THE FULL LIST · NOTHING OMITTED
We built 34 strategies and ship 4
Most vendors advertise how many strategies their bot contains. That number is meaningless unless you also know which ones are switched on and why. Here is the whole list — the four that trade, the six still proving themselves, and the twenty-four we removed, each with the measurement that killed it.
The 4 that trade your account
These ship enabled on a default install. Two of them do almost all the work: VWAP-MEAN-REV in mixed conditions and SMC-OB in trends. They are deliberately anticorrelated — the months where one struggles tend to be the months the other carries.
VWAP-MEAN-REV
LiveThe engine in mixed conditions and the best performer in backtesting at +$132. Fades price back toward VWAP without demanding an RSI extreme, which is a large part of why it actually fires when others do not. It was also the worst strategy in choppy conditions at −$72 — not broken, just in the wrong regime, which is exactly why regime gating exists.
Mean reversion · full write-up →
SMC-OB
LiveCarries the trend regime almost single-handedly. In out-of-sample 2025 testing it produced +$179.64 while everything else in that regime was noise. Trades institutional order blocks — zones where large orders previously moved price — rather than indicator crossovers.
Smart money concepts · full write-up →
SESSION-ORB
LiveOpening-range breakout tied to session structure. Survived the cut because its edge comes from a time-of-day effect that persists rather than from a parameter fitted to one period.
Breakout · full write-up →
LIQUIDITY-WICK
LiveTrades the rejection wick left behind when a move sweeps liquidity and immediately reverses. Low frequency by nature — it waits for a specific structure rather than manufacturing setups.
Smart money concepts · full write-up →
The 24 we removed
Split into two kinds of failure. Some lost real money and were benched with a track record attached. Others never fired at all — the conditions they wait for do not occur often enough on gold to matter. Both are reasons to remove something, and neither is a reason to leave it in a settings menu marked “advanced”.
EMA-PULLBACK
Cut−$391 across seven months of 2026, negative in five of them. The single most expensive strategy in the set.
Trend following · full write-up →
EMA-TREND
Cut−$61.14 over 15 live trades at a 33% win rate.
Trend following · full write-up →
EMA-BOUNCE
Cut−$40.06 over 10 live trades at a 20% win rate.
Trend following · full write-up →
MICRO-BOS
Cut−$28.04 over 9 live trades at a 33% win rate.
Smart money concepts · full write-up →
−$40.42 over 13 live trades. Looked like the best choppy-market earner in replay (+$220) while losing money live in both directions — the clearest case of a backtest lying we found.
Fade · full write-up →
3BAR-PUSH
Cut−$30.82 over 9 live trades at a 44% win rate. Decent hit rate, losses too large.
Momentum · full write-up →
−$60.42 at 30% win rate over 10 trades; its worst cell alone was −$106.88. Average loss exceeded average win, so even reversing it bleeds. Off until stop sizing is rebuilt.
Smart money concepts · full write-up →
SMC-SWEEP
CutCutting it improved the seven-month result from +$128.69 to +$154.59.
Smart money concepts · full write-up →
RANGE-REV
Cut−$80 in choppy conditions. Overlaps VWAP-MEAN-REV, which does the same job better.
Mean reversion · full write-up →
STOCH-EMA
CutCut in the 2026 review — no edge that survived out-of-sample testing.
Oscillator · full write-up →
One live fire, −$3.17. Experimental, and its routing flag ships disabled anyway.
Fade · full write-up →
BB-REV
CutZero fires in 20 days of live trading. RANGE-REV already covered the same edge.
Mean reversion · full write-up →
RSI-REVERSAL
CutZero fires. STOCH-EMA covered the same edge.
Oscillator · full write-up →
PIVOT-BOUNCE
CutZero fires. Redundant with RANGE-REV.
Mean reversion · full write-up →
MA50-BOUNCE
CutZero fires. Redundant with EMA-PULLBACK.
Trend following · full write-up →
DOUBLE-TAP
CutZero fires — entry conditions too strict for live gold. Fired 233 times in replay and never once live, which is its own warning about replay-only results.
Reversal · full write-up →
INSIDE-BREAK
CutZero fires in live trading.
Breakout · full write-up →
WHIPSAW-FADE
CutZero fires in live trading.
Fade · full write-up →
ENGULF-REV
CutZero fires in live trading.
Reversal · full write-up →
NR4-BREAKOUT
CutZero fires — needs an extreme dead-tape condition that effectively never arrives.
Breakout · full write-up →
Zero fires — extreme dead-tape only.
Fade · full write-up →
SQUEEZE-FADE
CutZero fires — extreme dead-tape only.
Fade · full write-up →
Zero fires in live trading.
Breakout · full write-up →
Zero fires in live trading.
Fade · full write-up →
The 6 still proving themselves
Gold-specific strategies running in shadow mode. They evaluate every bar and record what they would have done, but cannot place a trade. We are not marketing these as features, because they are not trading your account — they are earning the right to.
GOLD-TREND-RIDER
ShadowTrend continuation built specifically for gold structure.
Gold specialist · full write-up →
GOLD-RANGE-SNIPER
ShadowRange-edge entries tuned to gold's intraday behaviour.
Gold specialist · full write-up →
GOLD-SWEEP-RECLAIM
ShadowLiquidity sweep followed by reclaim of the broken level.
Gold specialist · full write-up →
GOLD-FLOW-RIDER
ShadowOrder-flow driven. Requires a tick stream, so it cannot be evaluated in a bar replay at all.
Gold specialist · full write-up →
GOLD-EXHAUST-FADE
ShadowFades exhausted moves. Also tick-stream dependent and unmeasurable in replay.
Gold specialist · full write-up →
GOLD-CONSENSUS
ShadowFires only when several gold signals agree.
Gold specialist · full write-up →
Why the cut list is the product
There is a check that makes this concrete. Over roughly three months of real trading on the developer's own account — 1,005 trades — the strategies now disabled accounted for 929 trades and a loss of about $330. The four that remain enabled accounted for 76 trades and a small profit.
Nearly the entire loss came from strategies that are now switched off. That is what the exclusions are worth, and it is why a bot advertising thirty active strategies should worry you rather than impress you. Thirty active strategies means nothing has been measured, or nothing has been acted on.
The same discipline removed an entire instrument. Bitcoin ran alongside gold until it had produced 117 trades at a 28% win rate for a net loss, at which point the symbol was removed rather than left switched on as a feature. We wrote that decision up in full.
Questions about the strategy list
How many strategies does the bot actually trade?
Four, on a default install: VWAP-MEAN-REV, SMC-OB, SESSION-ORB and LIQUIDITY-WICK. Thirty-four were built and tested. Twenty-four are disabled because they lost money or never fired, and six gold specialists run in shadow mode where they record what they would have done without placing trades. We think the number that got cut is more informative than the number that exists.
Why build 34 strategies and ship 4?
Because you cannot know which ones work without building and measuring them. Every strategy on the cut list looked reasonable on paper — that is why it got written. What separated the survivors was measured performance over months of gold data, not the elegance of the idea. A vendor advertising thirty active strategies is either not measuring them or not acting on what the measurements say.
What is the difference between a disabled and a shadow-only strategy?
A disabled strategy is switched off entirely — it does not run and cannot trade. A shadow-only strategy still evaluates every bar and records what it would have done, but can never place a real order. Shadow mode is how a strategy earns its way to live status: it has to accumulate a real track record on live data first. The six gold specialists are all in shadow mode.
Can I re-enable the disabled strategies?
They can be changed through configuration, but we would not advise it. The exclusions are the single largest reason the shipped configuration is profitable in testing — the strategies that were removed account for almost the entire measured loss in the operator's own live account over the same period.
Why did some strategies never fire at all?
Several needed conditions that gold simply does not produce often enough — a compressed dead range, or a bar pattern that is common in equities but rare in a metal that moves several hundred dollars a day. DOUBLE-TAP is the clearest case: it fired 233 times in historical replay and exactly zero times in live trading. That gap is also a useful warning about trusting replay results without live confirmation.
See the four in action
Put it on a demo account for a week and read the decision log — every trade taken and every one refused, with the strategy that produced it named.