The failure mode
Strategy records can carry a group-level volume while individual leg information is incomplete, delayed or encoded differently across sources. Treating a partial structure as resolved creates false certainty downstream.
Technical research note
Unresolved option legs must remain visible.
A control design for multi-leg strategy volume where an incomplete structure is not silently converted into an apparently complete analytical result.
Expected: 4Resolved: 3UNRESOLVEDBLOCKED
Synthetic validation artifact
Expected legs: 4Resolved legs: 3Status: UNRESOLVEDAllocation: BLOCKEDDownstream aggregate: EXCLUDED AND REPORTED
This synthetic control records the status at the time of evaluation. A missing leg may later be resolved when evidence arrives; until then it remains explicitly unresolved.
The validation design
- Require a strategy definition before allocation.
- Compare expected leg count with resolved leg count.
- Require all fields needed for each leg.
- Make unresolved a first-class measurable state.
- Apply a documented aggregate-conservation rule.
- Send schema changes through a controlled review.
The boundary
The case does not claim complete historical resolution, complete volume recovery or reverse engineering of every vendor semantic. It demonstrates how those claims can be tested honestly.
Working principle
What you receive
A leg-completeness control, unresolved-state reporting, conservation checks and a change-review rule for future source schema updates.