The Research Ledger
Every pattern we tested, one page each
Each of these was written down in full — the exact rule, the pass and fail thresholds, the data window — and cryptographically fingerprinted before the test was run, so the goalposts could not move afterwards. Every one of them then failed. The individual verdicts matter less than what they have in common.
Chart patterns and candlestick setups
0 for 14Fourteen named chart patterns, each pre-registered and tested on its own. None survived. Two findings recur often enough to be worth more than the individual verdicts: the patterns usually measured the market rather than the stock, and the specific clause a pattern is named for was frequently the part subtracting value.
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Does the bull flag pattern work?
The pole is the only live part of the pattern. Every flag condition made the result worse.
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Does MACD divergence work?
The loose version changed the outcome by less than one hundredth of a percent. The strict version widened both tails.
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Does breakout and retest work?
The setups the rule throws away outperformed the ones it keeps.
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Does buying the dip after a spike work?
The first pattern in this family to lose money significantly rather than merely do nothing.
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Does a big RSI drop mark a buying opportunity?
The family's only statistically significant result, and it vanished completely once we accounted for when it fired.
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Do three shrinking red candles signal a bottom?
The only chart pattern that beat all its own control groups — and it still could not clear the error bars.
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Does a tight base after a sharp drop work?
Removing the base conditions improved the result. The base was the problem.
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Does a capitulation candle signal a reversal?
Adding each condition made the result monotonically worse. The complete pattern was the worst version of all.
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Does buying stocks that close at the day's high work?
Stocks closing at the day's low beat stocks closing at the day's high, by a small but real margin.
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Does 'holding above the midpoint' confirm a move?
The setups the midpoint rule eliminates did better than the setups it approves.
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Does RSI rising while price stays flat mean accumulation?
The same RSI lift, where price confirmed it instead of contradicting it, performed better.
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Does buying a moving-average reclaim pullback work?
A positive average, a negative median, and one year of 2013 carrying the entire result.
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Does waiting for confirmation before buying help?
Worse than the worst of ten random delays. For momentum entries the earliest price is the best price.
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Does the shape of a pullback predict the recovery?
The strongest signal found was weaker than the average strongest signal that pure chance produces.
This is a fraction of what has been tested
192 experiments have been through this process and 105 were rejected outright. The ones with their own page here are the patterns people ask about most. The research ledger covers the rest — exit rules, momentum variants, seasonality, sector rotation, short interest — and the eight ways a backtest can lie to you, which turned out to be more reusable than any edge the programme ever found.