This is a complete, rules-based strategy for BTC and ETH. You need four charts and a limit order. No indicators to buy, no software to run.
Across 933 backtested trades it returned +0.177% per trade at a 52.9% win rate. Small, steady, and easily destroyed by impatience. The full numbers are at the bottom, along with every trade in a spreadsheet.
Here is how to trade it.
1. Set up four charts
BTC or ETH, four timeframes: 4H, 1H, 30M, 15M.
The two slow charts tell you which direction you're allowed to trade. The two fast charts tell you when. Never trade off the slow charts, and never let them talk you out of a clean setup on the fast ones.
2. Decide your direction
On the 4H, find the most recent significant swing high and swing low. Mark the halfway point between them.
- Price above halfway → look for shorts only.
- Price below halfway → look for longs only.
- Price sitting right on it, or the chart moving sideways with no clear trend → skip. Come back later.
This single filter does more work than anything else on the list. Take it seriously.
3. Find the level
On the 1H, in your permitted direction only, find the nearest price area that price has left behind and not yet returned to. In practice that's one of two things:
- the last opposite-colour candle before a sharp move away, or
- a gap where price jumped and left a hole.
That area is where you're willing to trade. If price is nowhere near one, there is no trade today.
4. Wait for the fast chart to confirm
Drop to the 30M and 15M. Before you do anything, you want to see two things in order:
- Price pushes past an obvious recent high or low and reverses — the stop hunt.
- A strong candle closes back in your direction. Strong means a big body, not a small candle with long wicks.
No strong candle, no trade. This is the step people skip, and it is the step that keeps you out of the worst entries.
5. Draw the zone
You are not entering at a price. You are entering in a zone.
Take the last opposite-colour candle before that strong move, on the 15M. The body of that candle is your zone.
Measure it. If the zone is wider than 0.8% of the current price, skip the trade. A tight zone is the whole point — median width in testing was 0.43%.
6. Place the order
| Entry | Limit order at the edge price reaches first — the top of the zone for a long, the bottom for a short |
| Stop | 0.15–0.25% beyond the wick that formed the zone. Never at a round number |
| Target 1 | 2× your risk. Close most of the position here |
| Target 2 | 3.75× your risk. Let a small piece run |
Your risk is the distance from entry to stop. If that distance is more than about 0.8% of price, the setup is too loose — skip it.
Enter at the edge, not the middle. The middle is a price you probably won't get.
7. Manage it by the clock
Three rules. They are not optional, and they are where most hand-traded strategies fall apart.
24 hours to fill. If price never reaches your zone within a day, cancel the order. That is not a missed trade — nothing happened. About 89% of setups filled, most within the hour.
12 hours to resolve. Once filled, if neither the stop nor a target has been hit after half a day, close it at market. Trades that drag on past that point go badly far more often than they go well.
One trade per idea. Same coin, same direction, within 48 hours, at roughly the same price? That is the same trade. Don't take it twice.
What it returned
933 setups on BTC and ETH, January 2025 to June 2026, followed on real 15-minute candles. Entries counted at the edge of the zone — the price a resting order would actually get — with fees included.
| Trades | 631 |
| Win rate | 52.9% |
| Profit factor | 1.36 — you make 1.36 for every 1 you lose |
| Average result | +0.177% per trade |
| Average win | +1.28% |
| Average loss | −1.02% |
| Worst drawdown | −14.3% |
Set your expectations from this: of 833 filled trades, 344 hit the first target, 321 hit the stop, 155 ran out of clock, and 13 reached the second target. The far target is a bonus. The strategy makes its money from slightly more than half of trades reaching a target worth a little more than the stop.
It does not work everywhere. On slower, heavily institutional markets the same rules go flat.
The data
Every trade is in the attached spreadsheet: the zone, the stop, both targets, what happened, the fill and exit price, how long it waited, how long it ran, and the result.
933 rows. Check the numbers above against it, and test the rules on your own markets before you risk anything.
Figures on this page come from backtests and are hypothetical. They do not represent actual trading, do not include every real-world cost, and are not a promise of future results. Nothing here is financial advice — see the disclaimer.