The paradox
The video above covers the full research arc. The headline result: a 74% in-sample win rate that still lost money after real Binance funding costs. Funding drag consumed nearly half of gross profit.
What we killed
- Funding rate momentum — 4 of 5 conditioning methods failed.
- Trailing stops and fixed take-profit — both capped winners in this strategy class.
- Market breadth oscillators — contextual value but no stable walk-forward edge.
- 30+ additional hypothesis variants, each tested and discarded.
What survived
Three mean reversion systems. Each weak alone (35–40% win rate). Combined as a confluence filter: 57–100% win rate on 4 of 5 assets. The exhibits below show the standalone system's out-of-sample results — what it produced on data it never trained on.
The receipts
Out-of-sample trades from the mean reversion system, sourced from Binance USDT perpetual data. Gross price returns, funding costs not included.
Per-trade returns, compounded one at a time (single-position simulation, not portfolio P&L)
Indexed to 100 · each trade compounds gross price P&L into running equity · 77 out-of-sample trades · training periods shown in walk-forward section below
Walk-Forward Validation
Strategy is optimized only on the training window. The test window is never seen during optimization, so results on it reveal whether the strategy generalizes or just memorized past data. Each fold shifts both windows forward in time.
Known Limitations
- A confluence variant requiring two independent systems to agree selects 29 of these 77 trades at a higher win rate. Promising, but too few trades to publish as a standalone result. Forward testing will tell.
- XRP outlier: one trade (+62%) dominates all XRP results.
- Trades after June 2025 fall outside the walk-forward test windows. They use Fold 3 parameters applied forward.
- Backtest ends Dec 2025. Forward testing began Jan 2026. Results will appear in a future study.
Trade Journal
77 trades · 5 assets · long only · Jan 2024 – Dec 2025| Date | Asset | Entry | Exit | P&L |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-01-10 | BTC | $46,511 | $42,604 | -8.4% |
| 2024-01-15 | ETH | $2,541 | $2,212 | -12.9% |
| 2024-01-18 | BNB | $314.84 | $302.43 | -3.9% |
| 2024-01-29 | BTC | $43,003 | $62,008 | +44.2% |
| 2024-02-02 | SOL | $99.09 | $108.36 | +9.4% |
| 2024-02-18 | ETH | $2,808 | $3,572 | +27.2% |
| 2024-02-24 | BNB | $380.79 | $581.82 | +52.8% |
| 2024-03-04 | SOL | $132.10 | $175.96 | +33.2% |
| 2024-04-11 | ETH | $3,575 | $3,232 | -9.6% |
| 2024-04-25 | XRP | $0.5300 | $0.5400 | +1.1% |
| 2024-05-09 | BTC | $62,436 | $66,187 | +6.0% |
| 2024-05-09 | SOL | $150.97 | $167.17 | +10.7% |
| 2024-05-26 | ETH | $3,835 | $3,674 | -4.2% |
| 2024-06-20 | XRP | $0.5000 | $0.5700 | +13.4% |
| 2024-06-30 | SOL | $143.51 | $153.38 | +6.9% |
| 2024-07-17 | ETH | $3,485 | $3,246 | -6.9% |
| 2024-07-19 | BNB | $592.22 | $537.61 | -9.2% |
| 2024-07-29 | BTC | $69,447 | $64,585 | -7.0% |
| 2024-08-12 | BTC | $59,871 | $61,704 | +3.1% |
| 2024-08-12 | SOL | $150.39 | $138.38 | -8.0% |
| 2024-09-16 | XRP | $0.5900 | $0.5300 | -10.1% |
| 2024-09-17 | BNB | $543.00 | $554.18 | +2.1% |
| 2024-09-23 | SOL | $147.69 | $161.92 | +9.6% |
| 2024-09-26 | ETH | $2,631 | $2,365 | -10.1% |
| 2024-10-11 | BNB | $572.52 | $574.28 | +0.3% |
| 2024-10-14 | BTC | $64,300 | $92,566 | +44.0% |
| 2024-11-21 | SOL | $249.21 | $228.91 | -8.1% |
| 2024-11-25 | XRP | $1.48 | $2.40 | +62.2% |
| 2024-11-27 | ETH | $3,424 | $3,930 | +14.8% |
| 2024-12-30 | BNB | $709.89 | $714.20 | +0.6% |
| 2025-01-06 | SOL | $221.32 | $186.20 | -15.9% |
| 2025-01-06 | XRP | $2.44 | $2.88 | +17.9% |
| 2025-01-24 | SOL | $260.08 | $212.81 | -18.2% |
| 2025-01-31 | BTC | $104,653 | $97,760 | -6.6% |
| 2025-02-12 | BNB | $641.99 | $613.85 | -4.4% |
| 2025-02-15 | XRP | $2.74 | $2.28 | -16.9% |
| 2025-03-16 | BNB | $619.52 | $602.56 | -2.7% |
| 2025-03-20 | XRP | $2.54 | $2.21 | -13.3% |
| 2025-03-25 | ETH | $2,080 | $1,896 | -8.9% |
| 2025-03-25 | SOL | $140.96 | $129.42 | -8.2% |
| 2025-04-13 | BTC | $85,326 | $105,577 | +23.7% |
| 2025-04-13 | SOL | $132.15 | $156.13 | +18.1% |
| 2025-04-13 | BNB | $597.01 | $585.58 | -1.9% |
| 2025-04-13 | XRP | $2.16 | $2.30 | +6.3% |
| 2025-04-23 | ETH | $1,755 | $2,413 | +37.5% |
| 2025-05-09 | BNB | $629.09 | $654.90 | +4.1% |
| 2025-06-10 | BTC | $110,341 | $104,498 | -5.3% |
| 2025-06-10 | ETH | $2,682 | $2,579 | -3.9% |
| 2025-06-10 | XRP | $2.32 | $2.15 | -7.6% |
| 2025-06-11 | SOL | $165.23 | $148.56 | -10.1% |
| 2025-06-25 | BTC | $106,052 | $115,725 | +9.1% |
| 2025-06-29 | SOL | $150.76 | $182.94 | +21.3% |
| 2025-06-29 | BNB | $648.13 | $782.95 | +20.8% |
| 2025-06-30 | ETH | $2,500 | $3,486 | +39.4% |
| 2025-08-08 | BTC | $117,485 | $116,163 | -1.1% |
| 2025-08-08 | ETH | $3,912 | $4,074 | +4.1% |
| 2025-08-08 | SOL | $175.31 | $176.13 | +0.5% |
| 2025-08-08 | XRP | $3.32 | $2.86 | -13.9% |
| 2025-08-11 | BNB | $807.21 | $992.73 | +23.0% |
| 2025-08-23 | SOL | $200.84 | $220.46 | +9.8% |
| 2025-09-09 | XRP | $2.97 | $2.98 | +0.2% |
| 2025-09-11 | BTC | $113,955 | $112,639 | -1.2% |
| 2025-09-13 | ETH | $4,714 | $4,197 | -11.0% |
| 2025-09-30 | BTC | $114,272 | $112,729 | -1.4% |
| 2025-09-30 | BNB | $1,030 | $1,103 | +7.1% |
| 2025-10-02 | ETH | $4,346 | $3,822 | -12.0% |
| 2025-10-02 | SOL | $221.96 | $187.53 | -15.5% |
| 2025-10-03 | XRP | $3.04 | $2.85 | -6.1% |
| 2025-10-27 | BTC | $114,600 | $108,361 | -5.4% |
| 2025-10-27 | ETH | $4,160 | $3,804 | -8.6% |
| 2025-10-27 | XRP | $2.65 | $2.44 | -7.8% |
| 2025-11-11 | XRP | $2.53 | $2.17 | -14.3% |
| 2025-11-25 | XRP | $2.23 | $2.01 | -9.9% |
| 2025-12-04 | BTC | $93,395 | $86,427 | -7.5% |
| 2025-12-04 | ETH | $3,187 | $3,063 | -3.9% |
| 2025-12-04 | SOL | $144.63 | $127.74 | -11.7% |
| 2025-12-04 | BNB | $920.73 | $842.40 | -8.5% |
34/77 wins · 44.2% WR