Ichimoku Cloud Break: a cloud breakout on EUR/USD
Methodology
- Signal: long above the cloud, short below, flat inside the cloud (9, 26, 52).
- Engine run with costs; the system is sluggish because of the 52-bar line.
- Data — daily EUR/USD bars (the stated gold XAU/USD is not represented by a separate history at the portal).
Results on real data
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Instrument | EUR/USD |
| Period | 2025-06-16 — 2026-07-20 |
| Bars | 400 |
| CAGR | +1.0% |
| Drawdown | 4.3% |
| Sharpe | 0.21 |
| Winning trades | 38% |
| Trades | 16 |
| Time in market | 72% |
How much can you trust this result
A single return figure proves nothing — it is easy to curve-fit to history. Below are three robustness checks. We show them even when they go against the strategy.
The first 70% of the data is "training", the last 30% is a fair test on data the rules never saw. If the result is far worse on the test set, the strategy was fitted to the past.
| Metric | Train | Test (OOS) |
|---|---|---|
| CAGR/yr | +3.0% | -3.5% |
| Sharpe | 0.57 | -0.65 |
| Max drawdown | 3.2% | 3.7% |
| Bars | 279 | 120 |
The sample is cut into 5 consecutive segments. The return in each shows whether the strategy works evenly over time or rests on one lucky stretch.
Trade order is reshuffled 2,000 times (bootstrap). The range shows how much the outcome depended on a lucky sequence rather than the strategy itself. p5–p95 is the corridor of "almost all" outcomes.
Computed from the per-bar returns of the same run (costs already included). Monte-Carlo is deterministic: the numbers are stable across rebuilds. Historical robustness does not guarantee future results.
Download the exact sample and run the logic yourself — the numbers above should match.
A Binance spot EUR/USDT proxy series, not a forex-broker feed. Binance Spot REST API (api.binance.com/api/v3/klines).
Conclusion
On a sample with no strong trend the cloud breakout produced a result near zero. The system held a direction most of the time — price was more often on one side of the cloud than inside it — but on a market with no developed move the profitable and losing directional bets cancelled each other out. Ichimoku’s inertia did not keep the system out of the market; it simply found no trend worth working.
Practical takeaway for the trader
Ichimoku only reveals its edge on a developed trend: on a trendless market it keeps issuing a direction, but those signals lead nowhere and offset each other. Expecting profit from it in a range is pointless — it is a tool for trending stretches.
FAQ
Why is the result close to zero?
The system held a direction most of the time — price was more often on one side of the cloud than inside it — but on a sample with no sustained move the profitable and losing directional bets roughly balanced out. There was no trend here to pay for the entry.
Is that good or bad?
Neutral: Ichimoku did not save the system from entries, but it did not lead to a systematic loss either — on an unsuitable regime it simply found no trend. On a trending stretch the same system would behave differently.
Why EUR/USD instead of gold?
The portal holds no own history for gold. We honestly test the cloud-breakout mechanic on the available pair rather than substituting unverifiable figures.