Does anything beat buy & hold on Neo?
Every setup we tested on Neo — ranked out-of-sample, corrected for multiple testing, and forward-tracked in public from the day this page published. The honest answer is the headline.
Beat buy-and-hold in both windows — but can't be told apart from selection luck.
Beat buy-and-hold in both the full window and out-of-sample but its OOS Sharpe 0.41 did not clear the 1.85 selection hurdle (best-of-N luck cannot be ruled out). Buy-and-hold benchmark: -20.2% CAGR over 12.5 years (-37.4% CAGR in the out-of-sample window).
Educational research from historical backtests — not investment advice. Past performance does not predict future results.
Neo (NEO): Beat Buy-and-Hold in Both Windows, Couldn't Beat the Selection Hurdle
Crypto sets a brutal baseline: Neo compounds at -20.2% annualized just for holding, and it charges drawdowns near -75.3% for the privilege. Against that backdrop we ran 648 indicator configurations on NEO. The best of them — Range Filter on the daily timeframe — beat buy-and-hold in both the training and holdout windows, with a profitable out-of-sample trade profile across 162 trades. That is genuinely uncommon here. But 'best of 648' is exactly the phrase that should make you slow down, which is what the second paragraph is for.
When you pick the winner from 648 attempts, the result is partly signal and partly luck of the draw. Our hurdle corrects for that: with this many tries and 3.8 years of holdout data, an out-of-sample Sharpe needs to clear 1.85 before we trust it. This one landed at 0.41 — profitable, but statistically indistinguishable from the luckiest of hundreds of tries. Add that crypto structure keeps changing — new venues, new participants, shifting volatility regimes — and a pattern from the past has no obligation to repeat. Treat this as a research lead, not an edge.
Every figure above is computed from our own backtests — nothing is estimated or invented. Hypothetical results; not investment advice.
The setups that ranked, and what they are
Fully mechanical — no discretionary steps, no hidden filters. We name the indicator and publish its record; we keep the settings.
Range Filter
What it is: A trend-following rule: it holds while a smoothed trend reference is pointing up and goes flat when it turns. Long/flat only — no leverage, no shorting. The parameters we tested are not published.
How it was tested: signals evaluated at daily-bar close, the position changes on the NEXT bar, 0.08% cost per side. Same engine, same cost model, same out-of-sample split as every other number on this site.
Out-of-sample (last ~30% of the window, never used to pick this setup): Sharpe 0.41 · alpha +46.1% · 34 trades over 3.8 yrs.
Ulcer Index
What it is: A trend-following rule: it holds while a smoothed trend reference is pointing up and goes flat when it turns. Long/flat only — no leverage, no shorting. The parameters we tested are not published.
How it was tested: signals evaluated at daily-bar close, the position changes on the NEXT bar, 0.08% cost per side. Same engine, same cost model, same out-of-sample split as every other number on this site.
Out-of-sample (last ~30% of the window, never used to pick this setup): Sharpe 0.39 · alpha +46.0% · 27 trades over 3.8 yrs.
Pivot Points (Standard)
What it is: A market-structure rule: it reacts to swing structure and prior levels rather than to a smoothed average. Long/flat only — no leverage, no shorting. The parameters we tested are not published.
How it was tested: signals evaluated at weekly-bar close, the position changes on the NEXT bar, 0.08% cost per side. Same engine, same cost model, same out-of-sample split as every other number on this site.
Out-of-sample (last ~30% of the window, never used to pick this setup): Sharpe 0.31 · alpha +52.8% · 20 trades over 2.6 yrs.
Since publication — including if it loses
Buy-and-hold is ahead so far — we publish that too. That is the point. Marked to market nightly from real prices, rules frozen at publication, as of 2026-09-11. Currently FLAT.
We tested 648 setups (indicator × parameters × timeframe) on Neo. Only setups with ≥30 trades qualify (392 did). Setups are ranked by out-of-sample Sharpe — the last ~30% of history, which standard-parameter rules never saw during selection. Because picking the best of 648 tries mines even the holdout, the VALIDATED verdict additionally requires the top setup’s OOS Sharpe to clear a selection hurdle of 1.85 (√(2 ln N)/√T) AND positive alpha in both windows. Of the eligible setups, 95.9% had positive out-of-sample alpha (median OOS Sharpe -0.22) — the table below is truncated, but this summary covers all of them. How we test: methodology. The scoring contract is published in full; the parameters of each individual setup are not.
Top 20 of 392 eligible setups
Ranked by out-of-sample Sharpe. Full + out-of-sample columns, costs included. Hypothetical.
| # | Setup | TF | Total ret | Sharpe | Max DD | Win | Trades | α vs B&H | OOS Sharpe | OOS α | OOS trades |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Range Filter | Daily | +210.8% | 0.42 | -75.3% | 45.1% | 162 | +29.7% | 0.41 | +46.1% | 34 |
| 2 | Ulcer Index | Daily | +295.6% | 0.46 | -68.8% | 31.3% | 83 | +31.8% | 0.39 | +46.0% | 27 |
| 3 | Pivot Points (Standard) | Weekly | -84.4% | 0.01 | -92.0% | 53.3% | 60 | +7.1% | 0.31 | +52.8% | 20 |
| 4 | Stochastic RSI | Daily | -85.5% | -0.09 | -94.1% | 58.4% | 89 | +5.9% | 0.3 | +41.1% | 29 |
| 5 | KDJ | Weekly | +47.8% | 0.41 | -81.3% | 28.9% | 38 | +31.0% | 0.27 | +48.5% | 12 |
| 6 | Bollinger 10 (x1.5) Break | Daily | +1.3% | 0.18 | -74.6% | 49.8% | 215 | +20.3% | 0.27 | +41.3% | 53 |
| 7 | Bollinger Squeeze | Daily | +676.0% | 0.58 | -68.1% | 51.4% | 37 | +38.0% | 0.27 | +41.1% | 10 |
| 8 | Gator Oscillator | Daily | -47.2% | -0.04 | -69.3% | 49.7% | 157 | +15.2% | 0.27 | +41.0% | 38 |
| 9 | Fisher Center-of-Gravity | Daily | +17.7% | 0.28 | -72.8% | 52.7% | 311 | +21.5% | 0.27 | +39.0% | 96 |
| 10 | Connors RSI | Daily | -78.9% | 0.03 | -93.3% | 52.6% | 154 | +8.5% | 0.25 | +39.4% | 49 |
| 11 | MA Envelope | Daily | -98.5% | -0.24 | -99.4% | 54.8% | 124 | -8.2% | 0.23 | +35.4% | 47 |
| 12 | Arnaud Legoux MA | Weekly | +84.0% | 0.44 | -77.3% | 40.0% | 30 | +33.6% | 0.22 | +46.4% | 10 |
| 13 | G-Channel | Daily | +154.2% | 0.41 | -75.2% | 33.3% | 75 | +27.9% | 0.21 | +37.3% | 18 |
| 14 | Trend Regularity Adaptive MA | Daily | -69.6% | 0.09 | -87.9% | 31.2% | 48 | +11.1% | 0.21 | +35.7% | 12 |
| 15 | Impulse MACD | Daily | +215.2% | 0.42 | -62.8% | 46.4% | 110 | +29.8% | 0.19 | +37.6% | 31 |
| 16 | Median MA | Daily | +262.2% | 0.45 | -77.5% | 43.9% | 171 | +31.0% | 0.19 | +35.0% | 52 |
| 17 | EMA 100 Trend | Daily | +6.9% | 0.28 | -80.1% | 32.8% | 64 | +20.7% | 0.19 | +33.8% | 22 |
| 18 | Disparity (100) | Daily | +13.5% | 0.29 | -80.1% | 32.8% | 64 | +21.2% | 0.19 | +33.8% | 22 |
| 19 | Fractal Adaptive MA | Weekly | +487.8% | 0.6 | -62.2% | 39.5% | 43 | +49.0% | 0.18 | +44.6% | 15 |
| 20 | RSI (50) | Daily | +14.4% | 0.3 | -80.2% | 30.0% | 70 | +21.3% | 0.18 | +33.5% | 23 |
Hypothetical backtests with 0.08%/side costs. Not investment advice — see the full disclaimer.
These are historical backtests of mechanical rules. They are educational research, not investment advice, not a recommendation, and not tailored to you. Educational information only — not investment advice. Hypothetical backtested results; past performance does not guarantee future results. Trading involves risk of loss.