RSI 30/70 Mean Reversion

The claim

When RSI drops below 30 the asset is 'oversold' and due a bounce; above 70 it's 'overbought' and due a pullback. The most-taught entry signal in existence.

Where it comes from

J. Welles Wilder introduced RSI in 'New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems' (1978). The 30/70 thresholds became the textbook default and have been repeated in essentially every trading course since.

The exact rule we graded

Long while RSI(14) < 30, short while RSI(14) > 70, on 1-hour candles. Exits: 2% stop loss, 3% take profit, 48-bar time exit.

• ✕OOS net expectancy > 0
• ✕Clears the cost hurdle
• ✕Robust, not lucky
• ✕Survivable drawdown
• ✓Not overfit

The backtest above is history. Since publication, this exact spec also runs in our nightly forward-test harness (the same one behind /forward-tests): only trades entered after publication count, open positions are never force-closed, and the record publishes either way.

No closed forward trades recorded yet — the record accrues nightly as trades complete their full exit windows.

Honest port notes

• Wilder wrote about divergences and failure swings, not naked threshold entries — but the naked 30/70 entry is what actually gets taught and traded, so that's what we graded.
• Exit levels (2% stop / 3% target / 48-bar timeout) are our sensible defaults; the folklore version famously never specifies exits at all.

{
  "name": "RSI 30/70 Mean Reversion",
  "universe": [
    "BTC/USDT:USDT",
    "ETH/USDT:USDT",
    "SOL/USDT:USDT",
    "BNB/USDT:USDT",
    "XRP/USDT:USDT",
    "DOGE/USDT:USDT",
    "LINK/USDT:USDT",
    "AVAX/USDT:USDT"
  ],
  "risk": {
    "risk_per_trade_pct": 1,
    "leverage_cap": 3,
    "max_daily_loss_pct": 5,
    "max_dd_halt_pct": 25
  },
  "sleeves": [
    {
      "name": "main",
      "timeframe": "1h",
      "entry": {
        "type": "rule",
        "logic": "all",
        "long": [
          {
            "indicator": "rsi",
            "period": 14,
            "op": "<",
            "value": 30
          }
        ],
        "short": [
          {
            "indicator": "rsi",
            "period": 14,
            "op": ">",
            "value": 70
          }
        ]
      },
      "exit": {
        "stop_loss_pct": 2,
        "take_profit_pct": 3,
        "time_exit_bars": 48
      }
    }
  ]
}