Utilities power-demand lead-lag (upstream AI-infra → power residual alpha)

The question

Do cross-sector economic links carry tradable information — e.g. does upstream AI-infrastructure momentum lead power-utility returns beyond rates and generic momentum? Sector-level regime and value-chain hypotheses.

How it was tested

The hypothesis, its exact trigger, the outcome it predicts, and the pass/fail bar were written down and cryptographically hash-locked before any data was tested, then held through a mandatory cooling-off period. The backfill ran exactly once against those frozen parameters — no re-tuning, no curve-fitting — using adversarial statistics (stationary-bootstrap confidence intervals, multiple-testing correction, purged cross-validation with an embargo, and walk-forward out-of-sample splits). The specific trigger thresholds are proprietary and omitted here.

The outcome

LOCKED 2026-07-13 (operator 'ok move forward with all decisions. i approve'). FIRST sector-regime family member — born from the operator's tech→utilities/healthcare rotation ask; the BROAD rotation was deliberately NOT drafted (consensus, INFO-ceiling, no variant). The construct: economic-links lead-lag (Cohen-Frazzini / Menzly-Ozbas) from upstream AI-infra spend to downstream electricity demand — the growth-asset-in-a-defensive-wrapper mispricing, duration-hedged (utilities = bond proxies; TLT residualization is THE killer confound control). Co-primary P1 continuous IC (floor +0.03) + P2 episode-deduped 80th-pctile onset lift (floor +0.5%/21d). No-subsumption battery B1 own-momentum / B2 duration / B3 naive XLU-relative-strength / B4 orthogonality-cluster report / B5 XLV placebo (healthcare has NO power mechanism — same lift there = generic defensive rotation, kill). IS 2005-15 (flat-demand era — mechanism may be absent → DATA_LIMITED plausible) / OOS 2016-26 (the 2023+ AI-power episode, ~3y = power-limited). nTrials=36 FROZEN (family added to STRATEGY_FAMILIES same commit). Honest prior INFO-leaning / DATA_LIMITED plausible; even full pass → scored forecast-ledger source ONLY (the fund has NO sector-ETF tradeable universe; any sleeve = separate operator-authored deployment pre-reg). All data free (Yahoo). backfillEligibleOn 2026-07-20 (7d cooling, in-sample origin). Next: ≥7/20 build scripts/backfill-utilities-power-demand.ts on the backfill-kit (verify SHA 6d4feedf, --validate-data, refuse before 7/20), run ONCE attended. SHA-256 6d4feedfe0541d2127181c67c9d9430722ab88f544fc1392027ecc97b4fdb4d7. **RAN 2026-07-24 (attended; RUN_AS_IS after a pre-run adversarial lookahead/spec review that cleared the SOXX-3:1-split risk) → NOISE / DISCONFIRMED.** Grid 2004-10→2026-07 (5466d), 12 OOS fresh onsets (≥6 → the test FORMED, not DATA-LIMITED). Co-primary FAILS decisively + WRONG-SIGNED: P1 OOS IC −0.1335 [−0.2591,−0.1074] (CI entirely below 0, expected +), P2 lift −1.615%/21d [−2.53,−0.97]; whole no-subsumption battery negative (B1 own-mom −0.080 / B2 duration −0.134 / B3 naive-XLU-RS −0.107); DSR 0.052, netSharpe −0.64, folds 2/5; jackknife holds negative sign (drop-2020 −0.126 / drop-2023 −0.125). Upstream AI-infra excess momentum NEGATIVELY predicts XLU's forward duration-residual — economically sensible (hot semis/datacenter momentum = risk-ON rotation OUT of defensive utilities; S loads +0.22 on the TLT duration axis, B4). Placebo XLV silent (−0.007, moot). ic63 −0.170; IPP VST/CEG/NRG raw fwd IC −0.060 (power-vacant, short history). FIRST sector-regime member DISCONFIRMED — the broad tech→utilities rotation adds no harvestable lead-lag alpha; pure info-layer, ZERO trade-path. data/backfill/utilities_power_demand_2026-07-24.json; memo project_utilities_power_demand_backfill_2026_07_24.md. Rule #10: no iterate (an EIA-demand-input or IPP-only variant = NEW pre-reg).

The backfill ran and the hypothesis failed its pre-registered bar. It is recorded and retired — not re-tested without a fresh, separately-registered hypothesis.