What targets, stops, and runners changed

How often does price travel a familiar fraction of its daily range? How long does that take? Could a stop avoid the movement along the way, and could a runner collect more of the eventual move?

The current answer comes from an audit of the original study. That audit withdrew earlier claims about a universal stop floor, an ideal runner target, and guaranteed daily opportunities. Those claims are not recommendations in this guide.

We started hypothetical trades at hourly bar opens and measured both directions. The distance ruler was the broker's daily Average True Range, released only after the daily bar had closed. That prevented a morning entry from using the afternoon's eventual range.

The calculations separated touching a distance at any time from reaching a target before a stop. Spread was charged relative to the original stop distance. Hourly bars cannot establish which level came first when both are touched inside one bar, so the main bracket tests gave those cases to the stop. Runner sequencing was also checked on minute bars for six instruments.

A high chance of touching a nearby price did not imply a high chance of winning a stopped trade. Price could visit both sides of entry during the holding window.

Across the tested reward-to-risk shapes, the unconditioned entries remained close to their no-information benchmarks. Every instrument lost after the study's spread charge. The simple entry patterns tested did not establish positive after-spread expectancy either.

Tighter stops produced more early stop-outs and a larger spread cost relative to risk. The stop-out curve changed smoothly. It did not identify a universal boundary below which all trading becomes invalid.

Audited runner outcomes largely matched the corresponding driftless benchmark. Further targets paid more when reached and were reached less often. In this sample, that redistributed outcomes without improving the average of the tested runner policies.

Most instruments had about two years of hourly history. Gold and NZDUSD had only months in the original hourly files. Some holding windows crossed weekends, so a bar count is trading time rather than elapsed clock time. The broker's short Sunday daily bar also affected its ATR scale.

These are tests of specified entries, exits, and a simplified cost convention. They do not establish that all path-dependent strategies lack an advantage. The later time-aware range study also revisits the daily ruler used here.