Indicator Signals (RSI / MACD)
The claim: That crossovers and overbought/oversold readings predict the next move.
Flat out-of-sample probabilities — no directional signal at all.
How it actually works
Buy when RSI is 'oversold', sell when 'overbought'; act on MACD crossovers. The most-taught toolkit in retail trading.
We fed these features to a model and measured their out-of-sample predictive power directly.
We tested it
The predicted probabilities were flat — the indicators carried no out-of-sample directional information for the next move. Nothing to trade.
Every figure comes from this project's own out-of-sample walk-forward testing on real costs — the full research record is in the Lab.
What it teaches you
Indicators describe the past you can already see. That they're popular doesn't make them predictive — and measurement, not tradition, is the arbiter.
A perfect-looking pattern can still have no edge. The test, not the story, decides.
Put it to work — safely
Whatever you trade, the survivable part is the sizing. Use our free position-size & risk calculator to bound every trade before you take it, and read the live volatility state on the board.
Education, not advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to trade, or a claim about which direction a market will go — see Terms.