Strategies
Hyperliquid ETH Donchian Channel Breakout Trend-Follower, Long-Short (Single-Instrument ETHUSD.HYPERLIQUID, DAILY Bars — Enter on a Clean N-Day High/Low Breakout, Ride the Directional Expansion with a Chandelier Trailing Stop, Flat Between Breakouts; Classic Turtle, 2-Parameter)
Outcome: Abandoned
HyperliquidEthDonchianTurtleBreakoutLS
Measurable sample (157 trades / 956 days) with clean long+short balance (88L/69S)
Hypothesis
Implementation
Long/short Donchian channel breakout (classic Turtle) on ETHUSD.HYPERLIQUID 4-HOUR bars. calculate_signal returns the continuous normalised channel position (close - mid) / half_range over the prior N bars, so it varies every bar and exceeds +/-1 exactly on a clean breakout. Entry: signal >= +entry_threshold -> LONG (new N-bar high), signal <= -entry_threshold -> SHORT (new N-bar low), flat in between. Exit: an ASYMMETRIC ratcheting stop -- the tight initial stop (init_stop_mult * ATR from the entry price) binds until the trade has run in favour, after which a wide chandelier trail (atr_mult * ATR below the best close since entry, mirrored for shorts) takes over -- plus an opposite-side channel flip. No fixed take-profit. Size: risk_pct of equity across the initial ATR stop distance, capped at 25% of equity notional.
Verification Results
CLEAN RESTART 2026-09-04 — this run's verdict history and learning records were removed and it was restarted from verification. Its previous abandonment came from the pipeline, not from the market: the Layer-2 harness mis-bound @staticmethod helpers (fixed), QA issued terminal performance verdicts on an unoptimized smoke test (removed — QA now judges correctness only), and sandbox timeouts came from backtest-slot starvation (fixed). The hypothesis and the strategy code are unchanged. Verify the code on its merits; performance is decided later by the full backtest and the optimizer.
Backtest Review
- Sharpe
- 0.19
- Total return
- 8.35%
- Max drawdown
- 22.67%
- Trades
- 157
- Win rate
- 29.3%
- Profit factor
- 1.02
Measurable sample (157 trades / 956 days) with clean long+short balance (88L/69S)
avg_trade_return_pct 0.424% clears the ~0.15% Hyperliquid fee floor (not strictly fee-dead)
Moderate max drawdown 22.7% and no liquidation; sizing/risk plumbing is sound
Profit factor 1.022 and Sharpe 0.188 with CI [-1.05, 1.38] straddling zero, PSR 0.61 — indistinguishable from no-skill
Edge concentrated in 2024 (+24.3%) then negative: 2025 -17.2%, 2026 -0.6%; rolling Sharpe -3 to -5 for long stretches — the post-2024 regime (where the holdout lands) is a net loser
Loses in the stressed regime tercile (-23.4%, Sharpe -1.67) and information_ratio -0.28 (underperforms buy-hold)
Capacity-blocked: impact_cost_pct 43.8% of gross, capacity_usd only $520k — edge real only at toy scale
Class prior L82/L30/L63: single-instrument directional trend breakout on Hyperliquid (hyperliquid 0/128); base Sharpe 0.19 is the ceiling and deflation only lowers it
Iteration History
Verification failed (Layer 4 — QA review): - PREMISE FALSIFIED — mechanism is sub-fee/negative across every variant tried, and iteration 3 is the worst. avg_trade_return_pct on ETHUSD.HYPERLIQUID: iter 1 (daily, symmetric) -0.087%; iter 2 (4H, symmetric 2-ATR) +0.063% (still a losing book, PF 0.95); iter 3 (4H, asymmetric 1.5/4.0-ATR) -0.625%. Iteration-3 sandbox: total_return -11.87%, Sharpe -0.751, PF 0.66, PSR 0.187, 64 trades. The payoff-asymmetry change — explicitly the last structural lever — backfired: avg_win 1195 / avg_loss 768 = 1.55:1 against a ~2.4:1 break-even at the 29.7% hit rate, because the tight 1.5-ATR initial stop knocks out would-be winners before the wide 4.0-ATR trail engages. The edge is absent, not mistuned. - Zero-survivor family, confirmed by exhaustion. Pure-OHLCV Donchian/N-bar breakout has ~0% survival (L7). Three iterations measured this mechanism across two cadences (daily, 4H) and two stop geometries (symmetric chandelier, asymmetric ratchet); all sub-fee or negative. No structural lever left untested.
Backtest and paper results are hypothetical. Trading involves risk of loss.