Arena Blog

Every additional backtest run increases the chance of finding good results by luck. The Deflated Sharpe Ratio (DSR) corrects for exactly this: it measures whether your result is real — or the best noise from N trials. Pro+ feature.

Win rate alone says little. The new Details tab shows four metrics serious backtester care about: SQN, Expectancy, Profit Factor, and a monthly/yearly breakdown of every trade.

LLMs don't trade profitably. But why would anyone expect them to? The honest answer is uncomfortable: nobody can see the future, and markets are explicitly the opposite of a forecasting machine — they're a mechanism for the ongoing negotiation of disagreement. On the Grossman-Stiglitz paradox, why one side of every trade is convinced it's smarter than the other, and why AI trading tools mathematically neutralize themselves the moment they become widespread.

A new strategy is live: Gerald Appel's MACD from the 1970s, now fully tunable (default 12/26/9). Two trade modes — classic signal cross or histogram flip — give you a reactive and a confirming variant from one indicator.

A new strategy is live: BB+RSI combines two classics into a strict mean-reversion setup. BUY only when price is at the lower Bollinger band AND RSI is oversold — two conditions, fewer false signals. Pro+.

A new strategy is live: two configurable EMAs cross — BUY on the upward cross, SELL on the downward cross. Default 9/21, faster and more tunable than Golden Cross. Plus optional volume- or price-confirmation filter to fight whipsaws.

The Take-Profit / Re-Entry strategy combines two simple rules: sell when your target gain is reached, re-enter when price drops enough from the post-sell high. No indicator noise — just price and two parameters.

Grid bots are marketed as "low-risk" and, with AI, as a source of "consistent profits." We checked the claims against the mechanics: a grid earns on sideways oscillation, not trends — and "always trading" means trend-chasing. A fair breakdown, plus how to actually evaluate a grid bot.

High funding rates signal overheated longs — a warning. Negative funding means shorts capitulating — a buy signal. The logic seems solid. We tested it across 6.7 years of BTC data. The results were the opposite of what we expected.

A new strategy is live: John Bollinger's classic volatility-cycle play. Wait for the bands to squeeze tight, then ride the long breakout above the upper band. Default 20/2.0/0.1. Pro+.

Most traders writing their own backtests accidentally look into the future. The result: spectacular backtests, collapsing live performance. A look at the subtlest methodology mistake in systematic trading — from the common `shift(-N)` to the innocuous `.mean()` aggregation without rolling window — and why we manually check every Backtesting Arena strategy for bias before release.

A buy signal fires — but the unlock calendar says a large tranche of supply hits the market in nine days. Do you take the trade? Using Hyperliquid and the FDV debate as the case: what the FDV-to-market-cap ratio really means, what token unlocks empirically do to price — and the one point-in-time trap that quietly makes almost every retroactive test worthless.