A backtest is a hypothesis, not a license to trade
Most platforms show you a backtest and let you assume it works. We do the opposite: a good backtest earns a strategy the right to be forward-tested on paper — and nothing more — until live, unedited results confirm it.
This post is the live status of that process. No cherry-picking, no “trust us.”
The one edge in validation: VRP on OKX ETH options
After proving directional prediction does not beat fees, one non-directional edge survived a beta-strip: selling volatility (the volatility risk premium). It is a strong lead — and it is not live. Here is exactly where it stands:
- What it is: weekly defined-risk iron condors on OKX ETH options. One ETH contract is ~$1,700 of notional, so a condor risks ~2–3% of a small account — small enough to run OKX-native, no other venue.
- Why not live yet: the edge is proven on a proxy volatility model. The real option-chain backtest needs live data we are collecting daily right now — one snapshot of the full OKX (and reference) option chain every day. Sufficient depth arrives around 2026-08.
- The gate: when ~60 days of real chains have accumulated, we run the actual condor backtest on real bid/ask spreads — not the proxy. Only if it holds do we move to a tiny live position, then scale in phases. Until that gate passes, zero real capital.
Paper trackers running now
Alongside the data collection, we run forward paper trackers that take the real signals in real time and record what they would have done — with no benefit of hindsight:
- A combined VRP + trend tracker (the two are uncorrelated, so together they diversify).
- A trend-ensemble tracker (managed beta — risk control, not alpha).
These exist to catch the gap between a clean backtest and messy reality before money is on the line. If the paper results diverge from the backtest, the strategy does not graduate. Several already have not — and we keep them visible as failures rather than quietly deleting them.
Why we publish the waiting
It would be easy to announce “we found a winning strategy” today. We won’t, because the honest answer is “we found a strong lead, and it has to survive a real-data gate first.” That discipline — paper before real, real-chain before proxy, phases before full size — is the entire difference between research and gambling.
When the gate passes, you will see it here with the real numbers. When something fails the gate, you will see that too. That is the deal: we show what fails, we show what is still being tested, and we only call something live when it actually is.