Does anything beat buy & hold on Rain (RAIN)?
Every setup we tested on Rain (RAIN) — 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 out-of-sample AND cleared the multiple-testing hurdle.
Beat buy-and-hold out-of-sample AND full-sample out-of-sample Sharpe 2.76 cleared the selection hurdle 2.54. Buy-and-hold benchmark: -82.2% CAGR over 6.3 years (-89.4% CAGR in the out-of-sample window).
Educational research from historical backtests — not investment advice. Past performance does not predict future results.
Rain: MA Envelope Cleared Every Filter We Apply — What That Does and Doesn't Mean
Beating buy-and-hold in crypto is a high bar. Rain compounds at -82.2%% simply by being held, and it trades around the clock through drawdowns that would end careers elsewhere. We ran 452 indicator configurations against RAIN, and one — MA Envelope on the daily timeframe — cleared that bar in the full window and, more importantly, out of sample, adding >+999%% of annualized alpha over the untouched holding baseline. In a market this young and this volatile, that combination is uncommon: most setups here lose to doing nothing.
Read the numbers with the selection problem in mind. When you test 452 setups, the best one looks good by construction, so we require the out-of-sample Sharpe (2.76) to clear a multiple-testing hurdle of 2.54 — this one did, across 1.9 years and 102 trades, with a max drawdown of -99.8%%. That makes the result harder to dismiss as noise, not impossible. Crypto regimes shift fast; liquidity, participants, and volatility today differ from the test window. Validated means the evidence survived our filters. It does not mean it will survive the future.
Every figure above is computed from our own backtests — nothing is estimated or invented. Hypothetical results; not investment advice.
Top setups as mechanical rules
Exactly as the backtest defined them — no discretionary steps, no hidden filters.
MA Envelope
Mechanical rule (exactly as backtested): Percent envelope around an EMA — buy the dip below the lower band, exit back at the mean. Signals are evaluated at daily-bar close, the position changes on the NEXT bar, 0.08% cost per side, long/flat only — no leverage, no shorting.
Out-of-sample (last ~30% of the window, never used to pick this setup): Sharpe 2.76 · alpha >+999% · 41 trades over 1.9 yrs.
Fibonacci Pivots
Mechanical rule (exactly as backtested): Fibonacci-ratio pivot levels — buy near S1, exit at the pivot. Signals are evaluated at daily-bar close, the position changes on the NEXT bar, 0.08% cost per side, long/flat only — no leverage, no shorting.
Out-of-sample (last ~30% of the window, never used to pick this setup): Sharpe 2.62 · alpha >+999% · 70 trades over 1.9 yrs.
Pivot Points (Standard)
Mechanical rule (exactly as backtested): Floor-trader pivots from the prior bar — buy near S1, exit at the pivot. Signals are evaluated at daily-bar close, the position changes on the NEXT bar, 0.08% cost per side, long/flat only — no leverage, no shorting.
Out-of-sample (last ~30% of the window, never used to pick this setup): Sharpe 2.49 · alpha >+999% · 65 trades over 1.9 yrs.
Since publication — including if it loses
The forward record is just getting started — the gap between the two is the honest score. Marked to market nightly from real prices, rules frozen at publication, as of 2026-04-29. Currently FLAT.
We tested 452 setups (indicator × parameters × timeframe) on Rain (RAIN). Only setups with ≥30 trades qualify (283 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 452 tries mines even the holdout, the VALIDATED verdict additionally requires the top setup’s OOS Sharpe to clear a selection hurdle of 2.54 (√(2 ln N)/√T) AND positive alpha in both windows. Of the eligible setups, 26.5% had positive out-of-sample alpha (median OOS Sharpe -0.86) — the table below is truncated, but this summary covers all of them. Full recipe: methodology · the engine’s contract lives in the repo as STRATEGY_METHODOLOGY.md.
Top 20 of 283 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 | MA Envelope | Daily | >+999% | 1.42 | -99.8% | 54.9% | 102 | +407.6% | 2.76 | >+999% | 41 |
| 2 | Fibonacci Pivots | Daily | >+999% | 1.46 | -99.8% | 46.8% | 235 | +535.1% | 2.62 | >+999% | 70 |
| 3 | Pivot Points (Standard) | Daily | >+999% | 1.47 | -99.4% | 46.9% | 213 | +555.1% | 2.49 | >+999% | 65 |
| 4 | Projection Bands | Daily | >+999% | 1.15 | -99.9% | 49.2% | 65 | +202.3% | 2.35 | >+999% | 30 |
| 5 | Camarilla Pivots | Daily | >+999% | 1.22 | -99.9% | 47.1% | 297 | +300.4% | 2.29 | >+999% | 81 |
| 6 | Lorentzian Classification | Daily | >+999% | 0.91 | -87.9% | 35.9% | 131 | +154.3% | 1.77 | +693.4% | 56 |
| 7 | Price Volume Trend | Daily | -99.9% | 0.54 | -100.0% | 31.6% | 76 | +13.9% | 1.34 | +34.8% | 10 |
| 8 | On-Balance Volume | Daily | -99.2% | 0.63 | -99.6% | 24.0% | 75 | +28.7% | 1.29 | +27.6% | 10 |
| 9 | DMI Direction | Daily | -98.5% | 0.68 | -99.3% | 24.0% | 50 | +33.8% | 1.27 | +40.4% | 11 |
| 10 | Connors RSI | Daily | -68.0% | 0.29 | -99.6% | 46.7% | 75 | +65.7% | 1.25 | +227.6% | 22 |
| 11 | Force Index | Daily | -99.8% | 0.51 | -99.9% | 32.3% | 96 | +20.9% | 1.24 | +33.7% | 13 |
| 12 | DeMarker (21) | Daily | -97.3% | 0.7 | -98.3% | 20.0% | 60 | +38.7% | 1.24 | +32.7% | 13 |
| 13 | Williams %R | Daily | -99.5% | 0.49 | -100.0% | 52.9% | 34 | +25.6% | 1.18 | +61.8% | 13 |
| 14 | VWAP Bands | Daily | -63.4% | 0.54 | -99.4% | 45.7% | 35 | +67.5% | 1.13 | +201.6% | 11 |
| 15 | Stochastic RSI | Daily | -64.9% | 0.66 | -91.6% | 43.8% | 48 | +66.9% | 1.1 | +78.4% | 16 |
| 16 | Net Volume | Daily | -90.5% | 0.65 | -98.4% | 25.4% | 63 | +51.1% | 1.09 | +42.3% | 17 |
| 17 | Liquidity Flow Oscillator | Daily | -91.5% | 0.64 | -98.4% | 25.4% | 63 | +49.8% | 1.08 | +39.1% | 17 |
| 18 | DeMarker (14) | Daily | -99.8% | 0.55 | -100.0% | 22.9% | 70 | +20.1% | 1.07 | +11.3% | 20 |
| 19 | Laguerre RSI | Daily | -80.7% | 0.57 | -98.4% | 43.2% | 44 | +59.2% | 0.99 | +73.1% | 16 |
| 20 | Connors RSI-2 | Daily | -52.9% | 0.36 | -99.4% | 50.7% | 75 | +71.0% | 0.95 | +159.6% | 20 |
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.