IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2607.20093.html

Retail Trader's Ruin: An Anatomy of Popular Signal Failure

Author

Listed:
  • Adam Darmanin

Abstract

We test whether five widely promoted retail signal families - trend, oscillator, candlestick, volume, and calendar rules - deliver a positive, economically meaningful, net-of-cost, and survivable edge. Practical viability is the conjunction of three predeclared gates: statistical edge after multiplicity correction, economic viability after trading costs, and finite-bankroll survival under leverage. Exposure-matched benchmarks, stationary-bootstrap confidence intervals, hierarchical Benjamini-Yekutieli control, one-sided claim-exclusion tests, and equivalence tests distinguish positive evidence, statistically refuted materiality, and unresolved cases. Four of six candidates - oscillator, volume, calendar, and candlestick - are REFUTED, ruled out on statistical and/or economic materiality grounds; trend and a momentum calibration benchmark are INCONCLUSIVE, with confidence intervals too wide at this sample size to resolve the claim; none is SUPPORTED. Cross-sectional tests use point-in-time membership and delisting corrections. The momentum benchmark itself does not clear the statistical gate and is classified INCONCLUSIVE, not REFUTED - the critical validity signature that a genuinely uncertain positive control is never falsely falsified by this design. Under FINRA- and ESMA-anchored leverage and margin scenarios, survival is not the binding constraint for any tested family at the US headline scenario, though it becomes discriminating for trend and oscillator under the higher-leverage EU CFD scenario. The results reject specific promoted deployability claims where confidence bounds rule out the declared effect threshold and classify the remaining cases as unresolved rather than treating non-significance as proof.

Suggested Citation

  • Adam Darmanin, 2026. "Retail Trader's Ruin: An Anatomy of Popular Signal Failure," Papers 2607.20093, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2607.20093
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.20093
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hendrik Bessembinder & Kalok Chan, 1998. "Market Efficiency and the Returns to Technical Analysis," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 27(2), Summer.
    2. Brad M. Barber & Terrance Odean, 2000. "Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(2), pages 773-806, April.
    3. Roll, Richard, 1984. "A Simple Implicit Measure of the Effective Bid-Ask Spread in an Efficient Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1127-1139, September.
    4. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:3:p:1039-1082 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Robert Novy-Marx & Mihail Velikov, 2016. "A Taxonomy of Anomalies and Their Trading Costs," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(1), pages 104-147.
    6. Svetlana Bryzgalova & Anna Pavlova & Taisiya Sikorskaya, 2023. "Retail Trading in Options and the Rise of the Big Three Wholesalers," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(6), pages 3465-3514, December.
    7. Hansen, Peter Reinhard, 2005. "A Test for Superior Predictive Ability," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 23, pages 365-380, October.
    8. Ryan Sullivan & Allan Timmermann & Halbert White, 1999. "Data‐Snooping, Technical Trading Rule Performance, and the Bootstrap," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(5), pages 1647-1691, October.
    9. Ledoit, Oliver & Wolf, Michael, 2008. "Robust performance hypothesis testing with the Sharpe ratio," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 850-859, December.
    10. Shumway, Tyler, 2001. "Forecasting Bankruptcy More Accurately: A Simple Hazard Model," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74(1), pages 101-124, January.
    11. Stefan Thurner & J. Doyne Farmer & John Geanakoplos, 2012. "Leverage causes fat tails and clustered volatility," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(5), pages 695-707, February.
    12. Grinblatt, Mark & Han, Bing, 2005. "Prospect theory, mental accounting, and momentum," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 311-339, November.
    13. Bollerslev, Tim, 1986. "Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 307-327, April.
    14. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:5:p:1775-1798 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Barber, Brad M. & Lee, Yi-Tsung & Liu, Yu-Jane & Odean, Terrance, 2014. "The cross-section of speculator skill: Evidence from day trading," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 1-24.
    16. Cheol‐Ho Park & Scott H. Irwin, 2007. "What Do We Know About The Profitability Of Technical Analysis?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 786-826, September.
    17. Moskowitz, Tobias J. & Ooi, Yao Hua & Pedersen, Lasse Heje, 2012. "Time series momentum," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(2), pages 228-250.
    18. Brad M. Barber & Xing Huang & Terrance Odean & Christopher Schwarz, 2022. "Attention‐Induced Trading and Returns: Evidence from Robinhood Users," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(6), pages 3141-3190, December.
    19. Clifford S. Asness & Tobias J. Moskowitz & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2013. "Value and Momentum Everywhere," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(3), pages 929-985, June.
    20. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Titman, Sheridan, 1993. "Returns to Buying Winners and Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 65-91, March.
    21. Brad M. Barber & Yi-Tsung Lee & Yu-Jane Liu & Terrance Odean, 2009. "Just How Much Do Individual Investors Lose by Trading?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(2), pages 609-632, February.
    22. Brock, William & Lakonishok, Josef & LeBaron, Blake, 1992. "Simple Technical Trading Rules and the Stochastic Properties of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(5), pages 1731-1764, December.
    23. Bessembinder, Hendrik & Chan, Kalok, 1995. "The profitability of technical trading rules in the Asian stock markets," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 3(2-3), pages 257-284, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stephen A. Gorman & Frank J. Fabozzi, 2021. "The ABC’s of the alternative risk premium: academic roots," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(6), pages 405-436, October.
    2. Adam Zaremba & Jacob Koby Shemer, 2018. "Price-Based Investment Strategies," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-91530-2, January.
    3. Ebert, Sebastian & Hilpert, Christian, 2019. "Skewness preference and the popularity of technical analysis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    4. Hung, Chiayu & Lai, Hung-Neng, 2022. "Information asymmetry and the profitability of technical analysis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    5. Strobel, Marcus & Auer, Benjamin R., 2018. "Does the predictive power of variable moving average rules vanish over time and can we explain such tendencies?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 168-184.
    6. Andreas Thomann, 2021. "Multi-asset scenario building for trend-following trading strategies," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 299(1), pages 293-315, April.
    7. Shynkevich, Andrei, 2013. "Time-series momentum as an intra- and inter-industry effect: Implications for market efficiency," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 64-85.
    8. Zaremba, Adam & Szyszka, Adam & Karathanasopoulos, Andreas & Mikutowski, Mateusz, 2021. "Herding for profits: Market breadth and the cross-section of global equity returns," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 348-364.
    9. Eom, Cheoljun & Park, Jong Won, 2023. "Price behavior of small-cap stocks and momentum: A study using principal component momentum," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    10. Chiang, Mi-Hsiu & Chiu, Hsin-Yu & Kuo, Wei-Yu, 2021. "Predictive ability of similarity-based futures trading strategies," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    11. Qi Xu & Ying Wang, 2021. "Managing volatility in commodity momentum," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(5), pages 758-782, May.
    12. Cui, Ling-xiao & Long, Wen, 2016. "Trading strategy based on dynamic mode decomposition: Tested in Chinese stock market," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 461(C), pages 498-508.
    13. Zhaobo Zhu & Licheng Sun, 2024. "When Buffett Meets Bollinger: An Integrated Approach to Fundamental and Technical Analysis," Post-Print hal-04703041, HAL.
    14. Jacobs, Heiko, 2015. "What explains the dynamics of 100 anomalies?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 65-85.
    15. Ergun, Lerby & Molchanov, Alexander & Stork, Philip, 2023. "Technical trading rules, loss avoidance, and the business cycle," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    16. Cheol‐Ho Park & Scott H. Irwin, 2007. "What Do We Know About The Profitability Of Technical Analysis?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 786-826, September.
    17. Shynkevich, Andrei, 2016. "Predictability in bond returns using technical trading rules," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 55-69.
    18. Fong, Tom Pak Wing & Wu, Shui Tang, 2020. "Predictability in sovereign bond returns using technical trading rules: Do developed and emerging markets differ?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    19. Degenhardt, Thomas & Auer, Benjamin R., 2018. "The “Sell in May” effect: A review and new empirical evidence," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 169-205.
    20. Isakov, Dusan & Marti, Didier, 2011. "Technical Analysis with a Long-Term Perspective: Trading Strategies and Market Timing Ability," FSES Working Papers 421, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2607.20093. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.