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Test · Crypto + Stock market + Forex + Commodities · 15m · 8 min read

Troy horse ICT method

By Thomas Jamais (Backtestd) · Published 2026-10-30 · Updated 2026-10-30

Watch the videos

Short videos about this test. Each one has its own page.

Videos
Troy horse ICT method: we tested 64 versions →

Results are never pooled across market kinds: a strategy can behave very differently on crypto perpetuals, stock indices and currencies. Leverage changes the size of a position, not its result in R. What leverage costs is counted: funding on crypto perpetuals and on the OKX contracts that track indices and commodities (2022 on). The 2010–2022 stock-index and forex history is tested on the plain price, without leverage or overnight swap.

The rule people share

As it is usually explained:

“London close stays inside the New York morning range. Then trade the retest of a fair value gap toward the morning low.”
— the rule as people share it

How we tested it

1. 01

   Data

   15m candles of 61 markets (Crypto (perpetual futures): AAVE, ADA, APR, ARB, AVAX, BAT, BCH, BNB, BTC, DOGE, DOOD, DOT, ENA, ETH, FIL, HYPE, INJ, IOST, LINK, LTC, NEAR, OKB, ONDO, PEPE, PUMP, SOL, STRK, SUI, TAO, TIA, UNI, WLD, XPL, XRP, ZEC, ZRO; Stock market (indices): ASX-IDX, CAC-IDX, DAX-IDX, FTSE-IDX, HSI-IDX, NDX-IDX, NIKKEI-IDX, QQQ, SPX-IDX, SPY; Forex (currency pairs): AUDJPY-FX, AUDUSD-FX, EURCHF-FX, EURGBP-FX, EURJPY-FX, EURUSD-FX, GBPJPY-FX, GBPUSD-FX, NZDUSD-FX, USDCAD-FX, USDCHF-FX, USDJPY-FX; Commodities: BZ, XAG, XAU), from 2022-11-10 to 2025-07-09. Crypto prices come from OKX perpetual futures; the 2020–2022 check uses Binance's public archive (median price gap to OKX: 0.06%). US index data comes from HistData.

2. 02

   Costs

   Every trade pays a 0.05% taker fee per side, 2–5 basis points of slippage per side, and, on crypto perpetual futures, funding every 8 hours at each market's measured average rate. Stock indices and forex pairs (2010–2022 history) pay their own costs: about 0.03% per side for indices, 0.013% for major currency pairs, without funding. Results are in R: 1 R is the amount risked on one trade (entry to stop), so strategies with different stops compare fairly.

3. 03

   Versions

   A rule shared online is never fully specified (which stop? which holding time? which timeframe?). So we test every reasonable reading: each combination of the settings below is one version.

4. 04

   Two halves

   The data is split in two halves (a rising market, then a flatter one). A real edge should work in both.

5. 05

   Against the market

   A long trade in a rising market makes money without any skill. We subtract what simply holding the crypto market (an equal-weight basket) on the same side over the same days would have made: what remains is what the rule adds.

6. 06

   Older data, never seen

   The best version is then run, unchanged, on 2020–2022 data that played no part in choosing it (a crash, a bull market and a bear market).

Read the full method →

Results

All 64 versions

The best of 64 versions

5743 trades, 51% winners, −0.082 R per trade on average, −470.8 R in total, worst drawdown −488.0 R.

Why “the best version” misleads

With 64 versions, some look good by luck alone. The typical version made −0.105 R per trade; the best made −0.082. If the rule had no edge at all, the spread of results would look like this anyway: the best of many random tries always looks impressive. That is why we never trust the best version until it works on data it was not chosen on.

Verify it yourself

1. Write the rule exactly (below: our specification and every setting we tried).
2. Get free data: Binance's public archive (data.binance.vision) has years of candles; OKX and most exchanges offer an API.
3. Include costs: fees on both sides, slippage, and funding for perpetual futures.
4. Count results in R (risk per trade), not in %, and look at the typical version, not the best one.
5. Split your data in two and keep a part you never look at until the end.
6. Compare with simply holding the market over the same days.

Troy horse: the "Trojan Horse ICT Order Flow Quantum Method" from an Instagram reel, written down as rules.

What it does: the reel (Micro Nasdaq futures, 5-minute chart) draws a wooden horse over one day of price.
"The soldiers build up inside the horse": during the London-close killzone price stays inside the range
of the New York morning killzone. Then price "displaces lower out of the mouth of the horse" and leaves a
fair value gap (FVG); you sell when price comes back into the gap and aim for the New York morning low.
The reel never states a rule; this file is the closest testable reading of what it shows. Long is the
mirror image (displacement up, target the New York morning high).

Rules (fixed a priori from the reel, not tuned on results), times in New York local time (DST handled):
- NY AM killzone: am_start..am_end (default 07:00-10:00). Its high and low are the horse's frame.
- London-close killzone: lc_start..lc_end (default 10:00-12:00). Its high (short) / low (long) is the head.
- Inside the horse (require_inside): the whole London-close range stays inside the NY AM range.
  Both sessions must be complete that day (markets that are closed then give no signal).
- Mouth: between lc_end and win_end (default 15:00), the first three-candle fair value gap of the day whose
  middle candle is a displacement (body >= disp_mult x ATR, gap >= min_gap_atr x ATR) gives the side:
  bearish gap = short, bullish gap = long. Price must still be inside the NY AM range.
- Entry (entry = "retest"): the first later candle (before win_end) that trades back into the gap and closes
  inside or beyond it; a close through the far side of the gap, or reaching the target first, cancels the day.
  entry = "immediate": enter right after the gap forms (no retest).
- Stop (stop = "head"): beyond the highest high (short) / lowest low (long) since the London-close killzone
  began, + stop_buf x ATR. stop = "fvg": beyond the far side of the gap. Optional floor: at least
  min_stop_adr x average daily range away (0 = pure structure, as in the reel).
- Target (target_r = 0): the NY AM killzone low (short) / high (long). target_r > 0: that many times the stop
  distance. Every trade is closed by flat_h (default 16:00 New York) at the latest. One trade per day.
- Needs intraday candles (<= 1 hour). The reel used 5-minute candles; our history is 15-minute.
Source: Instagram reel, "New trojan horse method" (caption tagged #funny); idea only.

Limitations

• A backtest is not live trading: fills, outages and your own discipline differ.
• We test the rule as written; a trader's discretion is not testable.
• Markets change. A rule that failed here could work elsewhere, and the reverse.
• Costs depend on your exchange and size; ours are typical retail perpetual-futures costs.

Questions

Disclaimer

Educational content based on historical backtests. Not financial advice. Past results do not predict future results. Trading leveraged products can lose more than you invest.

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