Linda Bradford Raschke & Laurence Connors

Holy Grail (ADX + 20 EMA pullback)

Verified1H · 4H · 1DNot recommended Channel

Linda Raschke's pullback play: only trade when ADX(14) is above 30 and rising, wait for a pullback into the 20 EMA, then enter on a buy stop above the pullback high to rejoin the trend.

Win rate

35.0%

Share of trades that closed in profit

Trades

Completed trades in the test

Profit factor

0.89

Above 1 means profit beat loss

Return

-0.8%

Account change over the window · buy & hold 6008.4%

Max drawdown

7.0%

Worst fall from a peak

Most-tested backtest · BNBUSDT 1H2018-09-02 → 2026-08-31 · 8.0 years

Step by step, exactly as executed

Timeframe

1H · 4H · 1D

Setup / filter

ADX(14) > 30 AND ADX(14) is higher than one candle ago AND +DI above −DI (14)

Entry

candle low touches or crosses below EMA(20) → buy stop at the signal candle's high, valid 3 candles (filled at the level, or at the open on a gap)

Stop

lowest low of the 5 completed candles before the signal candle

Target / exit

Target: 2R (R = entry-to-stop distance)

Risk

1% of equity risked to the stop

Executable rules

Published sources

Known limitations

The published rules, verbatim

A strong trend

ADX(14) above 30 and rising, with +DI above −DI for longs. Wait for the first pullback that touches the 20-period exponential moving average (the candle low reaches the EMA).

Entry

a buy stop just above the high of the pullback candle; if it is not hit within a few candles the setup is void.

Stop loss

below the swing low (the lowest low of the last 5 candles).

Take profit

the previous swing high in the direction of the trend.

Sources

tradingsetupsreview.com swingfolio.com

What this test cannot reproduce

Short trades (a pullback to the 20 EMA in a downtrend) cannot be executed on Spot, so only the long side is tested.

"First" pullback is mechanical here: any candle whose low touches or crosses the 20 EMA while ADX(14) > 30 and rising qualifies, so more setups are taken than a discretionary trader would take.

"Previous swing high" as the target is approximated by a fixed 2R target, because the published rule depends on the trader's own reading of the chart.

The buy stop is valid for 3 candles; the published rule says "a few bars".

The setup was published for stocks and futures; this test runs on the crypto pair you named.

Portfolio — every backtest of this strategy

Each row prints the exact window it was measured on. Rows with different windows measure different market periods, so their numbers differ without contradicting each other.

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