# ETF-Only Primary Evidence Contract — v0.10

Status: **CONDITIONAL PRIMARY-EVIDENCE DIRECTION; NOT YET FINAL SAMPLE FREEZE**

## Purpose

The primary paper should demonstrate Decision Diversification using data that an investor could actually have traded, without requiring weak or economically mismatched pre-inception proxies.

## Candidate primary panel

- instruments: actual ETF series used by the frozen five-sleeve ADAA design;
- pricing field: frozen adjusted prices, subject to later vendor/corporate-action audit;
- maximum required lookback: 13 monthly observations;
- first all-sleeve eligible signal month: **2008-05**;
- first effective holding month: **2008-06**;
- last complete frozen month: **2026-07**;
- incomplete August 2026 observations are excluded from headline monthly evidence.

## Why this is preferred

1. it removes the most serious current proxy problems (PCRAX for DBC and FKRCX for GLD);
2. it keeps the core paper investable and replicable;
3. it still covers major crises and multiple macro regimes;
4. it prevents proxy engineering from becoming the paper's main story;
5. it aligns with the practitioner principle that the main exhibit should be easy to understand while the audit remains rigorous underneath.

## What this contract does not claim

- It does not claim 2008-06 is ex ante the best start date.
- It does not claim the strategy would have been known in its current form in 2008.
- It does not eliminate the need for a longer-history robustness exercise if the final claims depend materially on sample length.
- It does not authorize headline performance analysis before G2 target-weight equivalence passes.

## Extended-history rule

Pre-inception history may be added only as a separately labeled robustness panel using economically defensible and date-keyed benchmark/index histories. Rejected legacy proxies may not be reused simply to obtain a longer backtest.
