been building trading bots for a while and got tired of strategies that look good on a chart and die live. so i ran 13 common setups through 2 years of data with real costs.

10 failed. the 3 that held up:
gold pullback after the opening range, profit factor 1.52
gold afternoon trend, profit factor 1.40
nasdaq prior day breakout, profit factor 1.46

biggest lesson: most "high win rate" setups lost money once you add slippage and fees. the ones that survived win around half the time but make more on wins than they lose.

happy to answer questions on how i tested them

So I’ve been working on a bot for about 2 weeks now and I’m just looking for someone to help me out and share ideas and strategies with.

I’m running multiple different strategies and some are good one day some are bad the next, I’m basically focusing on meme coins reason being is, one lucky or planned buy could change your whole week and there has to be a pattern to it, my goal is to build a bot that can average 10-20$ an hr and build off of that

If you have any advice or strategies or would like to get ahold of me add me on discord, gigrig01. I’d be down to make a group and see just how far we could push our ideas to make us money. If you have no idea about bots but you know how to make money on the market you are more than welcome to add me or dm me, passive income is something I’m extremely interested in

TL;DR: Quants are right about intraday: it's a brutal competitive game, you won't win by drawing resistance lines or using ICT concepts. But at low frequency, you can't statistically prove an edge for years, returns mostly come from factor exposure, and the real risk is quitting during a drawdown. That's where "retail" stuff like having a plan and position sizing actually matters and you can even find good strategies.

1. Why quants are right about intraday

First question: where does intraday profit come from? My answer: statistical arbitrage. If you make money intraday, it's because your trades make the market a bit more efficient, and you get paid for that.

Which means retail intraday traders compete directly with quant firms that have better data, better infrastructure and lower costs. Nice chart drawings don't win that fight. Yes, some retail intraday traders make money, and people call it survivorship bias.

A lot of retail content is about "perfect execution" and "the mindset to follow your plan". My question for them: why don't you automate your plan? You'd get perfect execution, and you could run it on multiple assets. But if your plan is bad, you'll have to face it.

Intraday trading is really hard, for retail and pro firms alike. You get paid for the value your trades bring to the market, and the competition is huge.

2. At low frequency, it's less clear

A) You can't prove an edge in a reasonable time

Simple t-test on your annual returns: the t-stat is just your Sharpe times the square root of the number of years. To be significant at 5%, you need T > (1.96 / Sharpe)² years of data.

https://preview.redd.it/e8gcnwkamnuh1.png?width=2400&format=png&auto=webp&s=adb058e724b6a0e30501e3d1e9747aa8ac1a2dc7

So with a low-frequency strategy, you'll basically never know statistically whether you have an edge.

B) So where does the money come from, and why does psychology matter?

At low frequency, most returns come from factor exposure (beta, momentum, etc.), not from a statistical edge. Example: my Ichimoku strategy on BTC (classic 9/26/52 settings, long or cash, 0.1% fees) vs buy and hold. I've been running it live since May 2023.

https://preview.redd.it/wibeg2vuhnuh1.png?width=2600&format=png&auto=webp&s=577166fa55bb258c355f42cb5d6c1d3c44bba848

Metric	Ichimoku	Buy & Hold BTC
CAGR (2015 → 2026)	69%	60%
Max drawdown	-47%	-84%
Longest drawdown	785 days	1,079 days
Time in market	47%	100%
Sharpe backtest (2015 → Apr 2023)	1.52 (t = 4.4)	1.10 (t = 3.2)
Sharpe live (May 2023 → Oct 2026)	1.05 (t = 1.94)	0.89 (t = 1.64)

Funny thing: the live Sharpe is 1.05 over 3.45 years, so t = 1.94. Just below 1.96. That's exactly what the chart in part A says: with a Sharpe of 1, you need ~4 years.

And even a significant Sharpe doesn't mean you have an edge: buy and hold is significant too and looks great on a chart.

But would you have kept holding at -84%, and stayed underwater for almost 3 years? Easy to say yes looking back. Much harder when you're living it. Ichimoku's worst drawdown was -47%, and it sat in cash more than half the time.

Do I have an edge with Ichimoku on BTC? I don't fucking know. But I can explain the bet I'm making. Ichimoku is a trend-following tool, so it's basically exposure to time-series momentum, a well-documented factor (Moskowitz, Ooi & Pedersen, 2012). Crypto is a FOMO-driven market that trends hard, and that's where Ichimoku shines. It fails when the market goes nowhere, or on pump and dumps.

So my bet is simple: "Bitcoin will keep trending."

Conclusion

Here's the difference. In intraday, the psychological risk is execution, and automation fixes it. At low frequency, the risk is giving up on the strategy during a year-long drawdown, and even an automated system gets switched off by a human who panics.

That's why retail concepts like having a plan, money management and position sizing can actually save people who aren't full quants. A properly systematic strategy is still better. But at low frequency, the money comes from factor exposure, and what makes the difference is choosing the right one at the right time. I'm not sure the classical quant approach is the only way to do that well.

Momentum reference: Moskowitz, Ooi & Pedersen (2012), Time Series Momentum: https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2089463

Data: angolin.com, a crypto data provider I'm building. The daily BTC history used here is available there if you want to rerun the backtest yourself.

https://preview.redd.it/v90zt4c0fruh1.png?width=423&format=png&auto=webp&s=471ee73ab82cf43cd9d18f075ac8dda9dd189b2d

When we are in bullrun and pulls back into the band I found its a good time to buy. I get average net of 6.9% in my replay when closing after only 2 days. Anyone taking these trades? Im sharing the trades the bot takes (for free) but I dont think we are allowed to post links so I wont do that.

Created a bot, copy trading 5 secs after the wallet, operational, profitable, but struggling to find reliable swing wallets? Any tips? Calls on dune, birdeye,...🦾