NilsTrades

Testing 100 TradingView indicators for statistical edge. Each one converted into a trading signal. No cherry-picking. No tweaking results. Identical conditions — same market, same timeframe, same rules. XAUUSD 15m • Last 10 years Posting 1 result every day for 100 days. 100 indicators. One leaderboard. The rankings start now. Spoiler: Some of the most popular indicators won't hold up.

@Team2Trading The hard part isn't cutting B and C setups. It's knowing which ones they are before you take them — not after.

Your A+ setups make you profitable. Your B setups bring you back even. Your C setups turn you red. So technically you are already a profitable trader but you are just doing too much. Cut out all those shitty little B & C setups this month!

@SJosephBurns Discipline is only as good as what you're following. Most traders call it a system. Few have the data to prove it has edge.

A trader without the discipline to follow a system with an edge is just a gambler.

@jtrader Most traders who say they don't backtest are already doing it — just badly.

Do you backtest?

@zaruww "Study losses, copy wins" only works if you've defined what a win actually looks like before the trade. Without that, you're not copying a pattern — you're copying what felt right in hindsight.

1 system. 100 trades. Study losses. Copy wins. Repeat. You will Thank yourself in 5 years.

Leaderboard update — 7 of 100 tested. XAUUSD 15m — 10-year backtest — identical conditions. Raw indicator signal. No trade management. 1. SuperTrend — 1.22 (No TP | 200 EMA) — avg 1.05 2. EMA 20/50 — 1.19 (No TP | 200 EMA) — avg 1.03 3. QQE MOD — 1.16 (No TP | 200 EMA) — avg 1.04 4. SSL Hybrid — 1.12 (No TP | 200 EMA) — avg 1.05 5. MACD — 1.07 (No TP | 200 EMA) — avg 1.02 6. RSI Divergence (Regular) — 1.04 (No TP | 200 EMA) — avg 1.00 7. RSI Divergence (Hidden) — 1.03 (No TP | 200 EMA) — avg 0.99 Ranked by Profit Factor of strongest variant. Drop your indicator below. Public TradingView indicators only.

Raw Indicator Signal Test #7 Indicator: RSI Divergence Indicator Entry Signal: Hidden Divergence XAUUSD 15m Test period: Last 10 years (ending previous month) 16919 trades tested Best Profit Factor: 1.03 Takeaway: After the surprisingly bad result of Regular Divergence, I wanted to test Hidden Divergence. Only to find that it performs even worse. This might be due to the indicator identifying divergence 5(!) bars later than where it gets drawn. Current rank: #7 (7 of 100 tested)

@dangadofx Partial profits are a solid way to manage downside — especially in volatile markets. The break-even move is where it gets nuanced though. Whether it helps or hurts expectancy depends on the signal. Some entries need room to breathe past 1R.

My model is simple. I’ve used it consistently for years, targeting 3-4RR. No greed. I always secure partial profits because the market can reverse at any time. Once price hits 1R, I move to break-even to protect my capital. You don’t need a Lambo before December. That mindset will only make you watch profits turn red. Discipline over hype. Fix that💪

@tradertheory The stop loss moved because the exit rule wasn't defined before the trade. When exits are pre-defined and backtested, "tactical" stops being an option.

You moved the stop loss. You told yourself it was a tactical decision. You used the word *tactical* out loud, to no one. The trade is still open. The stop loss is still moving. Where did it all go wrong?

@bl_qee Nice. If the approach is working consistently, worth running it through a longer backtest to make sure it holds across different market conditions — not just the current phase. Short timeframes can look very consistent until they don't.

@PatternProfits Win rate matters, but only relative to RR. A 70% win rate with a 0.3R average winner and 1R average loser still loses money. Profit Factor captures both in one number — cleaner primary metric for this reason.

With all due respect... if there's an inability to turn a 70% or better probability in the markets into a profitable trading strategy, one doesn't need to look deeper into the data; one needs to look deeper into the mirror. In the markets, it doesn't get much better. ✌️

Solid principle. The only thing I'd add: 50 trades is usually too small to draw conclusions. At that sample size you can't separate real edge from a lucky streak. I run 10-year backtests on XAUUSD 15m — that's typically 1000+ trades per signal. Results look very different if you compare chart history (a few hundred trades) with deep backtest (~10x more data and multiple market regimes).

Backtest any strategy 50 times on TradingView before you risk real money. If it doesn't work on historical charts it won't work live.

Raw Indicator Signal Test #6 Indicator: QQE MOD Entry Signal: Histogram turns blue/red XAUUSD 15m Test period: Last 10 years (ending previous month) 66300 trades tested. Best Profit Factor: 1.16 (No TP | 200 EMA) Takeaway: Decent performance with tons of entry signals. That means -> a lot of room for adding filters to improve the entry signal, and reduce drawdown. Current rank: #3 (6 of 100 tested)

Early observation after 5 tests: No TP + 200 EMA is the strongest variant in 5 out of 5 indicators. This means: - Letting trades run (no fixed target) adds more value than locking in profit early - 200 EMA filter consistently improves results (this does not mean that 200 EMA is the best trend filter option). One indicator showed no edge at all: RSI Divergence. Avg. PF 1.00 across all 6 variants — one of the most popular indicators on TradingView. Popularity ≠ edge. Insights based on XAUUSD, 15m — 2016/04–2026/03

No TP behavior No TP variant trades stay open until: - Stop Loss is hit, or - An opposite Entry Signal appears If the opposite Entry Signal is not suitable for exits, a Trailing ATR is added as an additional exit trigger — closing the trade when price closes more than 2× ATR below the previous candle close (for buys), or above it (for sells). The Trailing ATR exit level only moves in the trade's favor, never against it. An opposite Entry Signal also closes the trade — whichever comes first.

Indicator settings All indicators use their default settings. If an indicator does not produce an Entry Signal by itself, a 20-period EMA is added to generate a standardized cross Entry Signal.

Testing 100 TradingView indicators for statistical edge. Each one converted into a trading signal. No cherry-picking. No tweaking results. Identical conditions — same market, same timeframe, same rules. XAUUSD 15m • Last 10 years Posting 1 result every day for 100 days. 100 indicators. One leaderboard. The rankings start now. Spoiler: Some of the most popular indicators won't hold up.

Updated my multi-inside bar indicator with some nice features. tradingview.com/script/sZlYn2d…

@mrichardm94 Thank you. 🙌 Excited to see how the rankings will develop.

@nilstrades Eager to see more results with such profit factors. Keep up the amazing work 👌

First results are in. 5 of 100 indicators tested under identical conditions. Same market. Same timeframe. Same rules. Here’s how they perform:

@mrichardm94 Time to shine some light. 💡

@nilstrades This is gonna break the trading industry 🤭👏

@mrichardm94 I was actually surprised by RSI Divergence being so underwhelming.

@nilstrades "Popularity didn't translate to edge" 💀 love to see this

Indicator Test #5 Indicator: SuperTrend Entry Signal: New trend begins XAUUSD 15m Test period: Last 10 years (ending previous month) Best Profit Factor: 1.22 (No TP | 200 EMA) Takeaway: Strongest result so far. But the No TP variants lose roughly 3 in 4 trades. Edge comes from the few big winners, not consistency.

Indicator Test #4 Indicator: MACD Entry Signal: MACD signal line cross XAUUSD 15m Test period: Last 10 years (ending previous month) Best Profit Factor: 1.07 (No TP | 200 EMA) Takeaway: Without the 200 EMA, the Reaction variant loses money (PF 0.98). The filter is doing heavy lifting here. The signal alone has weak edge.