RSI oversold/overbought (14/30/70)
What has fallen too far tends to come back and what has risen too far tends to correct: entering as price leaves each extreme captures the reversal from the start. It works above all in a sideways market, where price spends most of its time.
Measured in forex — EUR/USD and GBP/USD · daily bars built from 15m · 1 pip spread (~0.009% per round trip) · no survivorship bias
- ✓invariance
- ✓costs
- ✓placebo
- ✓benchmark
- ✓out of sample
- ✓multiple testing
At its worst the account was worth 0% less than its own best previous moment, and it spent 809 days below that peak.
What was measured
How many of those trades actually count
What it paid, before any deductions
Why it passed
- the profit spread across the trades instead of coming from a handful
- the edge survived the broker's fee
- it paid more than entering on randomly drawn dates
- it paid more than buying and holding for the same stretch
- the result came back in the separated pieces of the data
- it survived the discount for having tested many versions
What would have happened to the money
What this result does NOT say
- 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 auditor's fixed horizon (10 bars). 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 113 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 +0.07% to +0.68% 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 | 2.37 | 2.00 | 69 |
| placebo | passed | 2.56 | 2.00 | 69 |
| benchmark | passed | — | — | — |
| out of sample | passed | — | — | — |
| multiple testing | passed | — | — | — |
- invariance113 signals across 4055 bars
- costsgross +0.375% · cost 0.008% · net +0.366% (t=2.37)
- placeboactual +0.366% · placebo -0.032% · excess +0.398% ± 0.156% (t=2.56 against a threshold of 2.00, 69 real groups, 5,650 sham dates, draw error ±0.018%)
- benchmarktechnique +0.37% · buy and hold (same horizon) +0.01% · excess +0.36%
- out of sampleasset half A: +0.294% (t=1.57, 52 episodes) · asset half B: +0.461% (t=2.05, 42 episodes) · liquid half (>= US$ 0/day): +0.366% (t=2.37, 69 episodes) · period 1/4 (2020-01-30 a 2021-07-02): +0.214% (t=0.61, 18 episodes) · period 2/4 (2021-07-08 a 2023-01-26): +0.233% (t=0.73, 19 episodes) · period 3/4 (2023-02-02 a 2024-10-18): +0.638% (t=3.16, 17 episodes) · period 4/4 (2024-10-24 a 2026-03-16): +0.379% (t=1.17, 17 episodes)
- multiple testing1 variation(s) tested · t=2.37 across 69 episodes (equivalent to t=2.33) · p≈0.0198 · false positives expected by chance ≈ 0.02
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
- 809
- 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
- +0.37%
- net per trade
- +0.37%
- exit rule
- the auditor's fixed horizon (10 bars)
- horizon bars
- 10
- spread pips
- 1.0
- episode days
- 12
- seed
- 20260728
- RSI period
- 14
- oversold
- 30.0
- overbought
- 70.0
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
A specific, falsifiable prediction, written without having run anything: the RSI in forex comes out INCONCLUSIVE, and for a DIFFERENT reason than in crypto. In crypto it died at cost — the signal was smaller than the fee. In forex the fee is ~20× lower, so cost stops being the killer; what kills is the effect being too small for 2 pairs and ~90 trades to distinguish from zero. If it PASSES here, my reading that short-term reversion does not survive controls is wrong, and the finding is a big one. Context that informs this prediction, declared so that it can be assessed: (a) the corpus has 101 claims in crypto, 4 of them passed — all from the moving average crossover family; (b) the available forex universe is only 2 pairs (EUR/USD, GBP/USD) over 6.5 years, against 540 pairs and 9 years in crypto, which gives ~88 trades against ~8,600; (c) the cost of turnover in forex is ~20× lower (1 pip ≈ 0.009% against 0.2% commission), so control 2 stops being the main killer; (d) I ran ONE smoke test on the 20/50 crossover and saw the result — see the disclosure in its own hypothesis.
filed on 2026-07-29, before the number existed
The original, as it was filed
Previsão específica e falsificável, escrita sem ter rodado: o RSI em forex sai INCONCLUSIVO, e por um motivo DIFERENTE do de cripto. Em cripto ele morreu no custo — o sinal era menor que a taxa. Em forex a taxa é ~20× menor, então o custo deixa de ser o matador; o que mata é o efeito ser pequeno demais para 2 pares e ~90 operações distinguirem de zero. Se ele APROVAR aqui, minha leitura de que reversão de curto prazo não sobrevive a controle está errada, e o achado é grande. Contexto que informa esta previsão, declarado para que ela seja avaliável: (a) o corpus tem 101 alegações em cripto, das quais 4 aprovadas — todas da família do cruzamento de médias; (b) o universo de forex disponível é de apenas 2 pares (EUR/USD, GBP/USD) em 6,5 anos, contra 540 pares e 9 anos em cripto, o que dá ~88 operações contra ~8.600; (c) o custo do giro em forex é ~20× menor (1 pip ≈ 0,009% contra 0,2% de comissão), então o controle 2 deixa de ser o principal matador; (d) ⚠️ rodei UM ensaio de fumaça no cruzamento 20/50 e vi o resultado — ver a divulgação na hipótese dele.
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.
- 2026-08-03PASSEDopen ↗
- this measurement →PASSED