Real tick data · Real costs · Losers published

We backtest the strategies
the internet sells you

Real tick data, real costs, out-of-sample validation — and every verdict published, including the failures. Father, developer, algo trading obsessive.

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Honest backtests, in public

Every strategy we test — winners and losers — with real tick data, costs included, and out-of-sample discipline. The failures get published too.

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2026-07-13

The 9:30 Opening-Range Breakout Is Just Long the Market in Disguise

Everyone posts the 9:30 candle. We tested it on three years of 1-minute data for all three US indices, in-sample only, before writing a line of EA code. A close beyond the opening range doesn't continue in either direction, on any of them. The only positive drift is being long a market that was rising.

2026-07-11

Sixteen Strategies Failed Our Gates. The Four Best Losers, Combined, Passed Everything.

We tested 16 published trading strategies on real tick data. Four kept a real edge but failed our quality bar alone. At pre-registered weights, together, they pass all 14 gates.

2026-07-06

Honestly Mediocre: the Bitcoin Trend Strategy That Passed the Overfit Test and Failed the Quality Bar

A Donchian breakout on BTC H4 made 7.8% a year across four unseen years with textbook retention numbers. We rejected it on absolute quality, and the same rules on H1 lost 60 times out of 60.

Range Breakout Strategy — $10k to $45k on USD/JPY

I backtested a range breakout strategy on real Dukascopy tick data across EUR/USD and USD/JPY. Optimised on 2021, tested out-of-sample on 2022–2025. One pair worked, one didn't. Watch the full breakdown.

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