Does the Chaikin Money Flow strategy beat buy & hold on Ethereum? (ETH · backtested honestly)
Chaikin Money Flow measures, for each bar, where the close finished inside the bar's high-low range (near the high means buying pressure, near the low means selling pressure), weights that by the bar's volume, and averages it over a lookback window to a reading between -1 and +1. Above zero suggests volume is flowing in ('accumulation'); below zero, out ('distribution'). This rule goes long while the reading is above its zero line and steps aside below - a trend/accumulation reading of volume flow, related to but not the same as On-Balance Volume (which uses close-to-close direction rather than the close's position inside each bar). It lags turns and whipsaws in sideways markets, and a bar with no range or a feed with no volume carries no information - the reading simply steps aside rather than inventing one.
Run it yourself
Change the parameters and the window, then re-run — no account needed.
A live badge that re-runs itself and links back here. Free to embed on any blog, newsletter or forum — it shows the honest result, beat or lagged.
<iframe src="https://stratsemble.com/embed/ethereum-cmf-backtest" width="360" height="252" style="border:0;border-radius:12px;max-width:100%" loading="lazy" title="Does the Chaikin Money Flow strategy beat buy & hold on Ethereum?"></iframe>- • The strategy line is Chaikin Money Flow on Ethereum; the dashed line is simply buying and holding ETH. Beating the dashed line is the whole point — many strategies don't.
- • Max drawdown is the worst peak-to-trough fall you'd have sat through. A higher return with a much deeper drawdown is not obviously better.
- • Every fill assumes next-open execution with costs & slippage on — no acting on prices you couldn't have known.
- • A small number of trades means a small sample. Treat a great-looking result on a handful of trades with suspicion.
This is a hypothetical backtest of a well-known mechanism on past data. It is not advice, not a prediction, and not a claim that the strategy works. I hold no funds and place no orders. The value here is the ability to test an idea honestly — see where it would have helped, and where it would have hurt — before you ever risk real money on your own broker.
How this is computed → · who's behind it · where a backtest fits