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SPECIMEN 010  /  STRATEGY AUTOPSYCRYPTO · WALK-FORWARD · 2020–2026

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
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
+686%
$1,000 → $7,860 vs $9,281 holding
Beat buy & hold
5 / 10
a coin flip
Out-of-sample
7 / 10
held up in recent years
02 The one line that ends it
The 200-Day Moving Average vs. doing nothinglog scale
The strategyBuy & hold (doing nothing)

The 200-Day Moving Average beat holding on 5 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
CoinTradesWin %StrategyBuy & holdVerdict
BTC2623+686%+828%lost
ETH1735+2318%+665%beat
BNB3918+1274%+2366%lost
SOL2223+1471%+283%beat
XRP4516−15%+426%lost
LINK4212−45%−19%lost
LTC3614−46%−19%lost
DOGE2520+2379%+778%beat
ADA2719+426%+16%beat
AVAX2914+6%−79%beat
Long/flat spot, no leverage, next-bar fills, 0.06% fee per side. Beat holding on 5 of 10 coins — and on 7 of 10 in the recent out-of-sample period (the test that separates a real edge from a bull-market coincidence).
04 Verdict
A decent seatbelt, not an engine. As a standalone buy/sell rule it beat holding on five coins out of ten — the literal definition of no edge. The 200-day tells you the weather; it doesn't tell you how to make money.
Method — long/flat spot, next-bar execution (no look-ahead) · 0.06% fee both sides · each coin over its full Binance history from 2019 with indicator warm-up · benchmarked against buy-and-hold on the identical window · out-of-sample = the most recent ~45% of each coin's history. 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.
05 Your turn
Think yours is the exception?

Run your own strategy through this exact gauntlet — multi-year, out-of-sample, across bull and bear, fees included, benchmarked against doing nothing. You get the full report and the downloadable code.

$1.99per strategy
full report + code
Test my strategy → Coming soon
✓  The price is shown up front, right here. You will never build a test and then get hit with a paywall to see the result.