FAILED

Elliott by the wave oscillator (5/35, n=20, trigger 0.25)

Elliott waves are acknowledged to be hard to apply because they depend on the eye of whoever is counting. Replacing the visual count with a two-average oscillator and a handful of state rules makes the five-wave structure identifiable without judgement — and you trade precisely the two legs where the theory says the movement is, the third and the fifth, staying out of the fourth.

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

+0.01%

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%

779 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 779 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, 108 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 69 of the 108. 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

+0.01% 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.

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 779 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 108 trades, but only 69 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 69 episodes, what the data supports is a range from -0.38% to +0.41% 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	0.03	2.00	69
placebo	inconclusive	0.07	2.00	69
benchmark	failed	—	—	—
out of sample	inconclusive	—	—	—
multiple testing	failed	—	—	—

invariance108 signals across 4055 barsconcentration: +32.47% of the profit sits in the top 5% of trades — with the dates shuffled, +30.41% (fails above +50.00%)
costsgross +0.015% · cost 0.008% · net +0.006% (t=0.03) · the range runs from -0.388% to +0.400%
placeboactual +0.006% · placebo -0.007% · excess +0.013% ± 0.200% (t=0.07 against a threshold of 2.00, 69 real groups, 5,400 sham dates, draw error ±0.029%) — the status flips inside the placebo's own Monte Carlo error
benchmarktechnique +0.01% · buy and hold (same horizon) +0.05% · excess -0.04%
out of sampleasset half A: -0.067% (t=-0.30, 47 episodes) · asset half B: +0.077% (t=0.30, 50 episodes) · liquid half (>= US$ 0/day): +0.006% (t=0.03, 69 episodes) · period 1/4 (2020-03-03 a 2021-08-31): -0.134% (t=-0.33, 14 episodes) · period 2/4 (2021-09-10 a 2023-03-21): +0.080% (t=0.14, 18 episodes) · period 3/4 (2023-05-12 a 2024-11-14): +0.158% (t=0.56, 18 episodes) · period 4/4 (2024-12-26 a 2026-04-13): -0.080% (t=-0.29, 19 episodes)
multiple testing9 variation(s) tested · t=0.03 across 69 episodes (equivalent to t=0.03) · p≈0.9754 · false positives expected by chance ≈ 8.78

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: 779
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: 9
gross per trade: +0.01%
net per trade: +0.01%
exit rule: the technique itself (held until the opposite signal)
median duration bars: 20
mean duration bars: 22.1
max duration bars: 71
spread pips: 1.0
episode days: 23
seed: 20260728
EWO n: 20
EWO fast: 5
EWO slow: 35
EWO trigger: 0.25

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

Oscillator = the 5-day average minus the 35-day average, over (high+low)/2. A six-step state machine locates price within the 5-wave sequence: the rally starts when the oscillator makes an `n`-period high, or when it bounces a percentage `trigger` above its own low; Wave 4 starts when the oscillator crosses zero; Wave 5 starts when there is a 5-period high with a positive oscillator; and if Wave 5's oscillator exceeds Wave 3's, it was Wave 3 all along. One buys on identifying Wave 3, on identifying Wave 5, and when Wave 5 turns into Wave 3; one flattens when the oscillator falls below zero. THE SOURCE HANDS OVER THE PARAMETERS SAYING THEY ARE THE BEST: «a 40-day trend period, oscillators of 5 and 35, a trigger of 0.35 — these parameters were the best for the S&P over the same period». They are optimized by confession, so they enter as a SWEEP with the true N; auditing only the published ones would be auditing his choice. And the source describes only the long side, saying the bearish one is the inverse set — we implement the mirror, and that goes declared. Family-level prediction, recorded before measuring: (1) NONE survives the corpus-wide Benjamini-Hochberg — part 74 measured that this requires ~3.94% per trade in crypto, and retracement techniques enter against the move, where the average effect is small by construction; (2) the gravedigger will be the PLACEBO, and not cost nor the invariant — this family's central claim is that specific levels (0.618, 0.382) matter, and the placebo is exactly the control that asks whether any level would have done the same; (3) the two retracements (0.618 and 0.382) will give results STATISTICALLY INDISTINGUISHABLE from each other — if the golden ratio had anything special about it, it would separate from its own complement; (4) automated Elliott will do BETTER than the retracements, because it is a trend system in disguise (the 5 against 35 oscillator is a moving average crossover) and not a bet on a level. Prediction (4) is the one I would least like to confirm, and that is why it is written down. MEASURED IN FOREX (EUR/USD and GBP/USD, daily aggregated from 15m), and not in crypto. This is a pre-registered REPLICATION — not a new discovery —, and the multiple-testing count treats it as such. And there is one difference that matters especially to this family: the swing filter is a percentage, and a 5% filter that captures a two-day move in crypto captures a months-long one in forex. The same sweep measures structures of completely different sizes in the two markets, and that is why it is swept rather than fixed.

filed on 2026-08-04, before the number existed

The original, as it was filed

Oscilador = média de 5 menos média de 35, sobre (máxima+mínima)/2. Uma máquina de estados de seis passos localiza o preço na sequência de 5 ondas: a alta começa quando o oscilador faz máxima de `n` períodos, ou quando ele repica um `gatilho` percentual acima da mínima dele; a Onda 4 começa quando o oscilador cruza zero; a Onda 5 começa quando há máxima de 5 períodos com oscilador positivo; e se o oscilador da Onda 5 superar o da Onda 3, era Onda 3 o tempo todo. Compra-se ao identificar a Onda 3, ao identificar a Onda 5, e quando a Onda 5 vira Onda 3; zera-se quando o oscilador cai abaixo de zero. ⚠️ A FONTE ENTREGA OS PARÂMETROS DIZENDO QUE SÃO OS MELHORES: «período de tendência de 40 dias, osciladores de 5 e 35, gatilho de 0,35 — estes parâmetros foram os melhores para o S&P no mesmo período». São otimizados por confissão, então entram como VARREDURA com o N verdadeiro; auditar só os publicados seria auditar a escolha dele. ⚠️ E a fonte só descreve o lado comprado, dizendo que o de baixa é o conjunto inverso — implementamos o espelho, e isso vai declarado. Previsão da família, registrada antes de medir: (1) NENHUMA sobrevive ao Benjamini-Hochberg do corpus — a parte 74 mediu que isso exige ~3,94% por operação em cripto, e técnicas de retração entram contra o movimento, onde o efeito médio é pequeno por construção; (2) o coveiro será o PLACEBO, e não o custo nem o invariante — a alegação central desta família é que níveis específicos (0,618, 0,382) importam, e o placebo é exatamente o controle que pergunta se qualquer nível teria dado igual; (3) as duas retrações (0,618 e 0,382) darão resultados ESTATISTICAMENTE INDISTINGUÍVEIS entre si — se a razão áurea tivesse algo de especial, ela se separaria da sua própria complementar; (4) o Elliott automatizado irá MELHOR que as retrações, porque ele é um sistema de tendência disfarçado (o oscilador de 5 contra 35 é um cruzamento de médias) e não uma aposta num nível. ⚠️ A previsão (4) é a que eu menos gostaria de confirmar, e é por isso que ela está escrita. ⚠️ MEDIDO EM FOREX (EUR/USD e GBP/USD, diário agregado de 15m), e não em cripto. Isto é uma REPLICAÇÃO pré-registrada — não uma descoberta nova —, e a conta de múltiplos testes a trata como tal. ⚠️ E há uma diferença que importa especialmente a esta família: o filtro de oscilação é percentual, e um filtro de 5% que em cripto captura um movimento de dois dias, em forex captura um de meses. A mesma varredura mede estruturas de tamanhos completamente diferentes nos dois mercados, e é por isso que ela é varrida em vez de fixada.

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.

This claim has been audited once — there is no history to compare against.