Most sites show you winners. We show you the failures first.

The claim

We tested two combinations of the Watchdog (cycle filter) and Tactician (30-day momentum) bots. Option B: 50/50 independent capital split. Option C: Watchdog-gated (Tactician trades only when Watchdog=LONG). Continuous-run results looked excellent — Option C returned +218% vs Watchdog-solo's +202% with lower drawdown. Looked like a strict upgrade.

Root cause

Split the data into 3 non-overlapping windows. Neither combo reliably beats Watchdog-solo. Option C: wins 1/3 windows on return (loses W2 by 7pp, W3 by 17pp). Option B: wins 1/3 windows on return AND 1/3 on drawdown. The +218% edge was W1-dominated — a bear-market artifact that doesn't generalize to bull regimes.

Lesson

Continuous backtests can look great and still fail walk-forward. The 3-window check is the truth serum. Both combos provide marginal drawdown protection at meaningful return cost in most regimes. Neither is a clean upgrade over Watchdog-solo. Signal correlation (~70%) means the combos don't diversify enough to overcome the fees and tax friction they add.

The claim

Scout (Hash Rate Momentum) was originally promoted as a live paper-trading bot. Honest backtest over 6 years: +575% bot vs +2,147% HODL. Scout loses to buy-and-hold by a ~1,572 percentage-point margin over the full window.

Root cause

Scout performs well in specific regime slices (2022-2024) but terribly in others (2020-2022). Averaging hides the fact that it systematically underperforms during strong trending markets, which make up most of the BTC 6-year record.

Lesson

A strategy can look great in a cherry-picked window and still fail the honest benchmark. BACKTEST-only label keeps the bot visible on the /bots page as an educational artifact, not a recommendation.

The claim

An attempt to rebuild the Scout around a different signal: Donchian 20-day breakout with 50-day SMA regime filter, 15% TP / 5% SL, 10-day time stop, positive-funding requirement. Continuous backtest 2020-2026: +156% over 71 trades. Looked clean.

Root cause

Walk-forward split the 6 years into 3 equal windows. Scout v2 lost to HODL by 346pp in W1 (biggest BTC bull in history), lost by 32pp in W2 (mid-cycle recovery), won by 10pp only in W3 (quiet consolidation where HODL itself was weak). Fixed TP/SL ratios too tight for BTC volatility — the bot missed the asymmetric upside that makes HODL hard to beat.

Lesson

A continuous backtest can look presentable and still fail walk-forward. This is the third strategy in a week (after Options B and C of the Watchdog+Tactician combo) where the 3-window check killed a result that seemed promising on the full period. The Scout family — mid-frequency trend-following on BTC daily — appears structurally disadvantaged vs HODL in asymmetric markets.

The claim

Inverse-vol-weighted Momentum Top 20 US stocks. Backtest +412% vs SPY +212%, -41% MaxDD (vs Alpha Hunter's -53%). Ran one paper rebalance with 20 positions. Looked promising.

Root cause

Same asset class (US large-cap stocks) and same signal family (momentum) as the existing Alpha Hunter. It would have diluted the bot lineup with a near-duplicate strategy that readers couldn't distinguish at a glance. The 'same alpha, less pain' pitch was real but marginal, and it violated the unique-angle filter we apply to new bots.

Lesson

Not every backtest-positive strategy deserves a production slot. Quality bar: unique asset class OR unique signal family. Alpha Hunter Light failed both tests.

The claim

Classic RSI(14) oversold-overbought bot. Tested on 6 years of BTC daily data. 58 trades. 28% win rate. Lost money in every parameter configuration tested.

Root cause

RSI is a mean-reversion indicator. Bitcoin does not mean-revert on daily scale. It trends. Trend-persistence dominates mean reversion in the base rate of BTC price action. RSI buy-signals (oversold bounces) are wiped out by continuation.

Lesson

Popular doesn't equal working. An indicator can be ubiquitous in financial media and still fail a proper test. RSI survives because it looks right on cherry-picked charts. On the full history, it's negative-expectation.