An RSI strategy in 5 minutes

The rule

RSI(14) weighs the gains of the last 14 candles against their losses on a scale from 0 to 100. Below 30 is the textbook “oversold”: the price fell so fast that a bounce is the bet. The recipe turns that into three rules:

• Enter on a 4-hour candle that closes with RSI(14) below 30, with half of the free capital.
• Exit when RSI(14) is back above 50 — the bounce the idea bets on has happened.
• Or exit earlier at +5% profit or at a −4% loss, whichever comes first.

Five steps

1. Open the idea. Press Open in the wizard on the card above. Without an account, sign in or create a free one first: once you are signed in, the wizard opens on the same answers.
2. Check the answers. The wizard asks which coin, which direction and market, which candles, how oversold and how much risk; the card picked BTC, long on spot, 4h, “RSI below 30” and Balanced. Change any of them, and the description under What you’ll get follows.
3. Open it in the editor. Press Open in the editor. Nothing is saved yet: the form holds the strategy, and the description above it says the same rules in words.
4. Dry-run it. In the Dry-run panel set the period and press Run. Seconds later you see the result and, on the last 500 candles of the period, where the entry fired — still nothing saved. Tick Compare against random entries to see whether the RSI rule beats a coin flip that trades as often, with the same exits.
5. Save and run the backtest. Save the strategy, then press Run backtest on its page. The report has the equity curve, every trade on the price chart, drawdowns and 60+ metrics.

What to look at first

• The number of trades. Under 30 trades is a small sample: a few lucky bounces make the win rate. Test more coins or a longer period before trusting it.
• Buy & Hold and Alpha. The report puts what simply holding the coin made next to the strategy. A rule that buys dips sits out much of a bull market, so it can make money and still trail holding.
• Max drawdown. The deepest fall of the account from a peak — the number that decides whether you would have stayed with the strategy. Every metric, explained.

What the platform’s own data says: the textbook version of this rule — buy when RSI climbs back above 30, sell when it crosses 70 — made money in 12 of 20 coin × timeframe runs on Binance spot in 2020–2026, but beat buy and hold in only 2 of them. The RSI 30/70 study has every run.

Four variations

• Deeper dips. Answer “RSI below 25” or “below 20” in the wizard: fewer trades, each after a sharper fall.
• Only in an uptrend. One more row keeps the strategy out while the price is below its long average — the trend-filter recipe shows how.
• The textbook cross. In the editor, change the entry row’s operator from < to CROSS_UP ↗: the strategy then buys on the candle RSI climbs back above 30, not while it is still below.
• The short mirror. On futures the same idea sells short when RSI(14) is above 70 and covers when it falls back below 50:

If the dry run shows no entries

The stricter the level and the longer the candles, the rarer the signal: RSI(14) below 20 on daily candles may not happen at all in a short period. Lengthen the period, or take a milder level or shorter candles. If that does not help, why a backtest has 0 trades goes through the other causes.

Frequently asked questions