Buy the dip in an uptrend
Nearly every swing-trading course teaches some version of it: wait for a stock in a long-term uptrend to pull back to its 20-day average, then buy the bounce. It is probably the most widely taught entry in existence. This page is the rule, frozen, before the trades existed.
Signals are logged automatically after each close and graded five sessions later. No verdict language of any kind is computed before 2026-11-02, and none is computed then unless both sample floors below are met. The running count is in the live experiments report, regenerated by the scheduled job — and the verdict will be published here either way.
Why this one
Of the four techniques registered in this batch, this one has the most coherent story behind it. Short-term reversion inside medium-term momentum is a real pattern in the academic literature, so the idea is not absurd on its face.
That is exactly why it is worth testing in public. A plausible mechanism is what makes a technique teachable — and being taught to everyone is usually what removes whatever edge the mechanism once had.
It is one of four techniques registered together on 2026-08-06, chosen from a survey of what is currently being taught and sold to retail traders. All four run on the same frozen universe and the same machinery as Experiment 03.
The rule, frozen
- Universe
- The same 40 liquid US large caps as Experiments 02 and 03, fixed at registration. Adding or removing a name voids the test.
- Entry condition (evaluated after the close)
- The close is above the 200-day simple moving average; today’s low touches or goes below the 20-day simple moving average; and the close is back above the 20-day. If more than five names qualify, take the five with the deepest touch first.
- Entry price
- The opening price of the next session. Signals are written to an append-only log before that open.
- Exits graded
- The same-day close (the scored horizon) and the fifth session’s close (reported).
- Costs
- 0.10% round trip, applied to every trade, declared up front so it cannot be tuned afterwards.
- Benchmark
- A day-matched control: the equal-weight return of the entire 40-name universe over the identical window, from the same data fetch. The scored quantity is the excess over that control, not the raw return — otherwise the test mostly measures whether the market went up.
- Window
- Only signals dated strictly after 2026-08-06 count. Nothing before the registration date is evidence.
What it has to clear
Frozen at registration on 2026-08-06 and tightened once, on 2026-08-07, before a single outcome had been graded. The bar can only have got harder:
1. At least 30 post-registration graded signals, spread over at least 20 different companies. Thirty trades on four names is not thirty pieces of evidence.
2. The mean and the median day-matched excess positive, net of costs. Both, not either.
3. A 95% confidence interval on that excess that excludes zero, treating each company as the unit of evidence rather than each trade.
4. One look. The verdict is computed once, on the pre-declared date of 2026-11-02 (or at the first run after it where both floors are met), written to an append-only file, and never recomputed. Re-running the numbers later cannot turn a null into a pass.
And one correction for running many tests at once. This is one of eight experiments (02–09) running at the same time, each with roughly a one-in-six prior. About one chance pass is expected across the family. So a single pass is reported as consistent with chance until it survives a Benjamini–Hochberg correction across all eight, and then a fresh forward window. Experiments 06–09 share one universe, so they are correlated tests, not independent replications — how often they fire on the same day is reported alongside the verdicts.
The win rate is reported but is explicitly not a pass criterion.
What we expect to happen
Stating the prediction before the data is part of the method.
This one earns the highest prior in the batch — roughly one in five — because the mechanism is coherent. Our registered expectation is still that the day-matched excess is indistinguishable from zero: textbook status is exactly what arbitrages an edge away.
A sensible-sounding story is not evidence. It is the reason a technique gets taught, and teaching is what erodes it.
And if it does clear the bar, we will say so — and then say how many other things we tested at the same time, because that is the number that tells you how surprised to be.
How you’ll be able to check it
Every signal is written to experiments/EXP07-SMAPULL-signals.csv before its entry session, and the graded outcomes alongside it — both public and append-only. The frozen rule lives in HYPOTHESES.md as H-EXP07 (registration batch #10), with the constants in experiment_harness.py. The verdict is written once to an append-only verdicts file, recorded in the audit log, and written up on this page.
If we change any constant in that rule, the test is void and we’ll say so. That’s the deal on every experiment here.
What this experiment is not
It is not a recommendation to trade this or anything else, and nothing here is advice. It is not a claim about any author, platform or educator — we test a published technique, never a person. And whichever way it lands, the verdict describes this rule, on these 40 names, over this window. It will not be evidence about the moving-average pullback in general.
Get every verdict by email
Verdicts land on dates fixed in advance; each experiment page shows its date. We'll email you each one, free, the day it publishes — and nothing else. No signals, no picks, no offers. Verdicts stay free and public for everyone either way; this just means you don't have to remember to check back.
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Educational and informational only — not investment advice, not a recommendation, and not a broker-dealer. ThePickLog is operated by AMD Ventures, LLC (Florida).
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