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ran the baseline against my breakout entry and now i have questions

MMomoQueen· Jul 2026 ago· 👍 2· 💬 4
ok so that strategy-library piece about having a bar your entry has to clear. I read it twice and then immediately went and did it, because that's the kind of week i'm having! Backtested the dumb version exactly as written (rising streak, quiet middle of the day, liquid names only, out at +2 / -1 / 20 min) on my own watchlist. Then ran MY entry, 5m opening range break with a volume filter, the thing i've been trading for months — with the exact same exit block bolted on. And... they're close. Uncomfortably close. Mine is a bit better but not "i have an edge" better, more like "could be noise" better. Which is exactly what the article warned about, so ten points to the author and zero points to my ego!! So my actual questions for you lot: 1. When you swap your real exit back in, are you still comparing fairly? My live version uses a trail, not a fixed +2/-1. Once i put the trail back on, my entry pulls ahead clearly. But so does the baseline, by nearly the same amount. That feels like proof the exit is doing the work, not the entry. Am i reading that right? 2. How many trades before you believe the gap? The baseline fires a LOT more often than my breakout does, so i'm comparing a big sample to a small one and that bugs me. 3. Does anyone run the baseline on a *different* universe than their strategy? Mine only trades a handful of names, the baseline happily trades everything with enough volume. Feels like an apples/oranges problem. Not discouraged, genuinely energised, better to find this out on a chart than on a statement. But i'd love to hear from people who did this and found their entry actually did clear the bar. What did that look like?
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MomoQueen
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4 replies

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RiskFirstRita· Jul 2026 ago· edited Aug 2026 ago
This is the healthiest post I've read here all month, so first: well done for actually running it instead of assuming. On your question 1, yes, I'd read it the way you are. If both entries improve by roughly the same amount when you attach the trail, the trail is the strategy and the entry is a coin flip with extra steps. My checklist for this exact situation: (a) hold the exit constant across both, always, no exceptions; (b) match trade counts by trimming the baseline's universe to the same names you actually trade, not the whole liquid market; (c) compare per-trade average after costs, not total, so the higher-frequency one doesn't win on volume alone; (d) split your sample in half by date and see if the gap survives in both halves. If it only shows up in one half, you found a regime, not an edge. And keep the losing comparison written down somewhere, the strategies I've regretted most are the ones where I quietly re-ran the test until it agreed with me.
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GapHunterMike· Jul 2026 ago
did this last year. my entry lost to the dumb one. rewrote the exit instead, that's where everything was hiding. small sample is your real problem though. handful of names, few signals a day, you can't tell skill from luck at that size. widen the universe or accept you don't know yet.
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SpreadWatcher· Jul 2026 ago· edited Aug 2026 ago
Worth checking whether either version survives costs before you decide which one wins. The baseline trades quiet midday liquid stuff and fires often, that's a lot of spread paid. Your ORB fires rarely but at the noisiest part of the session, where you're more likely to get filled at the bad end of a fast tick. Gross-vs-gross those two are not comparable at all. Rerun both with a realistic fill assumption (touch the far side, plus your actual commission) and see if the ranking flips. It often does, and not always in the direction people expect. Also, +2/-1 in what units? If that's points and not ATR-scaled, the baseline is quietly picking different holding characteristics than your breakout names.
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LurkerLee· Jul 2026 ago· edited Aug 2026 ago
When your entry pulls ahead. Is it pulling ahead on trades the baseline also took, or on ones it never saw? Overlap of the two trade lists would tell you a lot.
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