A thousand signals promise an edge. Most are noise. Is yours?
AlphaAssay puts every signal on trial — out of sample, against chance, against overfitting — and returns a structured verdict with named failure codes. When the result needs to travel, issue a separately signed certificate. Proof, not promises.
How many of your backtests survive honest math?
After enough tries, a great-looking Sharpe ratio is mostly selection luck. The Deflated Sharpe Ratio prices exactly that — run yours in the browser, nothing uploaded.
observed Sharpe 1.8 (3y daily) trials DSR 1 ≈ 1.0 a single honest test 10 ≈ 0.94 a weekend of tuning 50 ≈ 0.80 „I tried a few things" 200 ≈ 0.64 selection luck
One engine. Four ways to use the verdict.
Validate
Submit a signal or backtest — get a verdict with the reasons attached.
$0.05 · LIVE 02Pre-register
Record the hypothesis before evaluation. Retain its operator-published commitment to detect later changes.
$0.05 · LIVE 03Forensics
The full autopsy. Know where the edge died.
$0.05 · LIVE 04Certify
Issue a signed certificate — credibility that travels.
$9.90 · LIVEOthers tell you if. We tell you what broke.
A no without a finding is an annoyance. A no with a finding is a shortcut — it saves the most expensive thing you own: weeks of searching in a dead direction.
The 600 tries below are not this
caller's own: n_trials_effective is inherited from the anonymised family ledger, where
every recorded attempt at the same signal family counts against one shared budget — which is why a
first call can already fail deflation.
{
"schema": "gauntlet.v1",
"verdict": "fail",
"died_at": "family_deflation",
"failure_codes": ["deflated_out_at_n=600"],
"stages": [
{ "stage": "net_edge", "verdict": "pass",
"evidence": { "net_sharpe_annualized": 3.11, "trades": 184,
"bars": 380, "net_return_total_pct": 41.7 } },
// 380 daily bars ≈ 18 months: a high Sharpe on a short window
{ "stage": "funding_edge", "verdict": "skipped",
"evidence": { "reason": "no perpetuals in book" } },
{ "stage": "family_deflation", "verdict": "fail",
"evidence": { "dsr": 0.31, "cumulative_n": 1, "variants_in_call": 1,
"n_trials_effective": 600,
"effective_n_method": "family_ledger",
"killed_by": "deflated_out_at_n",
"family_verdict": "deflated_out" } }
// over 18 months, the best of 600 recorded family tries is expected to look
// about this good by chance alone — so 3.11 buys only dsr 0.31, not a pass
// + power_honesty, significance, cpcv, walk_forward, concentration, placebo, capacity, graveyard_prior
],
"budget": { "cumulative_n": 1, "n_trials_effective": 600 }
// cumulative_n = your own submissions; n_trials_effective counts the whole family's recorded tries
}
Most signals fail. That is not our opinion.
Decades of peer-reviewed finance say most profitable-looking strategies are selection noise, not skill. Before your edge risks a cent, that is the base rate it is up against — and the published record we built the battery on.
No trading arm. Retention disclosed.
Your strategy stays with you
Validation runs keep no raw inputs, rules or code — only a one-way fingerprint, the verdict with its cause of death and coarse trial statistics. The one sealed exception is disclosed, not hidden.
No honeypot
Our verdicts can devalue a signal, never crown one. There is no list of winners to raid.
No trading arm
No exchange access, execution, custody, broker or order path exists in the service. Pre-registration storage remains disclosed separately.
retention and no-trading boundaries · the complete retention inventory