INCONCLUSIVE

Momentum divergence (12/26/9, by peaks of the indicator)

Momentum is a leading indicator: when price makes a new high but momentum does not follow, the advance is losing strength, and price tends to follow momentum's direction rather than its own. The wider the divergence, the likelier the turn — and the longer the period over which it forms, the larger the reversal it announces.

Measured in crypto — Binance spot · 540 pairs, delisted ones included · 0.2% per round trip

Net per trade

+1.71%

after fees

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

Stalled at

costs

could not show the edge survives the cost

Worst drawdown

−37%

356 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 37% less than its own best previous moment, and it spent 356 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 2017-08-17 to 2026-07-28. It found trades in 539 coins, 7,426 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 28 of the 7,426. 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

+1.91% 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 · the broker's fee

We subtract the fee the broker charges to open and to close each trade — every trade pays on both legs. What is left after the fee is too small to be told apart from zero.

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 1.48× what it started with. At its worst the account was worth 37% less than its own best previous moment, and it spent 356 days below that peak. In none of the 12 paths tested did it fall to less than half of what it started with.

The account would not fit every signal

19% of the trades had to be turned down: by the time they appeared, the money was already tied up in other positions. That matters because the average return per trade the technique claims is computed over trades that nobody could have taken all of.

What this result does NOT say

For an edge to be assertable here it would have to reach 4.54% 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 0.69% 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 539 spot cryptocurrency pairs, delisted ones included. 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 2017-08-17 to 2026-07-28. 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 0.10% per leg, in and out. 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 7,426 trades, but only 28 independent market episodes: a single move fires the technique across dozens of assets at once, and counting those as separate observations inflates any result. It is the smaller number that governs the arithmetic. With 28 episodes, what the data supports is a range from +0.00% to +3.81% 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	inconclusive	1.84	2.05	28
placebo	inconclusive	1.48	2.05	28
benchmark	passed	—	—	—
out of sample	passed	—	—	—
multiple testing	passed	—	—	—

invariance7426 signals across 750934 barsconcentration: +35.11% of the profit sits in the top 5% of trades — with the dates shuffled, +55.45% (fails above +50.00%)
costsgross +1.906% · cost 0.200% · net +1.706% (t=1.84) · the range runs from -0.198% to +3.610%
placeboactual +1.706% · placebo -0.160% · excess +1.866% ± 1.261% (t=1.48 against a threshold of 2.05, 28 real groups, 371,300 sham dates, draw error ±0.042%)
benchmarktechnique +1.71% · buy and hold (same horizon) +0.03% · excess +1.68%
out of sampleasset half A: +1.608% (t=1.40, 28 episodes) · asset half B: +1.808% (t=1.88, 28 episodes) · liquid half (>= US$ 2,063,673/day): +1.844% (t=2.01, 28 episodes) · illiquid half: +1.553% (t=1.12, 28 episodes) · period 1/4 (2018-04-06 a 2022-06-22): +2.534% (t=1.54, 14 episodes) · period 2/4 (2022-06-23 a 2023-12-31): +2.056% (6 episodes — too small, does not count) · period 3/4 (2024-01-01 a 2025-04-12): +0.770% (5 episodes — too small, does not count) · period 4/4 (2025-04-13 a 2026-07-26): +1.470% (6 episodes — too small, does not count)
multiple testing2 variation(s) tested · t=1.84 across 28 episodes (equivalent to t=1.76) · p≈0.0790 · false positives expected by chance ≈ 0.16

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: ×1.48
worst drawdown from the peak: −37%
days below the previous peak: 356
signals refused for lack of capital: 19%
paths where the account halved (out of 12): 0

Reproducibility

period: 2017-08-17 to 2026-07-28
assets that traded: 539
variations tested before this one: 2
gross per trade: +1.91%
net per trade: +1.71%
exit rule: the technique itself (held until the opposite signal)
median duration bars: 6
mean duration bars: 11.5
max duration bars: 201
fee per leg: 0.001
episode days: 112
seed: 20260728
div fast: 12
div slow: 26
div signal: 9
div reading: peaks
div window: 20
confirmation bars: 5

Binance spot klines (delisted pairs included) · collected from 2026-07-27 23:31 to 2026-08-03 10:49 · 540 assets · 750,934 bars · 2017-08-17 to 2026-07-28

Hypothesis, filed before the result

Price rising while momentum falls (bearish), or the reverse (bullish), measured between consecutive peaks. The source gives complete rules for entry, exit and target, and three readings: by PEAKS of the MACD, by SLOPE of the price line against the momentum line, and ANTICIPATED (entering when price breaks resistance with momentum below the previous peak). All three will be measured — they are the same idea in different constructions, so ONE finding. And the source warns, in so many words, that 'there is no simple solution' and that 'what you see on a chart is not always easy to program'. It is the most taught technique in the chapter and the one that depends most on the auditor's choices; each one is 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.

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

The original, as it was filed

Preço subindo enquanto o momento cai (baixista), ou o inverso (altista), medido entre picos consecutivos. A fonte dá regras completas de entrada, saída e alvo, e três leituras: por PICOS do MACD, por INCLINAÇÃO da reta de preço contra a do momento, e ANTECIPADA (entra quando o preço rompe a resistência com o momento abaixo do pico anterior). As três serão medidas — são a mesma ideia com construções diferentes, então UM achado. ⚠️ E a fonte adverte, com todas as letras, que 'não há solução simples' e que 'o que se vê num gráfico nem sempre é fácil de programar'. É a técnica mais ensinada do capítulo e a que mais depende de escolhas do auditor; cada uma vai declarada. 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.

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

The same technique in the other market

The verdict is different there. The same technique, measured on independent data, came out the other way — and that says more about it than either card says alone. Read the cost and the detection floor before concluding: they are not the same in the two markets.

cryptoINCONCLUSIVE← this one
forexFAILEDopen that card

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 changed along the way — a fix in the engine changes the number, and that is a fact that has to stay visible. No earlier record was deleted.

this measurement →INCONCLUSIVE
2026-08-03PASSEDopen ↗