The Anabasis is a discretionary global macro strategy trading futures and options across commodities, equity indices, single names and volatility. Mimetic Rivalry is a long-only equity portfolio held since November 2020. Every position is marked to the close each session, and every trade in both books — open or closed — is on this page.
Open positions
The Anabasis
The Anabasis is a discretionary global macro strategy. It trades futures and options across commodities, equity indices, single names and volatility. Funded with $5,000 in April 2025, the book has , and every one of them, with the positions open now, is in the table below. Named for the march up-country.
Active positions
| Position | Type | Side | Contract | Size | Entry | Mark | P&L % | Held |
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Account value
Realized performanceEvery position closed in this book
Closed trades
| ClosedOpened | Symbol | Trade | Held | P&L $ | P&L % |
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The Anabasis — monthly returnsMonth by month
Framework note
In 401 BC Xenophon's Ten Thousand marched inland under contract to a claimant for the Persian throne, who was killed in the first battle they fought for him. Their generals were seized under truce and executed weeks later. Leaderless, unpaid, a thousand miles inside a hostile empire with no road home and no cause left to serve, the army elected new commanders from its own ranks and walked out through mountains nobody had mapped — arriving not by the plan, which had died with Cyrus, but by discipline and the willingness to invent a way as it went. Badiou takes this as the figure of a century stripped of its old certainties and left to orient itself without them, and defines the anabasis as the free invention of a wandering that will have been a return.
The modern world has not returned those certainties, and what Badiou reads as the condition of a century arrives, for whoever is actually allocating, one decision at a time. Capital leaves safe harbour for terrain where nothing is given in advance, and the thesis that justified the expedition is the first thing the market takes. What survives its loss is the discipline of the person carrying it — what is risked, how it is sized, and the freedom to alter the path without altering the destination. The Ten Thousand sighted the sea the following winter, from a mountain in Armenia; the shout that went down the column was thálatta, thálatta. It did not carry them home. It ended the wandering and gave them a horizon.
Rolling positions
Because a futures position held as the front month lives in a contract that expires every month, the account rolls it — the expiring month is bought back, the next one sold — and shows one position whose cost basis quietly absorbs each roll. This record absorbs nothing. On the session a held contract stops being the front month, that contract is closed into the ledger at the day’s settlement and the next month is opened at the same day’s settlement: two public prices, one date, a closed row for every roll. The position is continuous; the contract is not. The difference between the price the expiring month is closed at and the price the next month is opened at is what the roll costs — or, when the curve is in contango, what it pays — and it is counted from the rows rather than typed: — to date on —, a position first opened —, —.
Fees and the ledger
Each closed trade is recorded at its gross fill prices. Commissions and exchange fees are not itemised anywhere in the ledger, so realized P&L summed from the trades runs ahead of the account value by the fees paid to date. Counted from the record at published retail rates — — option contract-sides at $0.65, — futures sides at $2.25 plus exchange and NFA fees, nothing on the equities — that is about — to date. Where the two disagree, the account value is the one after costs; the ledger is the record of what was traded, not of what was kept.
Mimetic Rivalry
Mimetic Rivalry is a long-only equity portfolio, run across a Roth IRA opened in November 2020 and a taxable account added in July 2023 and reported as one book. Positions across sectors; the oldest has not been touched since November 2020, and the turnover is five closed positions in almost six years.
Active positions
Current bookEquity book
| Ticker | Company | Side | Theme | Weight | Entry | Mark | Unrealized | Held |
|---|
Gains and losses carry an explicit sign and arrow — colour is never the only cue.
Sector exposure
% of netAccount value
Realized performanceEvery position closed in this book
Closed trades
| ClosedOpened | Symbol | Trade | Held | P&L $ | P&L % |
|---|
Mimetic Rivalry — monthly returnsMonth by month
Framework note
No desire is one's own. René Girard attributes this to a triangular structure: a subject desires an object because a model desired it first, and imitates that desire before any reason for it exists — desire according to another. Mimetic rivalry then arises when the object cannot be shared. The model becomes a rival, each competitor becomes the obstacle to what the other imitates, and the value of the object is determined by the contest for it rather than by anything the object is.
Applied to markets, a crowded narrative makes an asset expensive and fragile at the same moment: its price is determined by the contest for it, and a contest can end overnight. This book does not try to trade the unwind. It tries to own the position early enough that the convergence, when it arrives, is something it is on the receiving end of. A published record is itself a model in Girard's sense; the name concedes as much.
P&L Ledger
Every trade in both books, closed and open. Each row carries its dates, size, entry, exit and realized P&L; open positions are marked to the close and sit in the same table, so nothing is left out for being unfinished. Multi-leg structures show the net of their legs and open to the individual contracts.
Account value — both books
Trade historyEvery closed and open position
Ledger
| ClosedOpened | Symbol | Trade | Held | Book | P&L $ | P&L % |
|---|
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DISCLAIMER — All performance figures, positions, and trade records shown on this site are for research presentation purposes only. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Nothing here is an offering, a solicitation, or investment advice. Zen Strategies does not manage external capital under this presentation.
Trade Research
One thesis per trade, as it was written before the position was put on, beside a post-trade review of what the record then shows — departures included. Fills, dates and P&L are the ledger's; the thesis is the desk's own words on the day.
Daily Technical Analysis
NVDA, every trading day: the levels are fixed from the completed bar after the close, and the read is written before the open from where the stock is trading pre-market — the only order that makes a level worth anything. Levels come out of the daily bars by one method, the same way each day. On days the Daily NVIDIA Report is published, its read and levels lead, and the method is checked against it.
The full report
Chart & levelsDaily and weekly charts, and the rated levels
NVDA — Daily
Last close
Tradable levels
Session ladderRated levels only, high to low — multi-week, weekly, session and intra-day containment. Minors stay on the sheet.
Session recording
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Marked charts
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| Session | Bias | Open | Close | Range | Level hit | Media |
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