The thesis
RSI Snap-Back is a clean, disciplined take on a well-worn idea: large-cap tech names overshoot in the short term and revert. The strategy buys the most oversold Mag-7 constituents when RSI drops below 35 and exits when RSI pushes above 70, rotating to hold a tight four-name book at any time. The universe is narrow and deliberate — AAPL, MSFT, NVDA, GOOGL, AMZN, META and TSLA — and the hard four-slot cap is doing real work, capping concurrent exposure and forcing the strategy to pick its spots rather than sprawl.
Backtest and validation
Over 451 days the backtest returned 20.95%, lifting a $10,000 book to $12,095 for an 11.21% CAGR. The win rate is a healthy 66.67% across 37 trades, and fees were negligible at $37 with zero FX cost. Those are encouraging headline numbers.
The texture underneath is more mixed. The Sharpe ratio of 0.61 is modest — the returns came with meaningful volatility, not a smooth ride. The maximum drawdown of 23.73% is the number to sit with: a reversion strategy that catches a falling knife can stay oversold far longer than four slots can comfortably hold, and nearly a quarter of the book evaporated at the worst point. Turnover of 773% also tells you this is an active, churn-heavy approach; the low fee figure here is kind, but any wider spread or slippage assumption would erode the edge quickly.
Most importantly, the validation field is empty. There is no out-of-sample or holdout confirmation on offer, so the 20.95% should be read as in-sample backtest performance and nothing more. For a strategy with 773% turnover and only 37 trades, the risk of curve-fit entry/exit thresholds is non-trivial.
Recent live activity
Here the picture turns quiet — pointedly so. The last six scheduled runs (8, 9, 12, 13, 14 and 15 October) all report the same line: 0 executed, 0 rejected, cash $10,000, total $10,000. The live book is fully in cash and has been flat for a week of sessions, with no recent trades to show. That is not a failure — it's exactly what you'd expect from a strict RSI < 35 trigger during a stretch where no Mag-7 name has been oversold enough to qualify. The discipline is holding. But it also means the live track record is, as of today, empty of signal.
Verdict
RSI Snap-Back is a coherent, rule-tight strategy with a genuine historical edge and sensible risk controls. The strengths are a strong win rate and low frictional cost; the risks are a soft Sharpe, a deep drawdown, missing validation, and a live deployment that has yet to place a single trade. Worth watching — but the real test begins the moment RSI finally dips and the book commits capital.