Before the strategies
Where the numbers come from, why popular chart setups fail after NSE charges, and how systematic desks filter and size their rules.
What a backtest can tell you, and what it cannot
Every strategy on AlgoVend is listed next to a test over past prices. Here is how that test is run, where its numbers come from, and the three ways to read them wrongly.
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- 5 min
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- how we work
Why most YouTube strategies fail the moment brokerage is charged
A crossover that looks profitable on a clean chart often turns into a steady loss on a broker statement. Here is the arithmetic of NSE charges, and how systematic desks build around it.
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- 3 min
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- how we work
The filter professional desks check before buying any stock
Retail traders spend almost all their time hunting for a better entry indicator. Systematic traders spend theirs deciding when a strategy is allowed to trade at all.
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- 3 min
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- how we work
How to build and test a trading rule without writing code
You should not need to learn a programming language to test whether a trading rule works, and you should never run a robot whose rules you cannot read back in plain English.
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- 3 min
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- how we work
Buys shares and waits
The four strategies that passed a five-year test and are available to try. Each holds ordinary shares for days to months.
One switch for the whole portfolio
Most cautious investors already time the market by instinct. Market mode does the same thing with a definition, and acts on it the same day.
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- 4 min
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- available to try
The slowest strategy we sell, and why that is the point
Long-term trend makes a handful of decisions a year per company and holds for months. Most of its trades lose a little. The ones that win pay for all of them.
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- 4 min
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- available to try
Why buying at a record high is not the mistake it feels like
Everything in you says to wait for a cheaper price. New-high momentum buys the day a company reaches its highest price in five months, holds without a target, and sells only when the buying has clearly stopped.
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- 4 min
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- available to try
Buying what everyone just sold
A large company falls hard for a week, usually on something that will not matter in a month. Swing mean reversion buys the stretch and sells the recovery, hundreds of times over.
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- 4 min
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- available to try
Sells options, with and without a floor
Unlisted until we hold historical option prices. The ideas are worth understanding first.
Getting paid for a market that goes nowhere
Most weeks the index drifts. The iron condor sells a promise that this week will be one of them, with insurance on both sides so the worst case is known before the trade is placed.
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- 4 min
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- not yet listed
Selling the side the market is leaning away from
A condor promises the index will stay in a range. The trend credit spread promises only that it will not reverse hard, on the one side the trend already favours.
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- 3 min
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- not yet listed
The most popular trade in India, and the one that needs the most respect
Selling a strangle wins most weeks, which is why so many people do it. The weeks it loses are the ones that end accounts. Here is how the robot tries to make those rare, and why it cannot make them impossible.
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- 4 min
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- not yet listed
A bet that today will be quiet
The straddle sells both options at today's level and gives the index no room at all. It collects the largest premium on this site and is the least forgiving thing on it.
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- 3 min
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- not yet listed
Trades the day
Four intraday families: the hourly exhaustion scalp that cleared round-trip charges, and three 5-minute families that lost after costs.
Only when the rubber band is stretched to breaking
Five-minute scalpers trade all day and work for their broker. This day-trading strategy waits for an hourly 2.5-sigma stretch with RSI beyond 20 or 80, fades the panic or euphoria, and is flat by 15:15.
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- 3 min
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- available to try
A day trade that follows the day's own tide
Some days a stock picks a direction in the morning and holds it. This strategy asks three questions to find those days and does nothing on the rest. In our test, doing nothing would have been better still.
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- 3 min
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- not yet listed
The first fifteen minutes
The opening range breakout buys a stock the moment it clears its early-morning high on heavy volume. It is wrong more often than it is right, and it was never supposed to be otherwise.
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- 3 min
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- not yet listed
Making money on a falling day
Every other share strategy here can only buy. This one can sell a stock it does not own and buy it back cheaper, which gives it something to do when the market falls, and twice as many ways to be wrong.
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- 3 min
- Status
- not yet listed
Looking for the rules themselves?
Each strategy also has a guide: what it does, the exits in the order the robot checks them, a worked example in rupees, the three versions side by side, and the jargon explained. The articles link to them, and they link back.