Volatility Breakout
The claim: That when price bursts out of a quiet range, momentum carries it — just ride the break.
+$20k in one lucky year → −$7,700 across the full 3.5 years.
How it actually works
You wait for a period of compression, then enter in the direction of the breakout, betting that the expansion continues.
On the right slice of history it looks spectacular — because that slice happened to be one long trending regime.
We tested it
Twelve cherry-picked months returned +$20k. Extend the same rules across the full 3.5 years and it gives back everything and more: −$7,700.
The 'edge' was one favourable regime, not a repeatable effect.
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
A backtest that spans only one market regime is not a backtest — it's a story about that regime. Always test across bull, bear, and chop.
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.