We backtested 49 famous trading strategies with fees on. Almost none had an edge.
We coded 49 of the most-taught trading strategies to exact mechanical rules and ran 154 backtests — 127,817 trades across 4 markets — on real market data with trading costs on. 0 earned a verified edge; 5 were conditional. The rest don't beat their own costs.
What we did
Every strategy here is coded to an exact, mechanical rule set — no discretion — and run bar by bar on a full year of real market data across Gold (PAXG), ETH, BTC, EUR (EURUSDT), with realistic trading costs turned on. Each one is then scored 0–100 by the Secuora Verification Score (SVS): a transparent measure of whether it has a real edge after costs, rewarding sample size, profit factor, drawdown control and how many markets it survives. The full method is published at /methodology.
The headline: the raw, unfiltered version of almost every famous setup — the one sold in a 10-minute video — does not clear the fee hurdle on its own. Where an edge exists, it usually lives in the filtering and instrument selection on top, not the entry trigger.
Every strategy, scored
| Strategy | Category | SVS | Profit factor | Markets + | Trades | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100-bar high/low breakout | Breakout | 55 | 0.96 | 2/4 | 678 | Conditional Edge |
| Break of structure (BOS) | ICT / Smart Money | 55 | 0.96 | 2/4 | 561 | Conditional Edge |
| Donchian 55 channel breakout | Breakout | 52 | 0.89 | 2/4 | 962 | Conditional Edge |
| Inside-bar breakout | Breakout | 52 | 0.98 | 1/4 | 398 | Conditional Edge |
| Market structure shift continuation | ICT / Smart Money | 49 | 0.92 | 1/4 | 690 | Conditional Edge |
| Previous-day high/low break | Breakout | 45 | 0.96 | 0/2 | 145 | Weak / Unverified |
| Donchian 20-bar breakout | Breakout | 39 | 0.88 | 0/2 | 803 | Weak / Unverified |
| Fair value gap retrace (1H) | ICT / Smart Money | 38 | 0.66 | 1/4 | 341 | Weak / Unverified |
| Bullish/bearish engulfing reversal | Price Action | 36 | 0.76 | 1/4 | 1,235 | Weak / Unverified |
| Stochastic %K/%D cross | Mean Reversion | 34 | 0.81 | 0/2 | 1,015 | Weak / Unverified |
| Opening Range Breakout (NY, 30m) | Breakout | 32 | 0.73 | 0/2 | 820 | Weak / Unverified |
| Over-extension mean reversion | Mean Reversion | 32 | 0.73 | 0/2 | 445 | Weak / Unverified |
| 200 EMA bounce (trend + pullback) | Trend / Momentum | 31 | 0.70 | 0/4 | 664 | Weak / Unverified |
| Rate-of-change momentum | Trend / Momentum | 31 | 0.70 | 0/2 | 261 | Weak / Unverified |
| Bollinger squeeze breakout | Breakout | 29 | 0.79 | 0/2 | 1,010 | Weak / Unverified |
| EMA 20/50 trend cross | Trend / Momentum | 29 | 0.67 | 0/4 | 585 | Weak / Unverified |
| RSI(7) 20/80 reversion | Mean Reversion | 27 | 0.69 | 0/4 | 951 | Weak / Unverified |
| Three-bar mean reversion | Mean Reversion | 26 | 0.72 | 0/4 | 2,227 | Weak / Unverified |
| Pin bar (hammer / shooting star) reversal | Price Action | 26 | 0.72 | 0/4 | 2,118 | Weak / Unverified |
| EMA 12/26 cross | Trend / Momentum | 26 | 0.65 | 0/4 | 916 | Weak / Unverified |
| EMA 50/200 golden cross | Trend / Momentum | 26 | 0.59 | 0/2 | 107 | Weak / Unverified |
| Donchian 20 channel breakout | Breakout | 25 | 0.71 | 0/4 | 6,159 | Weak / Unverified |
| Connors RSI(2) mean reversion | Mean Reversion | 25 | 0.71 | 0/4 | 2,342 | Weak / Unverified |
| RSI(14) 30/70 reversion | Mean Reversion | 25 | 0.63 | 0/4 | 769 | Weak / Unverified |
| MACD zero-line cross (≡ EMA 12/26 cross) | Trend / Momentum | 25 | 0.70 | 0/2 | 559 | Weak / Unverified |
| MACD signal-line crossover | Trend / Momentum | 24 | 0.65 | 0/4 | 1,291 | No Edge |
| HTF trend + EMA pullback | Trend / Momentum | 24 | 0.68 | 0/2 | 1,252 | No Edge |
| ICT Silver Bullet (NY AM window) | ICT / Smart Money | 24 | 0.48 | 0/4 | 393 | No Edge |
| Bollinger band bounce | Mean Reversion | 23 | 0.66 | 0/4 | 2,856 | No Edge |
| RSI(14) mean reversion (30/70 cross) | Mean Reversion | 23 | 0.67 | 0/2 | 2,674 | No Edge |
| Volume-spike breakout | Breakout | 22 | 0.65 | 0/4 | 3,832 | No Edge |
| London Session Breakout (08:00, 30m range) | Breakout | 22 | 0.63 | 0/2 | 917 | No Edge |
| 8/21 EMA crossover | Trend / Momentum | 21 | 0.58 | 0/4 | 3,637 | No Edge |
| Fair value gap retrace | ICT / Smart Money | 21 | 0.60 | 0/4 | 1,274 | No Edge |
| Displacement into FVG | ICT / Smart Money | 21 | 0.42 | 0/4 | 1,217 | No Edge |
| Momentum scalping (1m displacement + breakout) | Scalping | 20 | 0.18 | 0/2 | 26,786 | No Edge |
| VWAP bounce | Mean Reversion | 20 | 0.40 | 0/4 | 13,801 | No Edge |
| EMA 9/21 fast cross | Scalping | 20 | 0.45 | 0/4 | 12,437 | No Edge |
| Liquidity sweep reversal | ICT / Smart Money | 20 | 0.21 | 0/4 | 7,151 | No Edge |
| Liquidity sweep reversal | ICT / Smart Money | 20 | 0.26 | 0/2 | 6,631 | No Edge |
| VWAP trend (hold above/below) | Trend / Momentum | 20 | 0.54 | 0/2 | 5,654 | No Edge |
| Displacement momentum | ICT / Smart Money | 20 | 0.57 | 0/4 | 2,490 | No Edge |
| FVG entry after 10:00 (NY) | ICT / Smart Money | 20 | 0.43 | 0/2 | 2,232 | No Edge |
| Liquidity sweep reversal (1H) | ICT / Smart Money | 20 | 0.35 | 0/4 | 1,986 | No Edge |
| Turtle Soup (intraday sweep of a deeper swing) | ICT / Smart Money | 20 | 0.23 | 0/2 | 1,600 | No Edge |
| ICT Silver Bullet (relaxed: sweep + FVG, no same-candle MSS) | ICT / Smart Money | 20 | 0.11 | 0/2 | 93 | No Edge |
| NY Opening Drive (displacement + breakout, 09:30–10:30) | Breakout | 19 | 0.43 | 0/2 | 568 | No Edge |
| Power Hour momentum (15:00–16:00 NY) | Scalping | 19 | 0.39 | 0/2 | 282 | No Edge |
| ICT Silver Bullet (AM) | ICT / Smart Money | 18 | 0.00 | 0/2 | 2 | Insufficient Sample |
SVS = Secuora Verification Score (0–100). Profit factor is gross profit ÷ gross loss, aggregated across markets, costs on. "Markets +" = markets where the strategy was net profitable.
Run your own strategy through the same engine
Write any strategy in plain English and Secuora backtests it bar by bar on real data with fees on — the same deterministic engine behind this study. Free to try, no card.