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FAILED

Adaptive RSI (14, direct constant)

Varying the calculation period need not be confined to a trend formula: any momentum indicator that moves within a known range can be turned into a smoothing constant, and then governs the line's speed. A high reading means more trend and allows a fast line; a low reading means more noise and demands a slow one. The same indicator once used to measure exhaustion becomes a thermometer for speed.

Measured in forexEUR/USD and GBP/USD · daily bars built from 15m · 1 pip spread (~0.009% per round trip) · no survivorship bias

Net per trade
−0.01%
after fees
The fee is charged on both legs: every trade pays to open and pays to close.
Died at
benchmark
loses to buy and hold (same horizon)
Worst drawdown
−0%
2,109 days underwater
How far the account fell below its own best previous moment.
Timeframe
1 day
The time grid this was measured on. The same technique on a coarser or finer grid is a different measurement, and can earn a different verdict.
  • invariance
  • costs
  • placebo
  • benchmark
  • out of sample
  • multiple testing
Equity curve
Risking 1.0% per trade, marked to market every day — not only when a trade closes. The line at 1.0 is the capital it started with.

At its worst the account was worth 0% less than its own best previous moment, and it spent 2,109 days below that peak.

The technique against chance
Same number of trades, same holding time, same assets — only the dates were drawn at random.
0%barthe technique−0.01%random dates−0.01%
The average trade and the typical one
The mean sits above the median: the lottery signature — the typical trade loses and a rare handful pays for everything.
0%mean−0.00%median−0.14%

What was measured

We coded the rule exactly as it is described and let it trade on its own from 2020-01-01 to 2026-06-26. It found trades in 2 coins, 1,241 in total. Each one enters and exits at the price that existed on that day — the program never sees what comes next, which is the most common mistake people make testing strategies at home. Wherever the description was ambiguous we took the reading least favourable to the technique; whatever was left open is stated in the hypothesis, at the foot of this page.

How many of those trades actually count

Only 322 of the 1,241. Cryptocurrencies rise and fall almost in unison, so the same rule fires on dozens of coins on the same day — and that is one bet repeated, not dozens of different bets. Counting them all separately is the trick that makes a bad test look impressive.

What it paid, before any deductions

-0.00% per trade. Look at the sign: the average is already negative before any fee is taken out. The controls below still hold, but here they are not knocking down an edge — they are confirming there never was one.

Why it did not pass — it died here · against buying and holding

We compare it against simply buying and holding for the same stretch of time, with no rule at all. Sitting still paid more. The technique takes work, demands attention, and delivers less than doing nothing.

What would have happened to the money

Risking 1.0% of capital per trade — the most widely taught rule — across the whole period: The capital would have ended at 1.00× what it started with. At its worst the account was worth 0% less than its own best previous moment, and it spent 2,109 days below that peak. In none of the 12 paths tested did it fall to less than half of what it started with.

What this result does NOT say

For an edge to be assertable here it would have to reach 0.65% per trade — that is the size that survives this archive's multiple-testing correction, and it rises as the archive grows. So FAILED means “we found nothing above that size”, and never “it cannot possibly work”. The instrument is far more sensitive than that: on synthetic data, with a clean effect, it separates from 0.09% upwards. The distance between the two numbers is the price of a real market and the price of publishing many claims. The difference matters, and it is the rule of this house: the card confronts the claim, never the person who made it.
What this card does not measure
Every verdict holds for the conditions it was measured under. These are this card's — and outside them the result does not apply.
One market, one universe
Measured on 2 spot currency pairs. It says nothing about futures, equities or indices, nor about how the same technique behaves in another market.
One window of time, not every window
The measured period runs from 2020-01-01 to 2026-06-26. A market moves through regimes, and a technique can work in one and fail in another — the card measures the regimes that fit inside this window, not the ones still to come.
One cost structure
The cost charged is a 1.0 pip spread, crossed once. Anyone paying more than that gets a worse result, and anyone paying less gets a better one — the verdict holds for this fee.
One exit rule
The trade was closed by: the technique itself (held until the opposite signal). The same entry measured with a different exit is a different strategy, and can earn a different verdict — it happens in this archive.
The number of trades is not the sample size
There are 1,241 trades, but only 322 independent market episodes: trades that overlap in time are not independent observations, and counting them as if they were inflates any result. It is the smaller number that governs the arithmetic. With 322 episodes, what the data supports is a range from -0.07% to +0.07% per trade — the published average is the centre of it, not the exact measurement.
Daily bars
Measured at the daily close. Nothing here measures what happens inside the day, and an intraday technique is not auditable with this data.

Numbers and reproducibility

The six controls

controlstatustthresholdepisodes
invariancepassed
costsinconclusive-0.281.97322
placeboinconclusive0.061.97322
benchmarkfailed
out of sampleinconclusive
multiple testinginconclusive
  • invariance1241 signals across 4055 barsconcentration: +47.06% of the profit sits in the top 5% of trades — with the dates shuffled, +34.62% (fails above +50.00%)
  • costsgross -0.002% · cost 0.008% · net -0.010% (t=-0.28) · the range reaches +0.059%
  • placeboactual -0.010% · placebo -0.012% · excess +0.002% ± 0.035% (t=0.06 against a threshold of 1.97, 322 real groups, 62,050 sham dates, draw error ±0.003%) — the status flips inside the placebo's own Monte Carlo error
  • benchmarktechnique -0.01% · buy and hold (same horizon) -0.00% · excess -0.01%
  • out of sampleasset half A: +0.001% (t=0.03, 293 episodes) · asset half B: -0.021% (t=-0.41, 294 episodes) · liquid half (>= US$ 0/day): -0.010% (t=-0.28, 322 episodes) · period 1/4 (2020-01-19 a 2021-09-15): +0.072% (t=0.78, 86 episodes) · period 2/4 (2021-09-16 a 2023-05-02): -0.048% (t=-0.74, 80 episodes) · period 3/4 (2023-05-03 a 2025-01-27): +0.027% (t=0.54, 87 episodes) · period 4/4 (2025-01-28 a 2026-06-16): -0.091% (t=-1.47, 72 episodes)
  • multiple testing1 variation(s) tested · t=-0.28 across 322 episodes (equivalent to t=-0.28) · p≈0.7780 · false positives expected by chance ≈ 0.78

Equity — outside the six controls, and here is why

The t of the trade series is invariant to bet size: 0.5%, 1% and 3% agree to the sixth decimal. Nothing here moves the verdict — it moves what the account would have lived through.

risking 1.0% per trade
×1.00
worst drawdown from the peak
0%
days below the previous peak
2,109
signals refused for lack of capital
0%
paths where the account halved (out of 12)
0

Reproducibility

period
2020-01-01 to 2026-06-26
assets that traded
2
variations tested before this one
1
gross per trade
−0.00%
net per trade
−0.01%
exit rule
the technique itself (held until the opposite signal)
median duration bars
2
mean duration bars
3.2
max duration bars
24
spread pips
1.0
episode days
7
seed
20260728
adaptive RSI period
14
squared
0.0

Twelve Data forex (15m aggregated to 1d) · collected on 2026-07-25 · 2 assets · 4,055 bars · 2020-01-01 to 2026-06-26

Hypothesis, filed before the result

Third declaration, and it corrects an OVERSTATEMENT OF MINE in the second. That one said the source's sensitivity claim 'checks out' and 'is the first claim in the chapter to pass clean'. Measuring over the whole universe instead of 6 assets: HALF holds and half does not. Adaptive RSI 34.97% of sideways bars, 10-period average 19.76%, KAMA 18.90% (540 assets, 244,295 sideways bars). The first part — the adaptive RSI is the most sensitive — is large and robust, nearly double the other two. The second — the 10-period average being more sensitive than the KAMA — is a 0.86-point difference and IT REVERSES ON 42% OF THE ASSETS (the average wins on 312 of 540). That is noise with a slight tilt, not confirmation. What stands verified from the source is that the adaptive RSI is the most sensitive of the three, and that is exactly what it uses to justify the squaring remedy. The two points of the second declaration still stand: the adaptive RSI is a trend line and not an overbought/oversold strategy, and it is not a confrontation with the `RSI oversold/overbought` card. The turnover prediction stands: being the most sensitive, it will have the family's highest turnover. Family prediction, filed before measuring: (1) none of the adaptive averages survives the family's Benjamini-Hochberg in crypto; (2) the control that kills the most will be COST, not the benchmark — unlike the chart-pattern census, where the benchmark was the gravedigger, because these are always-in-the-market systems and they turn over a lot; (3) each adaptive average will have HIGHER turnover than its fixed-period counterpart already in the archive, and will die more at cost than it does. The mechanism is in the source itself: Table 17.1 reports a profit factor 'even before costs' and states that success is 'inversely related to the average number of trades' (KAMA 159 trades, factor 1.53; VIDYA 443, factor 1.17). That is a cost story told as a quality story. If I am wrong and one survives cost with higher turnover, the chapter's thesis gains evidence it did not present. MEASURED IN FOREX (EUR/USD and GBP/USD, daily bars built from 15m), not in crypto. This is a pre-registered REPLICATION of the same technique in the second market — not a new discovery — and the multiple-testing count treats it as such. What changes relative to the crypto card: 2 pairs over 6.5 years against 540 over 9, a round trip costs about 20× less (a 1 pip spread crossed once, against 0.1% commission per leg), the detection floor is about 10× lower (0.092% against 0.97%) and there is NO survivorship bias, because a currency pair does not get delisted. Specific prediction: with only 2 assets, the independent episodes come from TIME and not from the variety of assets, so I expect a low effective N and a high proportion of INCONCLUSIVE — and whatever is asserted here is worth more than in crypto, because cost cannot be the gravedigger.

filed on 2026-07-31, before the number existed

The original, as it was filed

Terceira declaração, e corrige um EXCESSO MEU na segunda. Ela dizia que a afirmação de sensibilidade da fonte 'confere' e 'é a primeira afirmação do capítulo que passa limpo'. Medindo no universo inteiro em vez de 6 ativos: METADE se sustenta e metade não. RSI adaptativo 34,97% das velas laterais, média de 10 períodos 19,76%, KAMA 18,90% (540 ativos, 244.295 velas laterais). A primeira parte — o RSI adaptativo é o mais sensível — é grande e robusta, quase o dobro dos outros dois. A segunda — média de 10 mais sensível que a KAMA — é 0,86 ponto de diferença e SE INVERTE EM 42% DOS ATIVOS (a média ganha em 312 de 540). Isso é ruído com leve inclinação, não confirmação. O que fica verificado da fonte é que o RSI adaptativo é o mais sensível dos três, e é exatamente isso que ela usa para justificar o remédio do quadrado. Os dois pontos da segunda declaração seguem valendo: o RSI adaptativo é linha de tendência e não estratégia de sobrecompra/sobrevenda, e não é confronto com o card `RSI sobrevendido/sobrecomprado`. Previsão de giro mantida: sendo o mais sensível, será o de maior giro da família. Previsão da família, registrada antes de medir: (1) nenhuma das adaptativas sobrevive ao Benjamini-Hochberg da família em cripto; (2) o controle que mais mata será o CUSTO, e não o benchmark — diferente do censo de padrões gráficos, onde o benchmark foi o coveiro, porque estas são sistemas sempre-no-mercado e giram muito; (3) cada adaptativa terá giro MAIOR que a sua contraparte de período fixo já no corpus, e morrerá mais no custo do que ela. O mecanismo está na própria fonte: a Tabela 17.1 relata fator de lucro 'even before costs' e afirma que o sucesso é 'inversely related to the average number of trades' (KAMA 159 operações, fator 1,53; VIDYA 443, fator 1,17). Isso é uma história de custo contada como história de qualidade. Se eu estiver errado e alguma sobreviver ao custo com giro maior, a tese do capítulo ganha uma evidência que ele não apresentou. ⚠️ MEDIDO EM FOREX (EUR/USD e GBP/USD, diário agregado de 15m), e não em cripto. Isto é uma REPLICAÇÃO pré-registrada da mesma técnica no segundo mercado — não uma descoberta nova —, e a conta de múltiplos testes a trata como tal. O que muda em relação ao card de cripto: são 2 pares em 6,5 anos contra 540 em 9, o custo do giro é ~20× menor (spread de 1 pip cruzado uma vez, contra comissão de 0,1% por lado), o piso de detecção é ~10× menor (0,092% contra 0,97%) e NÃO há viés de sobrevivência, porque par de moeda não é deslistado. Previsão específica: com apenas 2 ativos, os episódios independentes vêm do TEMPO e não da variedade de ativos, então espero N efetivo baixo e uma proporção alta de INCONCLUSIVO — e o que for afirmado aqui vale mais que em cripto, porque o custo não tem como ser o coveiro.

Pre-registration exists to keep prediction apart from rationalisation: written after the number, every hypothesis is right.

Earlier audits of the same technique

Each variation an author teaches enters as its own test, so that whatever might work in the strategy gets covered. The verdict held in all of them.

  1. 2026-08-03FAILEDopen ↗
  2. this measurement →FAILED
  3. 2026-07-31FAILEDopen ↗
  4. 2026-07-31FAILEDopen ↗
  5. 2026-07-31FAILEDopen ↗

record 0639f0e78bd3 · 2026-08-03 15:33

This code comes from this card's content: if anything here changed after publishing, the code would stop matching — that's how a change gets caught. We audit the technique, never the person — no record names an author, a channel or a brand.

The full record behind this verdict.