Buy oversold, sell overbought. Works in ranges, gets run over by trends.
Total return
17.3%
10,000 → 11,730
vs buy & hold
-101.3%
over the same period 118.6%
Max drawdown
17.4%
10,000 → 9,395
Longest underwater
493
493 days · 97% of the period
Settings that beat it
0 / 16
of 16 parameter settings tested
Win rate
75%
95% CI 41%–93% · n=8
This lost to simply buying and holding.
Over 2020-09-01 → 2026-09-23 it returned 17.3% while buying once on the first day and never touching it returned 118.6% — 101.3% worse. Not one of the 16 parameter settings tested beat the benchmark. The median setting returned 4.3%.
It spent 493 days below its previous high at the longest stretch — 97% of the whole period under water.
The win rate on this page is not a readable number.
With 8 closed trades the 95% confidence interval runs 41%–93% — it spans a coin flip, so the headline 75% cannot be distinguished from chance at this sample size. It is shown because leaving it out would be worse, not because it supports a conclusion.
Price & fills
Equity
account equitybuy & holddashed = starting capital
16 fills. Signals are taken on the close and filled at the next open.
A 0% risk of ruin here is a property of the test, not a safety rating.
These runs are long-only spot with no borrowed money, so there is no margin call and nothing can force the position closed. The account cannot be wiped out — it gets stuck holding the asset instead. Capital deployed (1×) and max drawdown (17.4%) are the numbers that carry the risk on this page. The same rules run on margin would be a different measurement, and this figure would not stay at zero.
Outcome distribution
A single return is one chosen start date. These are 62 runs of the same rules with the start shifted forward 30 days at a time.
Worst
p10
p25
Median
p75
p90
Best
Losing starts
-11.1%
-5.0%
0.0%
3.2%
7.9%
9.2%
15.3%
23%
Does it survive outside its best case?
The numbers above are one market on one timeframe. A rule that only works there did not work — the market did.
Timeframe
Same rules, same parameters, different candle size on Gold (PAXG).
Timeframe
Trades
Return
Buy & hold
vs B&H
Beat it
Trades
4H
13281
1%
119%
-118%
no
44
1D ←
2214
17%
119%
-101%
no
8
1W
316
0%
123%
-123%
no
0
Market — 0 of 3
Same rules, same parameters, different asset — daily candles.
The headline above uses one parameter setting. Here is every setting tested: 16 combinations, median 4.3%, best 32.7%, worst -5.2%. 0 of them beat buy & hold.
A strategy that only works at one setting did not work — it was fitted.
Parameter grid
RSI Reversion run across its own parameter range over the full period. The same rules flip from profit to loss depending only on the numbers you picked — which is why a single headline return is meaningless on its own.
buyBelow 20
buyBelow 25
buyBelow 30
buyBelow 35
sellAbove 60
0%
12%
18%
4%
sellAbove 65
0%
-0%
0%
-5%
sellAbove 70
0%
12%
17%
11%
sellAbove 80
0%
22%
33%
32%
Hover a cell for trade count and drawdown. “·” = invalid combination (fast ≥ slow).
Year by year
Year
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026
Return
9%
-5%
8%
3%
0%
-6%
Max DD
6%
14%
7%
5%
0%
17%
Trades
2
1
2
0
0
1
Recent closed trades
Closed
P&L (USDT)
Held
2026-08-11
-718.21
144 bars
2025-01-26
+909.48
74 bars
2023-10-20
+218.84
136 bars
2023-03-14
+645.31
28 bars
2022-11-11
-564.93
184 bars
2021-11-11
+338.38
146 bars
2021-05-09
+631.14
71 bars
2021-01-03
+269.62
102 bars
What it is
Reference — Glowwiki: RSI
The definitions and formulas below follow that article. It states its own limit plainly: “Whether this produces profit is not addressed in that article.” That is the question this page answers.
Note from the reference: Wilder smoothing has no fixed window, so an RSI value depends on how much history was loaded before it — Cutler documented that the same symbol and setting gives different values depending where the data file starts. Cutler's variant, using a simple moving average, does not have this dependency. The reference also notes that its Cardwell section has carried an unsourced tag since June 2014, and that Wilder and Cardwell read divergence in opposite directions.
Formulas
RSI
RSI = 100 − 100/(1 + RS), RS = avgGain / avgLoss
Averages use Wilder smoothing (α = 1/n), not a fixed window
Established
RSI is a momentum indicator measuring the speed of price change, conventionally read as overbought above 70 and oversold below 30. [1]
Conventional reading
The 70/30 thresholds are conventional rather than absolute and are applied differently across markets and periods. [1]
Levels such as 80/20 or 90/10 occur more rarely but indicate stronger momentum — which is why the threshold is swept rather than fixed on this page. [1, 3]
Wilder and Cardwell read divergence in opposite directions — one as an approaching reversal, the other as trend confirmation. The reference presents both without ruling, and so does this page. [3]
The reference notes its own Cardwell section has carried an unsourced tag since June 2014. The trend-adjusted 40–80 / 60–20 bands attributed to him are therefore weaker ground than the rest of the article, and are not used here. [3]
Marek and Šedivá (2017) reported that over longer horizons RSI trading is usually overcome by simple buy and hold. [3]
The usefulness of technical analysis as a whole is contested by the efficient-market hypothesis. The reference article states the dispute without ruling on it — and neither does this page. What is below is one measurement, not a verdict. [1, 2]
Listed as convention, not as established fact.
Why your chart may not match Wilder smoothing has no fixed window — every earlier bar still influences today's value, so the same symbol and the same 14-period setting give different RSI readings depending on how much history was loaded. Measured on this data: feeding 30 bars of history shifts the value by 0.67 against the full-history figure; by 120 bars the difference is gone. Across the 365-bar rolling windows used here the mean absolute difference is 0.30 points, and the RSI-below-30 entry test flips on 0.22% of bars. This site computes the indicator inside each window rather than carrying history across it.