Buy & Hold aka. HODL Strategy

Buy & Hold aka. HODL Strategy at a glance

Kind of rule	A rule of its own (rules-based)
Buys or sells	It only buys. It does not bet on falling prices.
Built on	price only
Where it was published	TradingView, by its author, as a Pine Script strategy
Tested on	69 cells: 15 coins, October 2021 to June 2026, no fee
Cells that placed a trade	67 of 69
Middle result before fees	−0.1%
Cells above zero	28 of 67
Middle drawdown before fees	0.9%
Page updated	2026-11-08

Buy & Hold aka. HODL Strategy backtest results, every cell

Every cell is in the picture, not only the strongest. To the right of the black line is above zero. The orange line, when you see one, is the middle.

How Buy & Hold aka. HODL Strategy works

Rules in this group usually work like this. This one does not sit in the usual groups. The buy and sell lines below are what it is. Read it the same way as the others: what it assumes, how many trades it took, and what happened on many coins and chart speeds rather than on one. The next paragraph is this particular rule, which can be narrower than the group.

It only buys. It does not bet on falling prices. It acts only when several checks agree at once. The exact line is in the list below, in the author's names, and you can skip that list. It gets out when another set of checks agrees. That line is in the list below too.

Each trade uses the whole account. It holds one trade at a time.

The exact condition, from the code

Same rule, translated from the code, in the author's names. You can skip this list if the paragraph above was enough.

• Enters long when (the number of closed trades equals 0 or the bar index equals 1).
• Closes the position when the bar index is at or above (last bar index − 1).

Buys or sells	It only buys. It does not bet on falling prices.
Tools it calculates	price only
A second chart speed	No. It uses one chart speed only.
Only at certain hours	Yes. It only acts during set hours.
Adding to a trade	It holds one trade at a time.
How much it trades	Each trade uses the whole account.
Cost the author assumed	The author assumed a trading cost of 0.1 percent per side.

Default settings

The test used the defaults in the middle column. Nothing was turned to help a coin.

Setting	Default	Group
Start Date	a date	Dates
End Date	a date	Dates

How the backtest was run

Every strategy was tried the same way, on the settings the author published.

The years are October 2021 to June 2026. The prices are from Bybit, for 13 widely traded coins, mostly on hourly, 4-hour and daily charts, with some faster charts. That was 47,242 tries. The window stored in the files is 2021-09..2026-06.

599 rules produced a finished try. A rule that finished above zero on at least 12 cells, before any fee, was tried again with a fee of 0.12 percent per side. Only buys are counted in that second try. 273 rules got it.

The method, the aggregate results and a downloadable table are on the study page. What the desk does with the results beyond these pages is its own.

This is the second pass. A fee of 0.12 percent per side is taken on the buy and again on the sell. Only buys are counted. If the rule also bets on falling prices, those trades are not in these numbers.

After fees, none of its 0 cells finished above zero.

0 of the cells cleared a quality check: at least 50 trades, gains that are not one lucky trade, and a drawdown that is real without taking the whole account.

Cells tried after the fee	0
Finished above zero	0
Cells that cleared the quality check	0

Label: backtest · old prices, buys only, a fee of 0.12 percent per side, every cell · Oct 2021 – Jun 2026. Hypothetical results; see the risk disclosure.

How to read the result

How to read the number

There is no finished result on this page, so there is no middle number to set against a lucky coin.

What this does not show

The useful question is what the rule assumes, how many trades it took, and what happened across coins and chart speeds rather than in one cell.

There is no cell to single out, and this note does not invent one. Other years, another exchange, or another fee would be a different measurement.

Questions about Buy & Hold aka. HODL Strategy

Words used on this page

Backtest

The rule was tried on old prices. No real money moved.

Cell

One coin on one chart speed. Bitcoin every 4 hours is one cell. Bitcoin once a day is another.

Chart speed

How often a new price bar is drawn. 15m means every 15 minutes, 1h means hourly, 4h means every 4 hours, 1D means once a day.

Fee, per side

A cost taken each time the rule trades. Per side means once on the way in and once on the way out.

Median

Line the cells up from the biggest loss to the biggest gain. The median is the middle one. Half the cells did better and half did worse.

Drawdown

The deepest fall from a high point along the way, as a percent of the account at that high.

Above zero

The account finished with more than it started.

"Buy & Hold aka. HODL Strategy" was published on TradingView by its author, under the author's own license. This page is an independent reading of those rules and of what they did on these old prices. It is not written with the author, and it is not a recommendation. Not every detail survives the translation onto this page, so read the original before you rely on it.