During a fast drop, Binance rejected my stop-loss with error -2021: the market had already moved past the trigger price before the order landed.
My code did not handle that rejection. The position stayed open with no stop, and because the bot's own state never recorded it, the next signal opened another position on top. Three times.
Intended risk was 3 USDT. Actual loss was 11.75 USDT.
THE NUMBERS Intended max loss: -3.00 Actual loss: -11.75 Positions stacked: 3 Time elapsed: 6 seconds
A backtest assumes your stop-loss always exists. Live, it is an order that can be refused. The gap between those two assumptions is where real money goes.
Part of a public experiment: 5,063 USDT to 1,000,000 USDT, every result published - including the ones that make me look bad.
I measured real execution costs with 48 controlled trades. One number decides everything.
I measured real execution costs with 48 controlled trades. One number decides everything. I stopped assuming what trading costs and measured it: 48 controlled round trips, entering and exiting immediately, recording the actual fill against the reference price. Fee was constant at 0.04% per side. Slippage was not - ETH filled at essentially zero, while DOGE cost 50 to 100 basis points per round trip. On a 150 USDT position, a round trip costs 0.36 USDT before the market moves at all. WHAT IT MEANS Any strategy must clear 0.240% of position size per trade just to break even. Most published setups never mention this number, which is why most published setups lose money. Part of a public experiment: 5,063 USDT to 1,000,000 USDT, every result published - including the ones that make me look bad. Run on $ETH $DOGE #Binance #Futures #Backtesting #TradingBot #CryptoData
Runners stopped while I rebuild the strategy from the backtest evidence. Nothing open.
Running on a Binance testnet account, so this is demo capital - I would rather say that than let you assume otherwise. The strategy, the costs and the losses are all real.
No signals for sale, no course, no affiliate link. Just the account and the data behind it.
Runners stopped while I rebuild the strategy from the backtest evidence. Nothing open.
Running on a Binance testnet account, so this is demo capital - I would rather say that than let you assume otherwise. The strategy, the costs and the losses are all real.
No signals for sale, no course, no affiliate link. Just the account and the data behind it.
On most coins longs pay shorts. On BNB it is the other way round.
Funding is the payment between long and short holders of a perpetual. Positive means longs pay shorts, which is the usual state of a market where most people are betting up.
Across 34,431 prints, BNB averages NEGATIVE funding - shorts pay longs - and only 22% of its prints are positive. BTC, ETH and DOGE are all positive.
So holding a long BNB perp is paid to exist, where a long BTC perp pays rent.
WHAT IT MEANS It is far too small to build a strategy on - 0.0042% against 8-hour price swings of 2.36%. But if you are already holding a position, the direction of funding is not the same on every coin, and most people assume it is.
Part of a public experiment: 5,063 USDT to 1,000,000 USDT, every result published - including the ones that make me look bad.
يُسوَّق تحصيل التمويل على العقود الدائمة بوصفه عائدًا سلبيًا. جمعت 34,431 حدث تمويل عبر 7 رموز، ثم قست النتائج.
متوسط التمويل هو 0.0024% لكل فترة مدتها 8 ساعات. على مركز بقيمة 150 USDT، يعادل ذلك 0.0036 USDT. وتبلغ تكلفة الدخول والخروج 0.36 USDT — أي إنك ستحتفظ بالمركز لمدة 33 يومًا لمجرد تغطية تكلفة الدخول والخروج.
في هذه الأثناء، يتحرك السعر بنسبة 2.36% خلال 8 ساعات في المعتاد.
الأرقام متوسط التمويل لكل 8 ساعات: 0.0024% سنويًا: 2.6% تقلب السعر خلال 8 ساعات: 2.36% الفترات اللازمة لتغطية التكاليف: 100
الدخل حقيقي، لكنه ضئيل، ومخاطر السعر التي تتحملها لكسبه أكبر بنحو ألف مرة. لهذا السبب، تتحوّط مكاتب التداول التي تتداول عليه باستخدام السوق الفوري. ومن دون تحوّط، لا يُعدّ دخلًا — بل رهانًا على اتجاه السعر مع خصم.
جزء من تجربة علنية: من 5,063 USDT إلى 1,000,000 USDT، مع نشر كل نتيجة — بما فيها النتائج التي تجعلني أبدو سيئًا.
Runners stopped while I rebuild the strategy from the backtest evidence. Nothing open.
Running on a Binance testnet account, so this is demo capital - I would rather say that than let you assume otherwise. The strategy, the costs and the losses are all real.
No signals for sale, no course, no affiliate link. Just the account and the data behind it.
Same universe, same ranking rule, same holding period, five different years.
2024 and 2025 carried the whole strategy. 2026 is the worst year of the five - a 25% win rate over roughly nine months.
Buying the strongest coins and shorting the weakest has stopped working this year. Doing the opposite would have returned +1.47% per rebalance at a 69% win rate.
A strategy is not a fact about markets, it is a fact about a period. Anyone showing you a backtest without the year-by-year breakdown is hiding the years that did not work.
Part of a public experiment: 5,063 USDT to 1,000,000 USDT, every result published - including the ones that make me look bad.
EPIC is up +30.87% - I tested both ways to trade it
TODAY'S TOP GAINERS EPIC: +30.87% GTC: +25.14% ERA: +15.19% AVA: +12.23% QUICK: +10.12% Every account on this app will show you this list. Here is the part they skip. I backtested both ways of trading a move like EPIC's +30.87%: buying the breakout, and fading it on the assumption it reverts. Both lost money. Not narrowly - they lost roughly the transaction cost, 0.240% per round trip, which is what a signal carrying no information looks like once you charge it fees. A large 24-hour move tells you something already happened. It does not tell you what happens next, and the data says so in both directions. Part of a public experiment: every strategy I test gets published, working or not. Movers above: $EPIC $GTC $ERA #Binance #Altcoins #Futures #EPIC #CryptoData
Two signal families, four timeframes, EMA and SMA, with and without a trend filter, long-only and short-only. 378 combinations in total, all with real fees and real measured slippage applied.
The round-trip cost of a trade is 0.240% of position size. The average result per trade, across every single configuration, landed between -0.361% and -0.401%.
That is the cost, and nothing else.
THE NUMBERS Round-trip cost: 0.240% Avg result, 15m setups: -0.361% Avg result, 1h setups: -0.401% Configurations profitable: 0 of 378
If a signal carried any directional information at all, the results would vary between configurations. Some would beat the cost line. None did. That is not weak edge that needs tuning - it is zero edge being charged an entry fee.
Part of a public experiment: 5,063 USDT to 1,000,000 USDT, every result published - including the ones that make me look bad.
Runners stopped while I rebuild the strategy from the backtest evidence. Nothing open.
Running on a Binance testnet account, so this is demo capital - I would rather say that than let you assume otherwise. The strategy, the costs and the losses are all real.
No signals for sale, no course, no affiliate link. Just the account and the data behind it.
EPIC is up +32.62% - I tested both ways to trade it
TODAY'S TOP GAINERS EPIC: +32.62% GTC: +19.91% ERA: +16.18% SAND: +12.67% AVA: +9.72% Every account on this app will show you this list. Here is the part they skip. I backtested both ways of trading a move like EPIC's +32.62%: buying the breakout, and fading it on the assumption it reverts. Both lost money. Not narrowly - they lost roughly the transaction cost, 0.240% per round trip, which is what a signal carrying no information looks like once you charge it fees. A large 24-hour move tells you something already happened. It does not tell you what happens next, and the data says so in both directions. Part of a public experiment: every strategy I test gets published, working or not. Movers above: $EPIC $GTC $ERA #Binance #Altcoins #Futures #EPIC #CryptoData
Runners stopped while I rebuild the strategy from the backtest evidence. Nothing open.
Running on a Binance testnet account, so this is demo capital - I would rather say that than let you assume otherwise. The strategy, the costs and the losses are all real.
No signals for sale, no course, no affiliate link. Just the account and the data behind it.
Crypto falls faster than it rises - liquidation cascades are asymmetric. That is documented market structure, which is why this result is more believable than one that only works when everything goes up.
Here is what that came from.
I ran 3,209 breakout trades. The longs lost money. The shorts made all of it.
Donchian 20 channel, ATR stop, 10 symbols, four and a half years.
If this were just riding a bull market, the longs would be the winners. They are not - they are negative.
The shorts even made money on coins that ROSE over the period. BTC gained 94% buy-and-hold, and shorting its breakdowns still returned +22.83 USDT. XRP gained 87%, shorts returned +24.27 USDT.
Part of a public experiment: 5,063 USDT to 1,000,000 USDT, every result published - including the ones that make me look bad.
EPIC is up +38.45% - I tested both ways to trade it
TODAY'S TOP GAINERS EPIC: +38.45% QUICK: +30.48% GTC: +20.70% ERA: +13.54% AVA: +10.23% Every account on this app will show you this list. Here is the part they skip. I backtested both ways of trading a move like EPIC's +38.45%: buying the breakout, and fading it on the assumption it reverts. Both lost money. Not narrowly - they lost roughly the transaction cost, 0.240% per round trip, which is what a signal carrying no information looks like once you charge it fees. A large 24-hour move tells you something already happened. It does not tell you what happens next, and the data says so in both directions. Part of a public experiment: every strategy I test gets published, working or not. Movers above: $EPIC $QUICK $GTC #Binance #Altcoins #Futures #EPIC #CryptoData
My 'validated' strategy made +1.74 USDT in backtest, then lost 208.72 USDT on data it had
My 'validated' strategy made +1.74 USDT in backtest, then lost 208.72 USDT on data it had never seen. I swept 40 symbols and found three that looked profitable. I called them validated and put them live. Then I tested the exact same settings on 751 days of price history the search had never touched. All three reversed. Not marginally - completely. Three survivors out of 40 is roughly what pure chance produces at that sample size. WHAT IT MEANS Searching hard enough through random data will always produce a winner. The out-of-sample test is the only thing that tells you whether you found an edge or just found noise wearing a costume. Part of a public experiment: 5,063 USDT to 1,000,000 USDT, every result published - including the ones that make me look bad. Run on $BTC $ETH $BNB #Binance #Futures #Backtesting #TradingBot #CryptoData
This is genuinely different from a useless signal - there is information here. But to use it you would need to know the regime in advance, which is the same circular problem that kills everything else.
Here is what that came from.
Funding rate predicts where price goes. It just changes which direction, by year.
I sorted every funding print into quintiles and measured the forward 72-hour return of the highest versus the lowest.
In bear markets, high funding preceded WORSE returns - crowded longs getting squeezed. From 2024 onward it preceded BETTER returns - momentum.
The signal is real. The sign is not stable. Average it across all years and you get -0.08%, below the 0.240% it costs to trade.
Part of a public experiment: 5,063 USDT to 1,000,000 USDT, every result published - including the ones that make me look bad.
EPIC is up +28.68% - I tested both ways to trade it
TODAY'S TOP GAINERS EPIC: +28.68% QUICK: +26.56% GTC: +21.82% ERA: +20.20% AVA: +12.57% Every account on this app will show you this list. Here is the part they skip. I backtested both ways of trading a move like EPIC's +28.68%: buying the breakout, and fading it on the assumption it reverts. Both lost money. Not narrowly - they lost roughly the transaction cost, 0.240% per round trip, which is what a signal carrying no information looks like once you charge it fees. A large 24-hour move tells you something already happened. It does not tell you what happens next, and the data says so in both directions. Part of a public experiment: every strategy I test gets published, working or not. Movers above: $EPIC $QUICK $GTC #Binance #Altcoins #Futures #EPIC #CryptoData