Myths · Busted
Luck looks exactly like skill — for about a year
10,000 zero-edge traders, five years, real costs. The market mints geniuses on schedule; the second year takes them back.
✓ 10,000 traders · 5 yrs · seeded & reproducibleMyths · Nº 001 · Monte Carlo, 10,000 traders
Your first winning streak is the most expensive thing you will ever own
We simulated 10,000 traders with zero edge — every trade a coin flip. After one year, 151 of them were up 25% or more and the best was up 58%. Only two repeated it. Here is how to tell whether your edge is skill, or the luck that precedes the loss.
Read the full backtest →10,000
Simulated traders
151
Up ≥ 25% in year one
2
Repeated it in year two
−25.9%
Median after 5 years
In the club
Methods · House Rules
How we test: the rules every backtest here must pass
Costs included, out-of-sample tested, full distribution shown, code published. If a strategy can't survive these rules, it can't survive your account.
✓ Every post ships its code & dataIn the queue
The golden crossover vs. buy-and-hold: 20 years, trade by trade
The most-shared strategy on trading YouTube, run on two decades of index data with real costs. Whatever comes out gets published — especially if it's ugly.
Backtest in progress