Engineering Alpha

Engineering Alpha

Stop Judging Reversal Strategies the Wrong Way

A Simpler Way to Measure Whether Trading Signals Actually Find Market Turning Points

Sofien Kaabar, CFA's avatar
Sofien Kaabar, CFA
Mar 05, 2026
∙ Paid

Most traders evaluate a strategy using one question:

Did it make money?

That sounds reasonable. But it hides a major problem.

Profitability mixes together many different things:

  • signal quality

  • position sizing

  • execution timing

  • risk management

  • market regime

  • luck

So when a reversal strategy works or fails, we often cannot tell whether the signal itself was intellige…

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