What the models say, with the working shown.

The strategy wins only 28.6% of trades and lives on the 3-to-1 target — long quiet stretches and sudden jumps are its normal shape, in the backtest and (so far) in the live paper record. The challenge-mode run of the same window passed both phases in ~327 days (Phase 1 at 312 days) and never failed; restarting the challenge fresh each month gave 15 passes, 0 failures and 9 still open out of 24. Two ways to measure the low point — and they disagree. Lowest closed balance: $184,119.11 (Jan 7, 2025) — $119 above Hola's $184,000 floor. Lowest live equity (the open trade marked at its worst hourly price — the basis a firm actually judges its floor on): $183,422.96 on Jan 9, 2025 — below the floor. On that basis the account would have failed that morning, during a trade that recovered and won the next day. The max drawdown (closed balance, peak to trough) was −9.80%; the dip measured from the $200,000 start was −7.94%. Hola alone, in the corrected firm-rules model on this same window: bought Nov 15, 2024, Phase 1 passed Sep 23, 2025, fully passed Oct 8, 2025, funded Oct 9, 2025 — 12 payouts, $25,097.09 to the owner, ending balance $204,546.08, and it never died. Those figures were modelled at the old 0.5% size and the earlier 75% withdrawal rule; the adopted 0.3–0.4% size and the skim-above-~$210,000 rule (below) are being priced.

Standing caveats: the news blackout (live rule) was not applied in this backtest. Prices are gold futures (GC); broker spot XAU/USD levels differ by roughly $10–40.

What Jay's run found:

• The 4% daily-loss cap was never broken in 5 years — the daily rule is not the problem.
• The binding constraint is Hola's 8% overall floor — $184,000, static.
• In 2022 and 2023, every challenge started on the 1st of a month failed Phase 1 — and an account traded continuously through those years broke the $184K floor.
• Losing streaks run 13–23 trades.
• The largest peak-to-trough drop over 5 years was ~33–38%.
• The strategy made its money in the 2024–25 gold trend and bled in the 2022–23 chop.

The conclusion, in plain words: "On this evidence, B2 at 0.5% risk would likely lose a Hola Prime account at some point — the January decision is now about risk size and floor choice, not just start date."

• Risk 0.3–0.4% per trade instead of 0.5% — smaller positions, so the same losing streak costs roughly a third less against the floor.
• Withdraw only profit above ~$210,000 instead of the 75% ratchet — the first ~$10,000 of profit stays in the account as extra cushion above the floor.
• Wait at least 10 minutes before re-entering in the same direction — under Hola's funded rules, trades opened within 10 minutes in the same direction count as one trade, with combined risk capped at 2%.

Jay's result: with these changes, no funded account broke the rules in either version of his 5-year test (original or fixed). Challenge passing remains regime-dependent — safer settings protect the funded account; they do not make a 2022–23-style chop passable. Adopted Oct 31, 2026: if the challenge is bought, it is traded on these parameters. What remains for the Jan 2, 2027 decision point is go / no-go on the purchase itself.

Later stacks earn less for one boring reason: they start later, so they catch less of the strong stretch and spend more of the window inside challenges. In the corrected run that effect is stark: owners 2 and 3 banked $0.00 inside the window — their accounts were still in challenge, or funded too late to release a payout, when it closed. Stack 1's numbers never change when owners are added — it builds first in every version.

The comparison behind the rule is superseded. The four-way comparison (25% / 50% / 75% / 100%) that informed the choice was run on the flawed, pre-correction backtest, and it has not been re-run on the corrected stream — so its dollar table is withdrawn rather than left standing with inflated numbers. The corrected Hola-only model above was run under this 75% rule — 12 payouts, $25,097.09 of owner cash over the window — so those figures carry this rule as part of their basis. The rule itself no longer stands: it was superseded on Oct 31, 2026 by the adopted skim-above-~$210,000 withdrawal rule. If the comparison is ever re-run on the corrected figures, this section will show the new table.