Brett Chereskin
← The LabStrategy v2 · Live · paper account

AI Crypto Strategy

A rule-based crypto portfolio with one load-bearing rule: cash only goes back to work when Bitcoin is above its 200-day moving average. Read the build notes and the stress test behind it.

Backtest Validation

12-mo window · Jun 2025 → Jun 2026
StrategyReturnMax DDSharpeTrades
HODL (target weights)-44.8%-65.5%-0.696
V1 rules (original)+15.4%-15.0%0.9028
V2 ungated-2.3%-27.3%-0.0294
V2 + macro gate (live)+16.7%-13.2%1.0555
HODL (target weights): A brutal 12-month window for crypto. Buy-and-hold lost 45% with a 65% peak-to-trough drawdown.
V1 rules (original): Trailing stops preserved capital, but the strategy dumped to cash and redeployed only on price recovery.
V2 ungated: Rotation-on-sell without a trend filter kept redeploying into the downtrend — activity without edge.
V2 + macro gate (live): Only redeploys cash when BTC is above its 200-day average. Best return, lowest drawdown, best Sharpe — and held up across 400 bootstrapped market paths (~80% win-rate vs ungated). This is what runs live.

How v2 Works

The macro gate — the rule that matters most

Cash is only redeployed when Bitcoin trades above its 200-day moving average. Below the line, sells go to cash and stay there. In backtest, this single trend filter is the difference between +16.7% (gated) and -2.3% (ungated) — and it held up across 400 bootstrapped market paths.

Rotation on sells

When a trailing stop or technical breakdown fires, proceeds rotate into other assets scored by 7d momentum × under-allocation — not dumped to cash (unless the regime is risk-off).

Contagion regime gate

3+ trailing-stop fires in 14 days flip the strategy to risk-off for 30 days: rotation pauses, proceeds go to cash, deploys pause. Caught the worst drawdown in backtest.

Deploy-to-target

Idle cash gets tranched back in daily via Rebuy 4 — $500/day into whichever asset is most under-weight. No more 80%-cash sitting through recoveries.

Learning loop

Every trade gets re-evaluated 7 days later against a counterfactual. Rolling per-strategy win rates surface in each monitor email — turn off rules that stop earning their keep.

Runs 3× daily · 8AM, 1PM, 7PM ET · paper account · v1 dashboard (archived)
Read the full build notes →