WickCheck / Trading school / Backtests / Bollinger band bounce

Bollinger band bounce backtest on real data

Mean reversion with Bollinger bands (20, 2): buy a close below the lower band and exit when price gets back to the middle band (the 20 SMA).

66trades
59%win rate
1.43profit factor
+0.18Raverage trade
-4.1%max drawdown
+11.9%return at 1% risk
0%+5%+10%
ES · S&P 500 · daily candles · 2016-11-09 to 2026-11-09 · Yahoo Finance data · equity in %, 1% risk per trade

A positive edge in this period after costs. Check the year-by-year table: an edge that only shows up in one year is fragile.

The exact rules tested

Buy when price closes below the lower Bollinger band. Exit when price crosses above the 20 SMA. Stop at 2x ATR.

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Same rules on 8 markets

MarketTradesWin rateProfit factorAvg tradeMax DDReturnPeriod
ES · S&P 5006659%1.43+0.18R-4.1%+11.9%2016-11 – 2026-11
NQ · Nasdaq 1006357%1.29+0.12R-3.4%+7.5%2016-11 – 2026-11
EUR/USD6862%1.14+0.05R-4.6%+3.4%2016-11 – 2026-11
XAU/USD · Gold5961%1.39+0.15R-5.1%+9.2%2016-11 – 2026-11
YM · Dow 306354%1.14+0.06R-6.2%+3.7%2016-11 – 2026-11
SPY · S&P 500 ETF6958%1.26+0.11R-7.5%+7.7%2016-11 – 2026-11
QQQ · Nasdaq 100 ETF6151%1.00-0.00R-5.0%-0.4%2016-11 – 2026-11
AAPL · Apple5351%1.09+0.04R-6.0%+1.9%2016-11 – 2026-11

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Year by year (ES)

YearTradesWin rateResult
20173100%+1.9R
2018838%-1.9R
2019757%+1.3R
2020540%-1.0R
20214100%+3.9R
2022956%-0.8R
2023850%-0.3R
2024757%+2.1R
2025650%+0.4R
2026978%+6.0R

How this test was run

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