Strategy tests

Every result, including the failures.

Each test runs the rule on our own data with real costs and the market's true clock, then through the twelve gates of our standard. So far, 0 of 10 have survived.

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Killed at G1 · DiscoverySmart money (ICT)

ICT Silver Bullet (10:00-11:00 New York)

A fair-value gap traded towards the nearest liquidity pool. A simple backtest shows a profit; realistic fills and costs turn it into a loss.

−0.050R / tradeRealistic fills and costs · t −0.83 on 862 trades
Nasdaq-100 · 2005-01 to 2020-12
Killed at G1 · DiscoveryMomentum

Momentum pullback to the 9 and 21 EMA

Buy the strongest stocks when they dip to a moving average and turn up. Negative at both fill bounds over 16 years.

−0.054R / tradeFavourable fill bound · t −2.44 on 7,461 trades
US stocks (S&P 500) · 2005-01 to 2020-12
Killed at G10 · ExplorationMachine learning

Machine-learning intraday forecaster

70 features, gradient boosting, a promising IC. The signal was oil prices read five hours early.

−1.6 to −7.3 bpNet per trade after the fix · every horizon negative
Nasdaq-100, S&P 500, Dow 30, Russell 2000 · 2010 to 2020 (walk-forward)
Killed at G12 · HoldoutBreakout

Nasdaq breakouts on high-fear days

Passed eleven of twelve gates, then lost money on the holdout nobody had seen.

−0.040R / dayHoldout 2023-2026 · t −0.57 on 225 days
Nasdaq-100 · 2010-04 to 2026-07
Killed at G1 · DiscoveryMean reversion

Weak-day reversal (lower high, lower low)

Buy the break of a weak day's high. Small, positive, and not distinguishable from noise.

+0.083R / tradeBest variant, Nasdaq · t 1.67 on 502 trades
Nasdaq-100, S&P 500 · 2005-01 to 2020-12 (Nasdaq), 2015-2020 (S&P 500)
Killed at G10 · AuditBreakout

Opening Volatility Stretch on DAX, Bund and Nasdaq

The DAX and Bund results came from a frozen pre-open quote. Nasdaq is positive but unproven.

+0.019R / tradeDAX, physical fills + real spread · t 0.38
DAX 40, Bund, Nasdaq-100 · 2005-01 to 2026-10
Killed at G1 · DiscoveryData mining

We mined 10,248 strategy rules on a GPU

Breakouts, sweeps, VWAP reversion and engulfing bars on five indices. The best result was weaker than what noise produces.

0Survivors · 403 variants below t −2.5, 9 above +2.5
Nasdaq-100, S&P 500, Dow 30, Russell 2000, DAX 40 · 2005 to 2020 (Discovery only)
Killed at G1 · Pre-registered testCalendar and flows

60/40 rebalancing pressure

A real flow effect from a 2025 NBER paper. Too small for an intraday trade after costs.

+0.002R / tradeNet of cost, 2005-2026 · t 0.86 on 5,396 trades
Nasdaq-100 · 2005-03 to 2026-08
Killed at G5 · DiscoveryMomentum

Intraday momentum into the close

The effect from the papers is there before costs: about 1.4 basis points a day. The spread is 0.6.

−0.008R / tradeAfter costs · t −0.78
Nasdaq-100, S&P 500 · 2005-01 to 2026-08
Killed at G10 · AuditFX fixing

USD/JPY Tokyo fix fade

t 7.52, twelve green years, and a bug that read the future. Corrected: t −1.52.

−0.042R / tradeSame rule, causal filter · t −1.52 on 1,582 trades
USD/JPY · 2015-01 to 2026-08 (second vendor 2008-2025)

Next in the lab

Popular strategies we are testing now. Each will be published with its full scorecard, whatever the result.

DAX morning breakout

Trading the break of the hour before the Frankfurt open. A first run by one of our agents lost money, but it read the hours of the data file without checking its time zone, the same defect that broke our DAX stretch test. It will be re-run on a verified clock.

AlgoTradingHub (YouTube)

Intraday momentum with noise bands and VWAP stops

A widely shared academic day-trading system on US index ETFs. A first run was very sensitive to how stops inside a bar are handled, so we are checking the fills before publishing either number.

SSRN 4824172 (Zarattini et al., 2024)

London 4 pm FX fix reversal

Tested before, on an FX data file whose clock we have since found to be off by an hour in summer. It will be re-run on a verified clock.

WM/Reuters fix literature

New York open liquidity sweep fade

Fading the first sweep of the overnight range on the Nasdaq-100, a staple of smart-money trading videos.

Popular ICT / smart-money concept

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