INCONCLUSIVE

TRIX (14)

Smoothing three times before measuring the change delivers a line so clean that its own change of direction serves as an early signal, without the noise that forces you to wait for confirmation. And because the difference is taken at the end rather than the beginning, most of the lag triple smoothing would introduce is given back.

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

Net per trade

+0.16%

after fees

The fee is charged on both legs: every trade pays to open and pays to close.

Stalled at

placebo

the excess over the placebo cannot be told apart from noise

Worst drawdown

−0%

919 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 919 days below that peak.

The technique against chance

Same number of trades, same holding time, same assets — only the dates were drawn at random.

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.

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, 98 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 46 of the 98. 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

+0.17% per trade. This is the number the technique claims, and the only one on this page that has not yet been through a single control.

Where it stalled · against randomly drawn dates

We ran the whole thing again entering on randomly drawn dates and changing nothing else: same number of trades, same holding time, same assets. The gap between the technique and chance came out too small to assert anything. It is not that the signal is useless — it is that, with this much data, it cannot be told apart from drawing dates at random.

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 919 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 INCONCLUSIVE 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 98 trades, but only 46 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 46 episodes, what the data supports is a range from -0.40% to +0.74% 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

control	status	t	threshold	episodes
invariance	passed	—	—	—
costs	passed	0.57	2.02	46
placebo	inconclusive	0.76	2.02	46
benchmark	passed	—	—	—
out of sample	inconclusive	—	—	—
multiple testing	inconclusive	—	—	—

invariance98 signals across 4055 barsconcentration: +29.96% of the profit sits in the top 5% of trades — with the dates shuffled, +32.21% (fails above +50.00%)
costsgross +0.170% · cost 0.008% · net +0.162% (t=0.57)
placeboactual +0.162% · placebo -0.056% · excess +0.218% ± 0.287% (t=0.76 against a threshold of 2.02, 46 real groups, 4,900 sham dates, draw error ±0.039%)
benchmarktechnique +0.16% · buy and hold (same horizon) +0.11% · excess +0.05%
out of sampleasset half A: +0.097% (t=0.24, 38 episodes) · asset half B: +0.229% (t=0.62, 37 episodes) · liquid half (>= US$ 0/day): +0.162% (t=0.57, 46 episodes) · period 1/4 (2020-02-17 a 2021-08-05): -0.248% (t=-0.69, 12 episodes) · period 2/4 (2021-08-19 a 2023-01-04): +0.466% (t=0.55, 11 episodes) · period 3/4 (2023-01-13 a 2024-07-08): -0.065% (t=-0.18, 12 episodes) · period 4/4 (2024-07-10 a 2026-04-15): +0.498% (t=0.88, 14 episodes)
multiple testing1 variation(s) tested · t=0.57 across 46 episodes (equivalent to t=0.55) · p≈0.5808 · false positives expected by chance ≈ 0.58

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: 919
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: +0.17%
net per trade: +0.16%
exit rule: the technique itself (held until the opposite signal)
median duration bars: 32
mean duration bars: 39.9
max duration bars: 138
spread pips: 1.0
episode days: 37
seed: 20260728
TRIX period: 14

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

Triple exponential smoothing and only then the 1-period difference — the inverse order of the TSI's, and the source claims this makes it smoother. Signal rule given: crossing zero. Completely specified. The natural-logarithm step and the factor of 10,000 are explicitly optional in the source, and do not alter the signal; they are left out, declared. Family prediction, filed before measuring: (1) the control that kills the most will be COST, and not invariance — unlike the `adaptativos` family, because these are discrete-signal oscillators, they turn over less and are not always in the market; (2) the DIVERGENCE techniques will come out mostly INCONCLUSIVE, because they require two aligned peaks and fire rarely; (3) none survives the family's Benjamini-Hochberg. I record that prediction (1) is the opposite of the one I made in `adaptativos` and that was confirmed there — if I get it wrong again in the same direction, that is a sign I am misreading the mechanism of cost, not the technique. 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. And the family prediction that has ALREADY FAILED once in `adaptativos` is put on record: I wrote there that «cost cannot be the gravedigger» in forex, and it killed 6 of 10 — cost is 22× smaller, but gross return is 30× smaller. Here I expect the same mechanism, and this time that is the prediction.

filed on 2026-08-03, before the number existed

The original, as it was filed

Tripla suavização exponencial e só então a diferença de 1 período — a ordem inversa da do TSI, e a fonte afirma que isso a torna mais suave. Regra de sinal dada: cruzar o zero. Completamente especificado. ⚠️ Os passos do logaritmo natural e do fator 10.000 são explicitamente opcionais na fonte, e não alteram o sinal; ficam de fora, declarado. Previsão da família, registrada antes de medir: (1) o controle que mais mata será o CUSTO, e não o invariante — diferente da família `adaptativos`, porque estes são osciladores de sinal discreto, giram menos e não são sempre-no-mercado; (2) as técnicas de DIVERGÊNCIA sairão majoritariamente INCONCLUSIVAS, porque exigem dois picos alinhados e disparam pouco; (3) nenhuma sobrevive ao Benjamini-Hochberg da família. ⚠️ Registro que a previsão (1) é o oposto da que fiz em `adaptativos` e que se confirmou lá — se eu errar de novo na mesma direção, é sinal de que estou lendo mal o mecanismo do custo, e não a técnica. ⚠️ 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. ⚠️ E fica registrada a previsão da família que JÁ FALHOU uma vez em `adaptativos`: escrevi lá que «o custo não tem como ser o coveiro» em forex, e ele matou 6 de 10 — o custo é 22× menor, mas o retorno bruto é 30× menor. Aqui espero o mesmo mecanismo, e desta vez a previsão é essa.

Quotations from the source were translated from the Portuguese record and back into English — they are not the author's exact words.

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.

2026-08-03INCONCLUSIVEopen ↗
this measurement →INCONCLUSIVE