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The Factory · its record

Castor

As the program names it: Bollinger + Stochastic · S&P 500 D1

S&P 500 · daily candles · fixed stops · prices from Darwinex’s MetaTrader 5. Found by BotFactoryFX in the October hunt on 14 October 2026; in quarantine since 16 October 2026.

Why “Castor”. Mean reversion, so a myth: the twin of Pollux, who take turns between Olympus and the underworld. The same rule, found on the S&P 500 and the Dow at once.

Simulated, no real money. Its backtest and its quarantine run on a simulated account; no order is sent to any broker. Its rules, settings and code are not published: this record shows what it did, not how it decides.

Its backtest

What the strategy did on the history it was tested on, from 10 April 2012 to 11 September 2026, as BotFactoryFX measured it when it went into quarantine, with the costs it pays there. A simulated account of 10,000 in the market’s currency, with a fixed size; every figure in % of that account.

Trades
74 in 14.4 years, 0.4 a month
Won
96%
Profit factor
5.59
Result
+89.7%
Worst drawdown
−9.9%
Average per trade
+1.21%
Average win · average loss
+1.54% · −6.52%
Best trade · worst trade
+2.27% · −9.92%
Longest losing streak
1 trade in a row
Years in loss
1 of 15

The result, trade after trade

Castor: its backtest, the result of each closed trade added up, in % of its simulated accountFrom 10 April 2012 to 11 September 2026: +89.7% after 74 trades. The shaded stretch, from 5 May 2022, is history the search never saw.Unseen by the search+20%+40%+60%+80%201320152017201920212023202511 September 2026: +89.7%

Its drawdowns

How far below its previous high it was at each closed trade: what you would have had to sit through.

Castor: how far below its previous high it was, in % of its simulated accountMeasured at each closed trade. The worst, −9.9%, on 10 May 2022.0%−5%−10%2013201520172019202120232025Worst drawdown, 10 May 2022: −9.9%

Year by year

The first and the last year are only part of a year.

YearTradesResultBar
20123+2.8%
20134+2.6%
20145+3.9%
20157+11.1%
20165+5.0%
20175+3.5%
20183+4.2%
20192+2.0%
20203−5.5%
20216+11.5%
202211+10.8%
20236+10.3%
20246+11.7%
20252+4.0%
20266+11.8%

How it was found and judged

BotFactoryFX found it in the October hunt on 14 October 2026, the best of 2,355 candidate rule sets that search tried on S&P 500, daily candles.

Judge’s score
76/100 · Solid
On a similar market
the Dow Jones: 81/100 · Solid
Judged on
history the search never saw, from May 2022
History it was found on
from 2012 to 9 October 2026
Checks measured
7 of 13

6 of the judge’s 13 checks could not be measured on this market; the 76 comes from the other 7. The same strategy on the Dow, its twin in quarantine, was measured on all 13.

The judge is BotFactoryFX’s Reality Check: 13 checks on the strategy, nine of them on history the search never saw. Our bar to put one in quarantine is Solid, 75 or more, on its own market and again on a similar one, judged from the same date.

The judge’s report, check by check

The search that found it on 14 October 2026 kept its score but not this report, so on 1 November 2026 we judged it again exactly as then: same history, costs and cut-off date. It gave the same score: 76/100, Solid. Holds up, including on other instruments and other timeframes. No check failed outright. 6 could not run — each says why below.

  • Out of sampleNot measurednot measurable

    Does it still work on history it never saw?

    Not one of the 22 trades on the held-back slice lost, so its profit factor has no losses to divide by and there is no number here to score. That is not a perfect result: it almost always means a stop that this stretch never reached, and a sample that has not yet met the risk it is taking. In sample the profit factor was 7.48, and there is nothing on the other side to compare it with.

  • Period consistencyPassed6 / 6

    Does the edge hold across time, or was it one lucky stretch?

    6 of 6 windows closed in profit. The best window alone is 30% of the gains.

  • Walk-forwardNot measurednot measurable

    On history it never saw, would it survive being re-tuned as you went along?

    Not one of the 20 trades across the 4 forward windows lost, so its profit factor has no losses to divide by and there is no number here to score. That is not a perfect result: it almost always means a stop that this stretch never reached, and a sample that has not yet met the risk it is taking. Re-tuning on past data only and trading what came next never met a losing trade, so there is nothing here to tell a procedure that works from a stretch that has not been tested.

  • Other instrumentsPassed66 %

    Does the edge exist anywhere else, or only here?

    The same rules stay profitable on USA30IDXUSD. An edge that survives a change of instrument is harder to explain away as a fit to this history. There it was measured only from 2022-05-05, the stretch this one never saw: before that is the history it was built on. Its distances in pips were scaled to each instrument's typical bar: USA30IDXUSD ×0.99.

  • Other timeframesWarning8 %

    Does the edge survive on another clock, or only on these bars?

    Rebuilt on other clocks almost nothing survives — H4 1.75 · W1 1.06, against 5.93 on the original. That is the signature of a rule set fitted to this exact sequence of bars, though a strategy can also be genuinely specific to one timeframe.

  • Better than chanceNot measurednot measurable

    On history it never saw, does it beat that same history with the direction of each bar drawn at random?

    Not one of the 22 trades it took on the held-back slice lost, so its profit factor has no losses to divide by and there is no number here to score. That is not a perfect result: it almost always means a stop that this stretch never reached, and a sample that has not yet met the risk it is taking. Without that number there is nothing to place among the 72 versions of the same stretch with the directions drawn at random, so this cannot say whether it beats chance.

  • Parameter sensitivityNot measurednot measurable

    Does it still work, on unseen history, if the numbers were slightly different?

    The neighbouring settings never lost a trade on unseen history either — the middle of the 24 of them has no losses to divide by — so there is no number to compare against this strategy's own, and nothing here says whether it sits on a plateau or on a spike.

  • DrawdownPassed10.3 %

    How deep underwater did you have to sit? A warning only: it does not count toward the score.

    Your statement would show 7.4 %, but open positions were 10.3 % underwater at the worst point — that is what you would actually have had to hold through.

  • Monte CarloNot measurednot measurable

    On history it never saw, how bad does it look if the trades had fallen differently — or without its best ones?

    Not one of the 22 trades on unseen history lost, so its profit factor has no losses to divide by and there is no number here to score. That is not a perfect result: it almost always means a stop that this stretch never reached, and a sample that has not yet met the risk it is taking. Reordering them 1000 times cannot change that, so the worst 5 % of orderings is the same non-number as the best.

  • Sample sizePassedt = 29.7

    On history it never saw, is the average trade distinguishable from zero?

    Over 22 trades on unseen history the average result stands 29.7 standard errors from zero, which is enough to take seriously. The three best account for 15 % of gross profit.

  • Cost tolerancePassed> 30 pips

    How much broker cost can it absorb before the edge dies?

    The edge is far larger than any plausible execution cost.

  • PerturbationNot measurednot measurable

    On history it never saw, does it hold up if that stretch had begun elsewhere and its prices had wobbled?

    Started elsewhere with the prices nudged it never lost a trade either — the middle of the 40 runs has no losses to divide by — so there is no number on the other side, and nothing here says whether this particular stretch was the reason.

  • Bar resolutionPassedunambiguous

    Does it hold up when measured on finer bars?

    No exit depended on the order in which the high and the low happened inside a bar, so nothing here rests on an assumption about it.

What the report does not cover

  • Everything above was measured on 4,601 bars — 14 years 9 months, 2012-01-16 to 2026-10-09. Nothing here was tested outside that window.
  • That window does not include the 2008 collapse, so no check above could tell you what this strategy does in one.
  • Deflated Sharpe: counting the 2,355 rule sets the search tried, there is a 57 % probability that this strategy's Sharpe on the history it was chosen on is more than luck — 0.538 per trade over 52 trades, against 0.484 expected from the best of that many rule sets with no edge. The spread of the tried rule sets' Sharpes is taken as that of strategies with no edge, because the search does not record it yet. It looks only at the stretch where the strategy was chosen: a pattern that was real there and then stopped, or a flaw in the data, scores as high as an edge.
  • This was the best of 2,355 different rule sets the search tried. What a search that size scores on data with no edge in it was measured on hourly currency pairs, not on this instrument and timeframe, so there is no reference figure for it here: the more candidates a search tries, the more likely its best is best by luck.

Live, in quarantine

Since 16 October 2026, on prices it had never seen, with closed trades only.

Quarantine verdict: Too early to tell

Its backtest promisedLive so far
Trades74 in 14 years2 in 22 days
Won96%100%
Profit factor5.59no losses yet
Result+89.7%+4.5%
Worst drawdown−9.9%0.0%
Castor: live against its backtest’s pace, in % of its simulated accountSimulated, no real money. Live, with closed trades only: +4.5% after 2 trades. At its backtest’s pace it would be at +0.4%.0%+2%+4%16 Oct7 NovIts backtest’s pace: +0.4%Live, closed trades: +4.5%Closed 2 Nov: +2.3%Closed 4 Nov: +2.3%

At its backtest’s pace, by now it would have closed about 0.3 trades and made +0.4%.

Its closed trades

Closed onResultRunning total
2 November 2026+2.27%+2.27%
4 November 2026+2.27%+4.54%

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