
Arena Blog
Data-driven insights on trading strategies, backtests, and market analysis.
73–84 of 153 posts · page 7 of 13
Bollinger Bands + RSI is live — the strict mean-reversion play
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+.
EMA Cross is live — the configurable cousin of Golden Cross
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.
New strategy: Take-Profit / Re-Entry — lock in gains, buy the dip
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.
You're Building with AI Coding Agents. Your Codebase Is Drifting. Here's Why — and the Fix.
We wrote 500 lines of rules. Claude read them — and still wrote text-[13px] instead of text-xs. The mistake wasn't Claude. The mistake was confusing documentation with enforcement.
Grid trading bots, honestly evaluated — what "consistent profits" leaves out
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.
Funding Rates as a BTC Signal: We Tested It. It Doesn't Work The Way You Would Think
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.
Bollinger Bands Squeeze is live — when the bands get tight
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+.
Look-Ahead-Bias — The Most Common Mistake in Self-Built Backtests, and Why 200% Returns Usually Lie
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.
AI-Crypto Is Not a Monolith: Four Categories — and the One Test That Separates Substance From Narrative
"AI-crypto" trades as one sector but is at least four different things on different layers of the stack: payment rails (Solana, Base, Sui, Tempo), agent frameworks (Virtuals, ElizaOS, Fetch/ASI), decentralized intelligence (Bittensor) and decentralized compute (Render, Akash, io.net). A map of the most relevant projects per category — and one test cutting across all of them to show where real substance sits and where a narrative was simply built around a token: is the token structurally necessary, or just present?
Which Layer 1 Is Built Best for AI Agent Payments? ETH, SOL, SUI — and the Chains Leapfrogging Them
AI agents pay per API call, per query, per compute slice — median $0.01–0.10. That kills card rails and makes the blockchain architecture the real question. A detailed comparison of Ethereum, Solana and Sui against the actual requirements (sub-cent fees, sub-second finality, programmable spend limits, identity) — plus the purpose-built payment chains Tempo and Arc that may be technically further ahead but barely adopted. The honest answer has no single winner.
How to Backtest Token Unlocks: FDV, Dilution & the Hyperliquid Lesson
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.
Three Waves Instead of One — What the LTH Distribution Pattern Says About the Bitcoin Cycle
Before 2021, every Bitcoin cycle had one major distribution phase in which long-term holders transferred coins to short-term holders. The current cycle broke that pattern — we've seen three separate distribution waves, each triggered by independent institutional demand shocks (ETF launch, 100k break, summer 2025 rally). An honest engagement with four possible readings, why the old 4-year heuristic is methodologically damaged, and what that means for cycle-based trading strategies.
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