PINE DIGGA
— The ledger

Every backtest we have, including the ones that failed.

Fourteen configurations, each measured twice: on the twelve months it was tuned on, and on years that existed before the tuning and could not have influenced it. Both numbers sit in the same row.

3 / 14

Three reproduced outside the window that selected them.Six landed within a few points of break-even. Five lost — and every one of those five is a 5-minute lane. A table that showed only the survivors would be the ordinary kind of table, and it would tell you nothing you could check.

How to read a row

The left half is the tuning window. That is how results are normally published and the reason such tables flatter: a setting chosen because it worked on a stretch of data will, by construction, work on that stretch. The right half is the same configuration on earlier data. Nothing re-fitted, nothing re-chosen.

The convention

Fixed sizing — every position risks 1% of the same $100,000, never of the account as it stands. Compounding would flatter these by roughly 20% and make two settings look far apart when the only real difference was the order the trades arrived in. Gold is OANDA, MGC is COMEX, crypto is Bybit throughout.

Winners — reproduced outside their window

profit factor above 1.05 out of sample
SleeveTFNetPFWinMax DDTradesOut of sampleNetPFTrades
Gold Scalps15m+29,7002.2244%4,10043Jan 2022 – May 2025+47,0901.371183
Split again inside its own out-of-sample window: +11,729 (PF 1.154) then +34,062 (PF 1.543) — it strengthens. Re-run with the original unscaled preset it gives +47,080 against +47,090, so it owes nothing to the price rescaling applied to the other gold rows.
ETH Scalps v115m+41,3001.966,40071Oct 2020 – Jul 2025+62,2291.285310
Halves +52,035 (PF 1.523) then +8,788 (PF 1.072) — positive in both, but decaying. The campaign reported PF 1.96; the honest trajectory is 1.52 → 1.07. Zero adoptions: the inherited engine ships untouched.
BTC Magic5m+6,2121.1725%10,98544Jan 2024 – Jul 2025+20,5451.34870
In-sample corrected 31 Aug 2026: this row first read +11,466 / PF 1.36 / 39, which was the campaign's own 365-day window wearing the label of the longer span every other sleeve is measured over. Over that span the lane is +6,212 / PF 1.167 / 44; over its own 365 days, +10,417 / PF 1.317 / 40. The out-of-sample column is unchanged and was re-measured to the cent. Still the newest and thinnest of the three: one window, and a chosen one. Its fixed-dollar stop was 2.10% of BTC in 2020 and 0.25% in 2025, so the test was restricted in advance to the stretch where that scale is closest to the one it was measured at. Ships behind a toggle, default off, because it earns roughly what it draws down.

Only the first two carry evidence across a long window and a split half. The narrowest honest statement of what has been demonstrated is this: the Scalp lane on the 15-minute chart, on gold and on ETH. Everything else on this page is flat or worse.

Flat — neither reproduced nor collapsed

profit factor 0.90 – 1.05
SleeveTFNetPFWinMax DDTradesOut of sampleNetPFTrades
Gold Regulars5m+21,5002.2443%9,20030Jan 2022 – May 2025+371.00167
ETH Scalps age755m1.40178Oct 2020 – Jul 2025−4,3760.993869
Never shipped as a year-round preset. It is seasonal, and the season is below.
MGC Magic v115m+38,8003.0939%6,60023Jan 2022 – Aug 2025−2,5970.95991
Twenty-three trades in the tuning window is a sample, not a track record — and it produced the highest profit factor on this page.
BTC Scalps v115m+21,1001.388,30081Mar 2020 – Jul 2025−13,0990.953362
BTC Magic v115m+17,1001.486,30049Mar 2020 – Jul 2025−12,8990.939260
Forty-nine trades, and its tuning-window edge rests on three or four winners per half.
Gold Regulars15m+13,1002.6647%2,00015Jan 2022 – May 2025−1,3220.93125
Fifteen trades. The thinnest sample in the catalogue, and it produced the second-highest profit factor.

The two thinnest samples here — 15 and 23 trades — produced two of the highest profit factors on their own year and two of the weakest afterwards. Read the trade count before the profit factor, always.

Losers — and all five are 5-minute lanes

profit factor below 0.90
SleeveTFNetPFWinMax DDTradesOut of sampleNetPFTrades
MGC Scalp v15m+56,6001.8739%6,900105May 2022 – Aug 2024−12,9320.844115
BTC Scalps v25m+40,6001.4713,800128Mar 2020 – Jul 2025−99,4820.828733
Its tuning-window result is also sequence-fragile: blocking a single net entry re-orders the rest of the year and moves the total by 30,232. The 138-against-137 trade count hides two very different lists.
Gold Magic5m+43,9001.8146%6,90093Jan 2022 – May 2025−41,4820.809311
ETH Magic5m+15,2231.4331.3%17,21248Mar 2021 – Jul 2025−37,7590.811223
Both out-of-sample halves lose — −36,284 then −1,475 — and the whole window drew down 66,662, two-thirds of the account. Its tuning year also drew down more than it made: 17,212 against 15,223, a reward-to-risk of 0.88:1, which said the same thing on 48 trades that 223 later confirmed.
Gold Scalps5m+25,1002.7650%4,10028Jan 2022 – May 2025−53,7910.534135
Hot-regime only, so its tuning-window curve covers April–August rather than the full year. The gold rows were re-run with every dollar threshold rescaled by the 0.614 price ratio between the two windows; that roughly doubled the trade count and lifted this row from PF 0.255 to 0.534. The verdict did not change.
The pattern

Not one 15-minute lane on this page falls below PF 0.931out of sample. Five of the eight 5-minute lanes fall below 0.90, and the worst reaches 0.534. Median out-of-sample profit factor: 0.956 on 15m, 0.836 on 5m.

That is not proof the 15-minute chart works — four of its six lanes are still slightly negative. It is evidence about where the damage is, and it is why the shipped catalogue is being reconsidered rather than defended.

— Six months at a time

The three that held, half-year by half-year.

A profit factor over four years says nothing about what those four years felt like. The obvious question about a +47,090 is how many of the halves produced it, so here is every one.

Gold 15m Scalps

five of seven positive
Half-yearNetPFWinMax DDTrades
Jan – Jun 2022+8,1171.56434.8%7,61023
Jul – Dec 2022−460.96625%10,55728
Jan – Jun 2023−4,4970.79721.4%16,46228
Jul – Dec 2023+6,8571.35932.1%5,10028
Jan – Jun 2024+13,4291.72037.9%6,97329
Jul – Dec 2024+11,6591.67737%5,58027
Jan – May 2025+2,6441.17628.6%6,03021

ETH 15m Scalps

eight of ten positive, three of them carrying 84%
Half-yearNetPFWinMax DDTrades
Oct – Dec 2020+5,4202.14442.9%2,2067
Jan – Jun 2021+12,9971.68136.7%9,36430
Jul – Dec 2021+1,0021.05127.3%14,57633
Jan – Jun 2022+25,4002.11038.2%4,82234
Jul – Dec 2022+4,9481.24628.6%9,96728
Jan – Jun 2023−1,0420.95425%7,71832
Jul – Dec 2023+7941.04226.9%10,08626
Jan – Jun 2024−3,9540.87322.5%12,47140
Jul – Dec 2024+11,7931.43432.5%4,70840
Jan – Jul 2025+2,4261.08927%7,98737

BTC 5m Magic

two of three positive
Half-yearNetPFWinMax DDTrades
Jan – Jun 2024+9,6692.03735.7%4,65414
Jul – Dec 2024−10,1390.63210.3%10,98629
Jan – Jul 2025+22,0432.04419.2%8,58626
The money is not spread evenly

ETH's three best halves carry 84% of its total, and January–June 2022 alone carries 42%. The other seven halves together make about 9,600 across four and a half years. Gold is less extreme and the same shape.

Drawdown does not follow profit

ETH's July–December 2021 made +1,002 and went through −14,576 on the way. Gold's worst drawdown lands in a half that lost money. BTC 5m Magic's one losing half is also the one with the most trades.

Do not total these columns

A trade that opens in one half and closes in the next is counted in neither — the tester reports trades that close inside the window. Those are by construction the longest-held trades, and in a lane that lets winners run they are disproportionately the winners. Gold's seven halves sum to +38,163 on 184 trades where the same span measured continuously gives +45,750 on 188: four trades exist only in the continuous run and are worth about 1,900 each against a 243 average. Block sums understate the period, systematically and in a known direction.

— A season, not a system

One configuration that only works half the time.

Published because it explains why this sleeve ships behind a switch instead of as a preset. Same settings, same instrument, split where the behaviour changed.

PeriodNetWinMax DDTrades
Jul 2025 – Feb 2026+62,05138%9,501110
Mar 2026 – Aug 2026−13,29321%21,27268

A yearly average would have hidden both halves inside one mediocre number. We looked for a computable rule that says which season you are in — across every regime feature we have — and did not find one. So the switch is the operator's judgement, stated as such, rather than a filter pretending to know.

— The limits

What these numbers cannot tell you.

  • Blank cells are missing records, not zeros. Where a campaign logged net, profit factor and drawdown but not the win rate, the cell reads “—”.
  • Out-of-sample windows differ in length between instruments, which is why those results are in account currency rather than percent. A −99,482 over five years is not comparable to a −1,322 over three.
  • Absolute-dollar thresholds do not travel. Several configurations carry stops pinned in dollars, and a dollar is a different fraction of price in 2021 than in 2026. Where that mattered the window was restricted in advance and the arithmetic recorded — but it is a real limit on how far back any of this can honestly be read.
  • An indicator prints more signals than its bench took. The bench holds one position at a time; the indicator shows every qualifying setup. Your chart is a superset of the measured trade list, deliberately.
  • Forward validation is not finished. Everything here is a backtest until a forward period says otherwise.

Backtest results — past performance is not indicative of future results. Nothing here is financial advice. Figures are per-lane on the stated account convention and are not cumulative across lanes.