bitlab AcademyThe setup everyone learns first
Find an uptrend, wait for price to pull back to a moving average, buy when it turns up again. It is the first trend strategy most traders learn, and one of the most repeated. We built it as an indicator with three EMAs (20, 50 and 200), then tested every signal it gave on Bitcoin.
It won often enough. It still lost.
On Bitcoin's 1-hour chart over two years the rules gave 1,369 trades. 477 reached a target twice the size of the stop. That is 34.8%, above the 33.3% needed to break even. Before fees the result was +62 R. After a 0.06% fee on entry and exit it was −328 R.
The reason is the tight stop. A pullback entry risks about 0.7% of the position on the 1-hour chart, so the two fees cost close to a third of what you risk, on every trade. The guide has the same test on 15-minute and 4-hour charts.
What you get
- The rules for longs and shorts, with stop and target.
- The backtest table: 15-minute, 1-hour and 4-hour charts, before and after fees, and the fee cost per trade.
- The indicator code for TradingView (the free plan works), with phone alerts.
If fees are what turns this setup negative, the rate you pay matters. You can compare futures fees across exchanges in our fee calculator.
Get the indicator code and the step-by-step guide
Free. Sign in with Google and the full guide opens right here: the step-by-step rules, the backtest table and the TradingView code to copy. We only store your Google ID and profile name, never your email.
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Sign in with GooglePractice what you learned
Test this setup on live Bitcoin prices with $10,000 in virtual money. Free, no deposit. Sign in with Google to join the monthly ranking.
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