Alpha Survey · in search of alpha
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Protect your money.

We sound the waters for alpha, one hypothesis at a time. Most of them are empty. Knowing where not to cast is how you protect your money.

Every hypothesis is written down before anyone looks at the data, with its pass and fail criteria fixed in advance. Then it is tested with real costs, out of sample and against chance. Here we publish the waters that turned out empty: where we cast, why they looked promising, what we found and what we learned.

the survey

Where we stand

Trading is real

Markets do pay people who find a genuine edge and execute it with discipline. Done well, it can grow your wealth. That is not a myth, and this site does not pretend otherwise.

Trading is also a mirage

It sells to our wishes, not to our judgment, and it takes money from the people it convinces. Most of what is offered as an edge has never been tested against real costs, against chance, or against the years after it was published.

Our mission

To make validation understandable, with concrete cases: hypotheses that are usually sold as sure things, tested the way a careful researcher would test them, and reported with the exact criterion they failed. What you get here is not a strategy. It is a way of judging one before it costs you.

The waters, sounded window by window
Sounded · emptySounded · emptySounded · empty
Up session Down session Sounded windowIllustrative, not market data

The survey so far

76
hypotheses registered
51
archived as empty waters
4
published log entries
25
other research, not disclosed

Registered means formalized in our research log; archived means closed as empty (no signal, no edge after costs, or not enough data). Only archived cases get a public entry; the rest is ongoing research and stays undisclosed. The share of archived cases says something about our selection of ideas, not about the market.The ledger →

This week's entry

H-016 · carry / funding

Collecting the funding rate is not free money. The price eats what the funding pays

Empty because: an out-of-sample Sharpe of zero, a ranking indistinguishable from rotating at random, and the whole edge living in one month

Read the log entry

Every episode, with its short and its log entry: the videos page →

Earlier cases

One log entry a week.

H-059
Testing the shorting premium: what a rebalancing bug taught us
Empty because: a short leg that loses once positions are held for the month, and a fee ranking that does worse than random
Monthly rebalanceUS stocks, stock lending market
September 8, 2026
H-042
The post-earnings bounce did not survive our cost assumptions
Empty because: net return of zero in one variant and of the opposite sign in the other
Swing, about ten sessionsUS stocks, earnings calendar
August 24, 2026
H-044
Short-term momentum in large caps: no robust edge in our test
Empty because: negative net return, and no convincing evidence that the ranking added value before costs
Monthly rotationUS large-cap stocks
August 24, 2026

How we judge a strategy

1Pre-registrationThe rule and its pass/fail criteria are written before anyone looks at the data.2Real costsCommissions, slippage, funding and borrow, and a pass at double the friction.3Out of sampleThe effect must show up in the stretch the original author could not see.4Against chanceShuffled versions of the same rule that keep the market drift and destroy the selection.5MultiplicityEvery attempt is counted, by family of mechanism, and the threshold tightens with it.6SurvivorshipUniverses rebuilt date by date with delisted names, or a 0.6 discount on the Sharpe.7No collidersEvery condition in a rule must be measurable before entry and explain itself.8One lookNon-renewable tests run once, with a date and guards against spending them twice.9Nothing deletedEmpty waters keep their full record: the numbers, the criterion and what would bring us back.

The full method →

One log entry a week, in your inbox

Where we cast, why it looked promising, what we found and what we learned. No signals, no promises.

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