Honest strategy backtesting  ·  crypto  ·  walk-forward

Most trading strategies don’t work. Here’s the proof.

Everyone sells the system that prints. We publish the ones that died — every strategy run through honest, multi-year, out-of-sample walk-forward, with the exact parameters, the seductive backtest, and the point it fell apart. A graveyard so you know which rabbit holes to skip before your capital does.

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Strategies tested
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Failed walk-forward
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Survived
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Full autopsies published
Paradigm
Failed Marginal Survived Full autopsy published
Each cell is one strategy we actually tested — most died, a few survived. Hover to inspect; bordered cells link to a full published teardown. No filler: every square is real.
Featured autopsies
Survived
The 9/21 EMA Crossover
The day-trader's bread and butter — fast EMA over slow, you're long. Unlike most of this graveyard, it actually held up.
BTC +1143%Hold +677%
Open specimen 008 →
 Survived
The Ichimoku Cloud
The cloud gets mocked as chart-astrology. But “long only above the cloud” actually held up — one of the few that did.
BTC +1004%Hold +780%
Open specimen 011 →
 No edge · coin flip
The Golden Cross
The most famous signal in trading. Six trades on Bitcoin — beaten by doing nothing.
BTC +504%Hold +828%
Open specimen 002 →
 Failed walk-forward
Bollinger Band Bounce
Price hit the lower band, so it's due a bounce, right? Buy the band on crypto and you buy the knife.
BTC −16%Hold +663%
Open specimen 005 →
 Failed walk-forward
The Stochastic Oscillator
%K under 20 is oversold, over 80 is overbought. Another buy-low-sell-high oscillator — and another one crypto eats alive.
BTC +132%Hold +524%
Open specimen 009 →
 Failed walk-forward
RSI Oversold Bounce
Buy when it's oversold, sell when it's overbought. The first strategy everyone tries. On crypto it gets taken apart.
BTC +85%Hold +663%
Open specimen 003 →
 No edge · coin flip
Supertrend
The green-line-red-line indicator all over TikTok. Go long when it's green. Turns out green is a coin flip.
BTC +189%Hold +510%
Open specimen 006 →
 No edge · coin flip
Donchian / Turtle Breakout
The famous Turtle Traders system. Buy the 20-day high. It makes a fortune — and still can't quite beat doing nothing.
BTC +642%Hold +677%
Open specimen 007 →
 No edge · coin flip
The 200-Day Moving Average
“It's above the 200-day, so it's bullish.” The single most-quoted line in markets. Tested as a rule, it's a coin flip.
BTC +686%Hold +828%
Open specimen 010 →
 No edge · coin flip
The MACD Crossover
The crossover on every chart and every tutorial. Eighty trades, a fortune in fees, and it still can't reliably beat holding.
BTC +620%Hold +655%
Open specimen 004 →
Failed walk-forward
KDJ “J-line” cross + ADX
The textbook momentum trigger. Looked like a printing press through 2021.
In-sample +661%Full cycle −97%
Open specimen 001 →
Bring your own

Think you’ve got an edge? Prove it.

Drop your strategy into the same gauntlet — multi-year, out-of-sample, across bull and bear, fees and slippage included. Watch it survive or die, then download the code and the full report. No flattering in-sample charts. Just the truth.

Coming soon · $1.99 per strategy · no subscription
← back to the graveyard
SPECIMEN 001  /  STRATEGY AUTOPSYCRYPTO · WALK-FORWARD · 2019–2026

KDJ “J-line” cross, ADX-filtered

A textbook momentum trigger that turned $1,000 into $7,613 in a bull market — then bled it down to $26. This is its autopsy.
Momentum / reversal Perp futures · 4H 3× leverage 48 pairs tested Failed walk-forward
01 The seduction

The rule is simple and widely traded: go long when the KDJ J-line crosses up through its signal line, short when it crosses down, but only when ADX > 22 confirms a trend. Backtest it through 2020–21 and it looks like a printing press. On the meme names it looks like a cheat code.

Peak equity
$7,613
from $1,000 · +661% · 13 Feb 2021
Best market, 2021
+1,845%
DOGE/USDT · single year
Win rate
35–42%
low, but winners ran
02 The full cycle
Equity · $1,000 compounded · majors basketlog scale
the climb the bleed (post-peak) $1,000 start

Same rule, same money — but run honestly across the entire cycle, bull and bear, no cherry-picked window, no basket picked with hindsight. The $1,000 peaks at $7,613 in February 2021, then bleeds for five straight years to $26. A 99.7% drawdown from the top. The “edge” was never an edge — it was the 2021 parabola wearing a strategy’s clothes.

03 The evidence
Pair2020202120222023202420252026Total
BTC+98+52−251−114−249−252+117−391
ETH−60−198−203−168−223−22+119−768
LINK+326−287−5−183+2−17+80−84
BNB−53+53+37−97−227+226+610
DOGE+210+1,845+181−151+19−77+231+2,257
Per-year net ROE %, at 3×. One meme coin in one year (DOGE, 2021) carried the entire illusion. Strip it, or hold past it, and the strategy is a wealth transfer to the exchange.
SignalKDJ(9,3,3) — J crosses D
FilterADX(14) > 22 (Wilder)
DirectionLong on cross-up, short on cross-down (flip)
Timeframe4-hour, closed candle
Leverage3× · salvage stop just inside liquidation
Universe48 pairs tested; majors basket (BTC/ETH/LINK/BNB/DOGE) compounded
Sizing90% deployed, max 5 concurrent, equal weight
Costs0.05% taker fee per side, applied both legs
DataBinance 4H, full history from 2019-09
04 Verdict
In-sample it returned +661%. Across the honest full cycle it returned −97%. This is exactly what an overfit backtest looks like once the music stops — and why a beautiful equity curve on a single window tells you almost nothing.
Method — pooled across all pairs (no basket chosen with hindsight) · taker fees both sides · walk-forward across bull & bear regimes · 7,268 trades · 2019-09-19 → 2026-06-25. Reproducible from the parameters above.
The exception
Same signal, one change: trade it directionally — longs only when BTC is above its 100-day average, shorts only below. That version survived every regime tested. Most modifications die with the original; a rare few resurrect it. The only way to know which is yours is one honest backtest.
Surviving variant · specimen soon
05 Your turn
Think yours is the exception?

Run your own strategy through this exact gauntlet — multi-year, out-of-sample, every regime, fees and slippage included. You get the full report and the downloadable code. Then change one thing and run it again.

$1.99per strategy
full report + code
Test my strategy → Coming soon
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The Graveyard · honest backtests, published · educational only · nothing here is financial advice