{
  "slug": "silver-bullet",
  "title": "ICT Silver Bullet (New York AM) on NAS100",
  "status": "complete",
  "published": "2026-10-23",
  "summary": "The New York AM Silver Bullet, written as fixed rules and tested on five years of NAS100 5-minute data. In the out-of-sample windows (May 2023 to October 2026) it took 230 trades and lost 0.12R per trade on average, -26.9R in total, before trading costs. Every one of the five test windows lost money. Verdict: reject. Not this time.",
  "instrument": "NAS100",
  "timeframe": "M5",
  "period": {
    "start": "2021-10-01",
    "end": "2026-10-23"
  },
  "costs": "before trading costs",
  "run_id": "run_d87f236a61",
  "verdict": {
    "grade": "reject",
    "summary": "Rejected. Out of sample the rules lost 0.117R per trade before trading costs, and all five test windows were negative. Price series reshuffled at random scored as well or better in 34 of 40 tries, so there is no sign of an edge."
  },
  "oos_metrics": {
    "trades": 230,
    "win_rate": 41.3,
    "expectancy_r": -0.1167,
    "profit_factor": 0.749,
    "max_drawdown_r": 32.62,
    "total_r": -26.85
  },
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      "2026-07-16T16:15:00+00:00",
      -26.833
    ],
    [
      "2026-07-21T16:35:00+00:00",
      -25.924
    ],
    [
      "2026-07-30T17:00:00+00:00",
      -26.401
    ],
    [
      "2026-08-07T16:35:00+00:00",
      -25.892
    ],
    [
      "2026-08-10T16:15:00+00:00",
      -26.219
    ],
    [
      "2026-08-25T16:10:00+00:00",
      -26.212
    ],
    [
      "2026-08-26T16:35:00+00:00",
      -26.007
    ],
    [
      "2026-08-31T16:45:00+00:00",
      -25.551
    ],
    [
      "2026-09-02T16:50:00+00:00",
      -25.435
    ],
    [
      "2026-09-25T16:05:00+00:00",
      -26.435
    ],
    [
      "2026-10-07T16:30:00+00:00",
      -25.411
    ],
    [
      "2026-10-08T16:45:00+00:00",
      -26.411
    ],
    [
      "2026-10-15T16:15:00+00:00",
      -25.232
    ],
    [
      "2026-10-19T16:30:00+00:00",
      -24.851
    ],
    [
      "2026-10-21T14:50:00+00:00",
      -25.851
    ],
    [
      "2026-10-22T14:15:00+00:00",
      -26.851
    ]
  ],
  "method": "The rules were written down before the test and every parameter was pinned: a swing of 4 bars each side, a fair value gap of at least 0.2 ATR within 6 bars of the sweep, a limit entry at the near edge of the gap, the stop 2 points beyond the sweep's extreme, a 2R target, a 2-hour time exit, one trade per day, 1% risk per trade. Nothing was optimised.\n\nData: NAS100 5-minute bars from a broker's MetaTrader 5 feed, 1 October 2021 to 23 October 2026 (358,580 bars). Signals fill at the next bar's open or at the limit price; if one bar touches both the stop and the target, the stop is assumed to fill first.\n\nThe test is a rolling walk-forward with five folds: each fold has a training window of about 19 months followed directly by a test window of about eight months, and only trades inside the test windows count. The first 19 months (October 2021 to May 2023) are training only; the test windows run from May 2023 to October 2026. Because every parameter was fixed before the test, the training windows had nothing to fit: the optimise step ran one trial with the fixed settings and every fold used the same values. Each test window is simply the same rules applied to the next stretch of data. Results are in R, the amount risked per trade, and are before trading costs: no spread, commission, slippage or financing is charged.",
  "limitations": [
    "Before trading costs. Spread, commission and slippage would make the result worse, not better.",
    "The out-of-sample result covers about 3.5 years (May 2023 to October 2026), not the whole five; the first 19 months are the walk-forward's first training window, in which nothing was fitted.",
    "One precise reading of the Silver Bullet. Other definitions of a sweep, a fair value gap or the stop could behave differently; this study does not test them.",
    "One instrument (NAS100), one session (10:00 to 11:00 New York), one broker's price feed.",
    "5-minute bars: what happens inside a bar is not visible, so a bar that touches both stop and target is counted as a loss.",
    "A backtest, not live or funded-account trading."
  ]
}