Heikin-Ashi Trend Ride — Disproof verdict

"Smoother candles, clearer trends" — hold while the smoothed candles stay bullish above a moving average, exit when they turn.

Verdict: dead — grade D, 0 of 2 markets survived, tested on BTCUSDT from 2023-05-16 to 2026-08-30.

At zero cost: +211.7%
With real costs (15bps + 2bps slippage): +169.8%
Out-of-sample: -0.9%
Buy and hold over the same window: +190.9% (the strategy is 21.1 points behind buy and hold)

Rules tested

strategy "Heikin-Ashi Trend Ride"  (long)
indicators:
  ha = heikin_close()
  e = ema(20)

entry: when ha crosses above e
exit:  when ha crosses below e
# fills next open · fees+slippage on · 70/30 OOS · deflated-Sharpe gate

How this was reconstructed

APPROXIMATE. The engine's heikin_close is the (O+H+L+C)/4 bar average, not the recursive Heikin-Ashi construction that smooths the open from the prior HA candle. This tests the smoothed-price-vs-EMA idea, and is the weakest reconstruction in the registry — flagged so a reader can judge it.