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Simulation Setup Latest data: —
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📖 Lingo & acronyms
Moving average (10-day, 20-day…)
The average closing price of the last N trading days, redrawn every day. It smooths out daily noise so you can see which way the price is drifting. A shorter average (10-day) turns quickly and reacts to every wiggle; a longer one (200-day) turns slowly and only reflects the big trend.
10-day average
The average of the last 10 closing prices — about two trading weeks. Because it turns fast, it's used to spot the moment a bounce is starting.

In one line: the 'fast' line.
20-day average
The average of the last 20 closes — about a month. Slower than the 10-day, so when the fast one climbs above it, the short-term trend has genuinely turned up, not just twitched.

In one line: the 'slow' line in the 10/20 cross.
50-day average
The average of the last 50 closes — roughly a quarter. A middle-speed trend line. (No longer offered as an exit: it sold too early to be useful.)
100-day average
The average of the last 100 closes — about five months. A medium-term trend line: it lets a position run for a few months before letting go.

In one line: a 'fast exit' — it lets go sooner than the recommended one.
150-day average
The average of the last 150 closes — about seven months. Slow enough to ignore normal pullbacks, quick enough to step aside when a real downtrend starts.

In one line: the recommended exit.
175-day average
The average of the last 175 closes. Sits between the 150 and 200 — slightly more patient than the recommendation.

In one line: a 'slow exit'.
200-day average
The average of the last 200 closes — about ten months. The traditional dividing line between a bull and bear market in the US, and the line the Rulebook watches to decide whether the market is in an uptrend or a downtrend.
200-week average (200W)
The average of the last 200 weeks — roughly four years. This is the strategy's anchor: a stock sitting at or below this line has fallen far from its long-run trend and is a potential bargain. Everything in this simulator is measured against this line.

In one line: the long-run trend line.
Band
A zone straddling the 200-week line: from 10% below it to 3% above it. A stock is considered 'in the dip zone' while it trades inside that band — close to its long-run trend, not far above it.

In one line: the neighbourhood of the 200-week line.
Dip entry (buy the sell-off)
Buys after a fall. A stock drops near or below its 200-week average, then starts climbing again; the strategy buys once it has risen 3.5% from its lowest point. The idea: buy fear when the drop is arrested, not while it's still falling.

In one line: buy the panic once it stops panicking.
Cross entry (buy renewed momentum)
Buys when trend turns back up: the 10-day average climbs above the 20-day average while the price is already above its 200-week line. No dip required — this is a 'the recovery has started' buy.

In one line: buy when the trend re-ignites.
Rulebook (regime) entry
The recommended setting. It picks the entry type for you based on the whole market: when the S&P is above its ten-month average (risk-on), it uses cross entries; when the S&P is below it (risk-off), it switches to dip entries. One rule set, two moods.

In one line: the strategy chooses dip or momentum depending on the market's mood.
Risk-on
The broad market is in an uptrend — the S&P sits above its ten-month average. Investors are willing to take risk, so the strategy buys stocks that are recovering and rising.

In one line: the market is healthy.
Risk-off
The broad market is in a downtrend — the S&P sits below its ten-month average. The strategy stops chasing momentum and waits to buy the panic instead.

In one line: the market is falling.
Dip quality gate
A filter deciding which dips are worth buying. It only keeps dips where the stock is genuinely washed out — measured by RSI (a 0-100 momentum gauge): the more oversold, the better the odds. Tighter settings mean fewer trades with a higher hit rate.

In one line: don't catch every falling knife, only the exhausted ones.
RSI (14)
A 0-100 gauge of how stretched recent price moves are. Above 70 = overheated (likely to cool); below 30 = washed out (likely to bounce). The strategy buys dips when RSI is low, and momentum when RSI is comfortably above 50. It is not a prediction — it's a pressure reading.

In one line: how tired the move is.
Weak sectors
Four industry groups where buying dips has historically paid the least: utilities, consumer staples, energy and real estate. The strategy skips them, so it isn't buying the same kind of slow, defensive stock over and over.

In one line: avoid the industries where this tactic keeps failing.
Equity-fraction sizing (12.5%)
How big each bet is. Every new position takes 12.5% of what the account is worth at that moment — one eighth. On a $10,000 account that's $1,250; if the account doubles, the next bet is $2,500. Bets grow with the account, which is what lets winnings compound. It also means you hold roughly eight positions at once, so a single bad trade can't sink you.

In one line: bet a fixed slice of the account, not a fixed dollar amount.
Flat sizing ($1,000 / $2,500)
Every buy is the same dollar amount no matter how big the account has become. Simple and predictable, but a $1,000 bet on a $100,000 account is barely a rounding error — the strategy stops growing with the account.

In one line: same bet every time.
High-water-mark sizing (15%)
Each bet is 15% of the best the account has ever been worth. Bets shrink as a share of the account when you're below your peak, and never increase just because you had a bad stretch.

In one line: size bets off the best you've ever had.
Fixed book (equity ÷ 20)
Treat the account as twenty equal slots. Each position takes one slot and you can never hold more than twenty at once.

In one line: a fixed number of slots.
Initial capital
The money the simulation starts with ($10,000 by default). Because each bet is a fraction of the account, this number sets the size of the very first trades — everything scales from it.
Skip rate
The share of signals that fired but did not become trades. A high skip rate isn't a bug: the filters deliberately reject weak setups and there's only so much cash. Every skipped signal shows the exact reason it was passed over.
Dip quality gate / skip reasons
Every buy or skip comes with a plain sentence saying what happened — which condition failed, or how much cash was short and why.
Arming an exit
Some exits are kept 'switched off' until the position is safely in profit. The rule switches on only after the price closes back above the exit average; before that, only a hard stop and a time limit protect you. Without arming, a stock bought near its lows would sell itself the next day.

In one line: don't sell on day one just because the price is below average.
Hard stop (-10%)
A safety sell if the position falls 10% from the buy price — but it applies only while the normal exit is still switched off (see 'Arming').

In one line: the emergency brake.
Time stop (40 days)
If a position has gone nowhere for 40 trading days and the normal exit still isn't switched on, the strategy gives up and frees the cash.

In one line: don't let dead money block a better trade.
Trailing stop
An exit that follows the price up and sells when it drops a set percentage below its peak. It protects gains but tends to cut winners short; extensive testing here showed it loses to the simple average-based exit.

In one line: sell after it falls X% from the high.
Cross confirm
Before buying a momentum signal, wait for N days in a row where the price held above its 20-day average. It filters out one-day spikes that immediately reverse.

In one line: wait for the move to prove itself.
Cooldown (5 weeks)
After a signal for a stock, that same stock can't signal again for five weeks. It prevents repeatedly buying the same name during a long decline.
Minimum hold (5 days)
A new position can't be sold for its first five trading days. It stops the strategy from flickering in and out on tiny moves.
Confirmation days (3)
The exit doesn't fire on the first close below the average — it waits for three closes in a row below it. One bad day isn't a trend change.

In one line: wait for three strikes.
Spread costs
The small gap between what buyers pay and sellers receive. It's entered in 'basis points' (0.01% each) and models the real cost of trading. Commission is assumed to be zero.
Episode
One complete dip opportunity: the stretch from the moment a stock enters the dip zone until the buy signal either fires or expires. If the bounce doesn't come within four weeks, the episode ends and the stock is forgotten.
Episode low
The lowest price reached during that dip. It's the reference point the bounce is measured from.
Buy-stop
A standing order placed a set distance (3.5%) above the dip's low point. It buys automatically only if the price actually starts recovering — no guessing, no buying a falling knife.
Benchmark
What the results are compared against: the S&P 500 for US stocks, the TSX Composite for Canadian ones. 'Beating the benchmark' means doing better than simply buying the index and waiting.
Mark-to-market (MTM)
Valuing a position you still hold at today's price, rather than at what you paid. It's how unrealised profit or loss is shown.
ROE (return on equity)
How much profit a company generates per dollar of shareholders' money. A rough sign of business quality; the strategy requires at least 10%.
Market cap
The total value of a company's shares: share price × number of shares. Used to classify stocks from micro-cap to mega-cap.
Quality score
A ranking number given to each signal, built from sector, dip depth, company size, volatility and profitability. When several stocks fire on the same day, the highest score gets bought first.
ROI
Return on investment: the profit or loss on a position, shown as a percentage of what it cost.
Profit factor (PF)
Total money won divided by total money lost. 1.0 means break-even; 2.0 means every dollar lost was matched by two won.
Max close / post-exit peak
The highest price a stock reached after you sold it, measured up to 100 trading days later. It answers the question: how much further did this one run without us?
Peak given up
The money left on the table: the gap between where we sold and the best price afterwards, multiplied by the shares we held. It's a score for exit timing, not money we earned.