SPECIMEN 010 / STRATEGY AUTOPSYCRYPTO · OUT-OF-SAMPLE TESTED
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.
Trend filter
Spot · daily · SMA(200)
10 coins · out-of-sample
No edge · coin flip
The claimAbove the 200-day is bullish, below is bearish.
The realityBeat holding on just 6 of 10 coins. A coin flip you pay fees to make.
Cause of death No edge, a coin flip
01 The seduction
Price above the 200-day moving average = bull market, below = bear. Every analyst on TV leans on it. As a regime filter it feels like the most sensible, grown-up rule there is — buy strength, avoid weakness.
The 200-Day Moving Average · BTC
+709%
$1,000 → $8,088 vs $9,830 holding
Beat buy & hold
6 / 10
a coin flip
Out-of-sample
7 / 10
held up in recent years
Simulated on real historical prices, fees included, and past results are not the future. See how we grade →
02 The one line that ends it
No edge
The 200-Day Moving Average vs. doing nothinglog scale
The strategyBuy & hold (doing nothing)
The 200-Day Moving Average beat holding on 6 of 10 majors — and 7 of 10 out-of-sample. Same money, same window, fees included — measured against simply buying Bitcoin once and never touching it.
03 The evidence
| Coin | Trades | Win % | Strategy | Buy & hold | Verdict |
|---|
| BTC | 26 | 42 | +709% | +883% | lost |
| ETH | 17 | 47 | +1860% | +668% | beat |
| BNB | 39 | 31 | +1183% | +2380% | lost |
| SOL | 22 | 32 | +1242% | +238% | beat |
| XRP | 45 | 38 | −7% | +399% | lost |
| LINK | 42 | 38 | −9% | −17% | beat |
| LTC | 36 | 22 | −48% | −22% | lost |
| DOGE | 25 | 36 | +2305% | +875% | beat |
| ADA | 27 | 44 | +710% | +23% | beat |
| AVAX | 29 | 31 | −24% | −80% | beat |
Beat holding on 6 of 10 coins — and on 7 of 10 in the recent out-of-sample period (the honest test that separates a real edge from a bull-market coincidence).
04 The other direction — what if you also shorted?
The headline test sits in cash when it is not long. The fair question is whether trading both ways helps — so we ran the identical rule with the flat side flipped to a 1x short (still no leverage), same fees, same ten coins.
| View | BTC $1k→ | Median return | Median maxDD | Beat hold | Verdict |
|---|
| Long / flat · headline | $8,088 | +709% | 75% | 6/10 | No edge · coin flip |
| Long / short 1x · illustrative | $2,655 | +166% | 95% | 2/10 | Failed out-of-sample |
Trading it both ways was worse on the headline test — median return +709% → +166%, worst drawdown 75% → 95% and the verdict fell from no edge · coin flip to failed out-of-sample. And that is before funding: a short is not spot, it needs a derivative that pays borrow/funding (~10–30%/yr) this omits — add a realistic 20%/yr and the median return drops to −20%. Shorting a market that mostly went up is a wrecking ball, not a rescue.
Why the short side is illustrative
You cannot short on spot — it needs a derivative (a perpetual or margin), which is why the headline test is long/flat. These short figures are shown at 1x with no funding or borrow cost, so the real-world version is worse than what you see here, not better. The window is also net-bullish; the short side only pays in a sustained bear, and betting on that is a different strategy entirely.
05 Verdict
A decent seatbelt, not an engine. As a standalone buy/sell rule it beat holding on six of ten coins — the literal definition of no edge. The 200-day tells you the weather; it doesn't tell you how to make money.
Method — the headline test is long/flat spot, no leverage (the long/short view above is a 1x illustration, funding excluded) · a signal read at the daily close is filled at the NEXT close (a full bar of lag — no look-ahead) · 0.06% fee each side, buy-and-hold charged one entry fee too · each coin over its available Binance daily history with warm-up · out-of-sample = held-back most-recent ~45% of each coin's data (a recency holdout, not rolling walk-forward). Honest limits: the ten coins are today's majors (survivorship bias) and are correlated, so “beat on N of 10” is not N independent tests. Reproducible.
The honest other side
It does keep you out of the deepest bear stretches, which is genuinely worth something for your stomach and your drawdown. As a seatbelt it works.
06 Your turn
That was the textbook version.
We tested it exactly as it's usually described. Yours is probably a little different — a tweak to the settings, an added filter, a different exit. You don't need to code any of it: just describe your version to Vera, our assistant, in plain English, and she builds it and runs it through this same honest test. Most don't survive. A few do — we've proven that. Worth knowing which yours is.
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full report + code
Coming soon
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