Hypothetical backtest at a glance
What did Aperture do in its published backtest?
In a hypothetical backtest from Sep 2, 2025 to Aug 24, 2026, Aperture took 111 trades on MNQ (1 MNQ contract). Net of commission and one tick of slippage per contract, the hypothetical net profit was $9,228 and the maximum drawdown was −$806, with a profit factor of 2.55 and a win rate of 61.3%.
| Backtest window | Sep 2, 2025 – Aug 24, 2026 |
| Market | MNQ · Nasdaq pre-market range breakout |
| Size tested | 1 MNQ contract |
| Trades | 111 |
| Hypothetical net profit | $9,228 |
| Max drawdown | −$806 |
| Profit factor | 2.55 |
| Win rate | 61.3% |
| Average trade | $83.13 |
| Largest win / loss | $925.10 / −$202.90 |
↓ The trade data behind these results: aperture-trades.csv — every one of the 111 trades, losing trades included. Equity curve and monthly results: backtests. All 1,113 trades across 7 runs: trade data.
What it actually does
It finds the levels while the market is quiet, then trades the side that breaks.
Before the US session opens, trade is thin and deliberate. The prices that get defended in those hours are prices real size cared about. Aperture identifies that support and resistance ahead of the open and then does nothing until the market chooses a side.
It does not predict a direction. When price commits through one of those levels during the morning and the move carries the characteristics of a genuine break rather than a probe, it goes with it. If nothing clears, it does not trade that day — and most days nothing clears.
The honest thing to say about this engine is that its edge is in the exits, not the entries. Plenty of breaks fail. The money comes from keeping those losses small and capping how much open profit a winner can hand back, so the breaks that do run get banked.
The honest two-sided ledger
Where it wins. Where it hurts.
Thrives in
- Mornings that break a level the pre-market already defended. That is the entire thesis: a level that mattered overnight, cleared with conviction.
- Sessions that trend away from the open. Once a real break is underway the trail is designed to stay with it rather than take a quick profit.
- Quiet setups, not loud ones. It is more selective than a conventional opening-range engine, which is why it trades roughly nine times a month instead of daily.
Faces duress in
- Mornings that probe a level and rotate straight back. The classic false break. It takes the trade, the move fails, and the stop pays for it. This is its number one weakness.
- Range-bound sessions with no commitment. Nothing clears, so it either sits out or takes a break that immediately reverses.
- Any month without one of its big trades. See the risk section — this matters more for this engine than for any other in the book.
It is a Nasdaq engine, so treat it as one. Aperture belongs at a firm where you are not already running another equity-index engine — the levels it trades and the levels a Nasdaq or S&P engine trades are the same market, and firms read correlated index positions as one exposure.
The regime truth
A breakout engine is a bet on follow-through. Say so.
There is no version of this strategy that thrives in a market going nowhere. It needs sessions willing to leave a level behind. When the market stops committing, Aperture stops trading — which is the correct behavior, but it means flat stretches are normal and not a fault to be fixed.
We will not claim the drawdown can be engineered away. The 2026 tape has pullbacks close to twice what they were a year earlier, and a breakout that travels the same distance against you first is simply a harder trade to hold.
The flip side of that honesty: a long stretch of sessions that never clear a level is Aperture's bad patch, and it will happen. It trades about nine times a month even in a good one — that is what the monitoring below is for.
Risk & bail-out
Drawdown-first, and one thing you must accept.
Every trade carries a protective stop that rests from the moment of entry — a real resting order at the broker, not a mental stop or a market order fired on a touch. A daily loss line stands the strategy down for the rest of the session so one bad morning cannot spiral, and everything is flat well before the close.
The profit is lumpy, and this is the thing to accept before you start. Across the published run the best 10% of trades produced effectively the entire result. Remove the top twenty and what is left is slightly negative. That is not a flaw we intend to fix — cutting winners short to smooth the curve is how this kind of engine gets destroyed.
What it means for you: a quarter that misses its two big trades will look broken while nothing is wrong. Judge it on whether it is taking the setups it should and staying out otherwise. Nine trades a month is not enough for a month of P&L to mean anything.
How we catch decay before it’s too late
We monitor this like a model, not a hunch.
Every edge decays eventually — ours included. The difference is whether you find out from a dashboard or from your account balance. Aperture runs inside a monitoring loop that compares every live trade against its learned baseline and raises a flag the moment behavior drifts.
The promise. We would rather pull Aperture back a month early than a day too late. When the data says the edge is thinning, we trim or bench it — publicly — instead of hoping it comes back.
Independent record
Aperture also trades in public on Collective2.
Aperture and its partner engine trade together as Orthant Duo on Collective2, an independent strategy marketplace that records every signal as it happens and keeps the track record itself. Subscribers there can have the trades copied to a supported broker through C2’s AutoTrade instead of running NinjaTrader®. $150/mo, billed by Collective2. See Orthant Duo on Collective2 →
Collective2 results are hypothetical, include C2’s estimate of fees and commissions, and are not a promise of future results. On C2, Aperture runs at a fixed 1 MNQ and Iris is sized by its risk per trade, which may differ from how you run them yourself.