Cost study across our backtests, 2026-10-27T13:53:40.735Z
Inventory: 62 tests, 416 variants, 0 excluded

Check 1. Trade logs against the published summaries (tolerance: the rounding of the printed CSV values, n x half a unit of the last printed digit)
  rows with an unquoted comma in a text cell, read from the right: 2 (2026-04-09,2026-10-20 (end of data, clos; 2026-05-01,2026-10-20 (end of data, clos)
  [ok] trade log found for 416 of 416 variants
  trade count matches: 416; net matches: 416; gross matches: 367; logs without a gross column (gross checked through check 2 only): 49

Check 2. Is the cost a per-trade amount (N(k) = G - kC exact)?
  golden-cross-50-200: per-trade cost in percent from 0.0070 to 0.0720 (4 variants with both columns)
  intraday-trend-pullback-bitcoin: per-trade cost in percent from 0.0926 to 0.1077 (2 variants with both columns)
  noise-area-breakout-bitcoin: per-trade cost in percent from 0.0804 to 0.1084 (4 variants with both columns)
  accumulation-distribution-indicator-spy: per-trade cost in percent from 0.0400 to 0.0400 (3 variants with both columns)
  accumulation-distribution-indicator-bitcoin: per-trade cost in percent from 0.0848 to 0.1535 (3 variants with both columns)
  heikin-ashi-strategy-bitcoin: per-trade cost in percent from 0.0853 to 0.1185 (3 variants with both columns)
  best-time-to-trade-gold: per-trade cost in percent from 0.0054 to 0.0784 (3 variants with both columns)
  200-day-moving-average-strategy-spy: per-trade cost in percent from 0.0400 to 0.0400 (2 variants with both columns)
  fee formulas read in the libraries (ha, ad, tp, na_btc, adspy, sma200, ma, gn): every cost is a fixed amount or fee x (entry + exit), so it is linear in the cost level and N(k) = G - kC holds exactly; the spread above comes from the exit price, not from compounding
  [ok] no trade with a negative cost (gross below net) in the logs
  [ok] total cost C = G - N is never negative in the summaries

Check 3. Gold variants against the gold hub (gs_data.js)
  [ok] hub 97 versions; matched in the inventory 97
  [ok] matched hub versions: 42 lost to costs (hub 42), 13 lost before costs (hub 13)
  gold variants outside the hub: 4 (previous-day-high-low-strategy-gold SX-STRICT-T1, previous-day-high-low-strategy-gold SX-STRICT-T2, previous-day-high-low-strategy-gold SX-NEAR-T1, previous-day-high-low-strategy-gold SX-NEAR-T2)

Check 4. Cause labels in the articles
  [ok] 76 variants labelled "Costs" in cause tables, all in the class "lost to costs"

All checks passed.

Question 1. How often did the cost model decide the verdict?
  variants: 416; lost before costs 102 (25%); lost to costs 137 (33%); survived costs 177 (43%); passed all six gates 3
  tests (majority of variants): 62; before 13, costs 14, survived 26, ties 9
  Index futures (ES, NQ, YM): 140 variants; before 35, costs 31, survived 74
  Gold (spot and GC futures): 101 variants; before 15, costs 44, survived 42
  FX: 151 variants; before 48, costs 56, survived 47
  Bitcoin: 19 variants; before 4, costs 6, survived 9
  SPY: 5 variants; before 0, costs 0, survived 5

Question 2. Share of the gross profit taken by costs (variants with G > 0)
  all: n 314, median 85%, 25th 31%, 75th 213%
  Index futures (ES, NQ, YM): n 105, median 42%, 25th 20%, 75th 181%
  Gold (spot and GC futures): n 86, median 102%, 25th 40%, 75th 194%
  FX: n 103, median 113%, 25th 71%, 75th 263%
  Bitcoin: n 15, median 59%, 25th 14%, 75th 314%
  SPY: n 5, median 19%, 25th 1%, 75th 23%

Question 3. Trades per year against cost share, outside the gold hub (prediction: positive)
  n 230, Spearman rho 0.428, one-sided permutation p 0.0000; with the hub included: n 314, rho 0.510
  0.3 to 84.0 trades a year: n 76, median cost share 33%, lost to costs 21
  84.1 to 206.6 trades a year: n 78, median cost share 83%, lost to costs 33
  223.4 to 1819.5 trades a year: n 76, median cost share 122%, lost to costs 41

Question 4. Variants with a positive net at k times our cost
  k=0: 314; k=0.5: 230; k=1: 177; k=1.5: 125; k=2: 107
  Index futures (ES, NQ, YM): 0: 105, 0.5: 80, 1: 74, 1.5: 62, 2: 58
  Gold (spot and GC futures): 0: 86, 0.5: 65, 1: 42, 1.5: 28, 2: 26
  FX: 0: 103, 0.5: 70, 1: 47, 1.5: 21, 2: 11
  Bitcoin: 0: 15, 0.5: 10, 1: 9, 1.5: 9, 2: 7
  SPY: 0: 5, 0.5: 5, 1: 5, 1.5: 5, 2: 5