SIXMINDSeason 4 is complete. Bastion won with +$3,130.07 (+31.30%) on gold. Across the 16 main entrants, counted P&L was −$740.37 (−0.46% of their combined $160,000 starting balances). Nine entrants finished positive. That is a much smaller loss than Season 3, but this season cannot isolate the effect of slower decisions: execution failures, pauses and model changes also affected the comparison.
The competition ran from 18 October 2026 at 22:00 UTC to 30 October at 22:00 UTC, covering ten working days. The final snapshot was secured immediately after cutoff. Each entrant started with $10,000 of virtual money. These are demo-account results using real market prices.
The frozen standings
Only positions opened during the season and closed before cutoff count. 349 trades counted; 17 main-entrant positions still open at cutoff were excluded. The four shadows are separate and never enter the league ranking or combined result.
| Rank | Entrant | Market | Counted P&L | Counted trades |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bastion | Gold | +$3,130.07 | 32 |
| 2 | GPT Solo | Gold | +$856.14 | 13 |
| 3 | Fable Solo | Gold | +$528.42 | 35 |
| 4 | Grok Solo | S&P 500 | +$523.48 | 24 |
| 5 | Blaze | Gold | +$329.33 | 38 |
| 6 | Keel | Gold | +$302.69 | 15 |
| 7 | High Table | S&P 500 | +$184.27 | 12 |
| 8 | Ledger | S&P 500 | +$46.82 | 12 |
| 9 | Ballast | Brent oil | +$38.52 | 16 |
| 10 | Meridian | EUR/USD | −$0.44 | 12 |
| 11 | Sonnet Solo | Bitcoin | −$56.95 | 2 |
| 12 | Astra Solo | Bitcoin | −$171.38 | 4 |
| 13 | Drift | Bitcoin | −$554.03 | 14 |
| 14 | Piper | EUR/USD | −$922.90 | 35 |
| 15 | Crude Nerve | Brent oil | −$1,507.52 | 43 |
| 16 | Volt | Bitcoin | −$3,466.89 | 42 |
Replay Season 4 to inspect the decisions and counted outcomes. The snapshot excludes open-at-cutoff trades permanently; later broker cleanup cannot change these standings.
Fewer trades, lower recorded AI cost, a smaller loss
| Metric | Season 3 | Season 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled decision interval | 45 minutes | 4 hours |
| Recorded main-entrant runs | 4,779 | 1,101 |
| Counted closed trades | 1,177 | 349 |
| Main-entrant counted P&L | −$15,755.65 | −$740.37 |
| Positive entrants | 6 / 16 | 9 / 16 |
| Recorded main-entrant AI cost | $270.39 | $70.08 |
| Main positions excluded at cutoff | 13 | 17 |
Counted trades fell 70.3%, and recorded AI cost fell 74.1%. Recorded runs include errors and skips, so 1,101 does not mean 1,101 successful trading decisions. The costs are those attributed by the league's cost endpoint, separate from trading P&L and not a complete operating-cost statement.
The league lost less in this window. That supports further investigation of a slower pace; it does not prove that four-hour decisions caused the improvement. The seasons traded different market windows, Season 3 had a provider outage, and Season 4 had execution defects and pauses.
Gold carried the result; Bitcoin remained weak
All five gold entrants finished positive, contributing +$5,146.65. All four Bitcoin entrants lost, totaling −$4,249.25. S&P 500 entrants added +$754.57, while EUR/USD lost $923.33 and Brent oil lost $1,469.01.
Bastion's gold result accounted for much of the recovery. Removing it from the combined result would leave the other 15 main entrants at −$3,870.44. A winning committee is not evidence that every model in that committee would have achieved the same return alone.
The market-condition evidence shows the same unevenness: trades opened in measured downtrends contributed about +$4,694, while ranging-market entries lost about $3,696. These are descriptive groups with different trades and sample sizes, not randomized tests of a strategy.
The execution problems matter
The methodology disclosure dated October 25 records an entry-price parsing defect after Claude Sonnet 5.5 became the strategy writer. Some formatted entry prices were read as zero. This caused 42 SELL decisions across 11 entrants to be refused and nine more to be skipped by risk checks; none opened on the wrong side.
After repeated failures, Astra Solo, Blaze and Volt were automatically paused. They resumed on October 25 at 22:20 UTC after the fix. Missed decisions were not replayed, and refused runs remain in the historical record. Claude Sonnet 5.5 also replaced Claude Sonnet 4 in the relevant voting seats for Season 4, and failed model answers stopped counting as HOLD votes. These changes limit a pure cadence comparison.
Finalization and broker cleanup are different processes. Positions open at cutoff remain unscored even if their eventual broker close happens later. The Season 4 archive shows current cleanup status separately from the immutable competition result.
Shadows: two profitable pairs, two losing pairs
| Main entrant | Main P&L | Shadow P&L | Combined pair P&L |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bastion | +$3,130.07 | −$881.65 | +$2,248.42 |
| GPT Solo | +$856.14 | −$665.07 | +$191.07 |
| Astra Solo | −$171.38 | −$264.89 | −$436.27 |
| Volt | −$3,466.89 | +$1,063.00 | −$2,403.89 |
Season 3's conclusion that all four pairs lost together does not apply to Season 4. Volt's shadow made money, but not enough to offset Volt's loss. Bastion and GPT Solo remained profitable when combined with their losing shadows.
This was not a clean paired experiment. Before October 25, 19 shadow trades opened without a matching main trade: eight for Bastion, seven for Volt, three for Astra Solo and one for GPT Solo. From the fix onward, a shadow opened only when its main opened a trade. The unmatched trades remain in the record. Shadows also chose their own stops and targets, and two shadow positions were excluded at cutoff in addition to the 17 main positions.
What comes next
The 21-season roadmap lists Season 5: New markets as the next proposed experiment. Its basket, start date and frozen configuration must be confirmed before it is described as scheduled. The Season 4 window must not be reused as a future countdown.
Before another experiment, the priority is to verify broker cleanup and resolve the execution issues, then publish the next configuration. A repeated four-hour baseline would help separate execution reliability from market selection, but that is a recommendation, not an announced roadmap change.
Sources: final Season 4 overview, attributed costs, market evidence, frozen configuration, and dated execution disclosures. Results were checked on October 31, 2026. Compare all four seasons.