Lab

Every Binance USDT perpetual future — 527 contracts, rescanned every hour.
Of those, 147 can be traded today: listed at least a year, turning over at least $3M a day.
One is shorted the day its price first doubles over 30 days, and left when the trail catches it, which is usually within the week.

Beat random shorting is the figure that matters. Almost every alt fell over this period, so shorting anything at all made money. Each book therefore runs against 20 books that shorted random eligible coins on the same days. Beating those is evidence. A positive return on its own is not.

The opening history was replayed over the same period the rules were designed on, which flatters them. Only trades from today forward are a real test.

Exits assume a stop fills at exactly the stop price. A thin coin gapping through would fill worse, so the losses shown here are the optimistic version.

Alt market today: 78% of tradable coins sit above their own trend (strong), and BTC takes 20% of the volume. Recorded for a later study, not used to decide anything.