Strategies

10 Trading Strategies to Test and Compare

Astron Team · 09/24/2026 · 7 min read

There's no single trading strategy that works for everyone. Risk profile, the time available to follow the market, and each person's capital completely change which approach makes sense. Instead of looking for the perfect strategy, it's worth getting to know several of them and calmly testing which ones fit best into your routine.

Here we've gathered ten well-known strategies, organized by how they work, to serve as a starting point for study and testing, never as a ready-made recommendation.

Trend-based strategies

1. Trend following with moving averages

Buy when a short-term average crosses above a long-term average, and sell on the reverse crossover. Simple to understand, but it tends to generate late signals in markets without a clear trend.

2. Channel breakout

Enter in the direction of a support or resistance breakout, betting that the move will continue. Works best on assets with good liquidity and visible volume.

3. Pullback within a trend

Instead of entering on the breakout, the trader waits for the price to pull back a little within an already established trend, looking for an entry point with less risk than the original breakout.

Reversal-based strategies

4. Mean reversion with RSI

Uses the relative strength index (RSI) to identify overbought or oversold assets, betting on a short-term return to the historical average price.

5. Support and resistance in a sideways range

In markets without a defined trend, buy near support and sell near resistance, within a price range that keeps repeating.

6. Indicator divergence

Watches for when the price makes a new high (or low), but an indicator like the RSI doesn't follow that move, a signal often interpreted as a weakening of the current trend.

Shorter-term strategies

7. Scalping

Seeks small profits on very fast trades, sometimes lasting just a few minutes, taking advantage of small price swings. Requires constant attention and low trading costs to be viable.

8. Day trading the market open

Concentrates trades in the first minutes after the market opens, a period when volatility tends to be higher because of the buildup of orders from the previous night.

Longer-term strategies

9. News-based swing trading

Holds positions for days or weeks, seeking to capture the move generated by company earnings, interest rate decisions, or other relevant events.

10. Positioning with fixed risk management

Instead of defining entry through a specific indicator, this approach focuses on position-size discipline, always risking the same small fraction of capital per trade, regardless of the chosen asset.

How to compare and choose between these strategies

An example helps show why the choice depends on numbers, not personal preference. Suppose two strategies tested over 100 trades each: strategy A wins 65% of the time, but averages a R$ 40 gain and a R$ 45 loss; strategy B wins only 40%, but averages a R$ 120 gain and a R$ 40 loss. Strategy A's expected result is (0.65 x R$ 40) − (0.35 x R$ 45) = R$ 26 − R$ 15.75 = R$ 10.25 per trade. Strategy B's is (0.40 x R$ 120) − (0.60 x R$ 40) = R$ 48 − R$ 24 = R$ 24 per trade. Despite the much lower win rate, strategy B would have an expected result more than double that of strategy A.

• Win rate alone doesn't determine whether a strategy is good.
• Risk-reward ratio and expected value matter more.
• Test each strategy in a demo account before risking real capital.
• Choose based on the time you have available to follow the market.

How to test these strategies in practice

Choose two or three strategies that make sense for your routine and available capital, test each one in isolation over a set period, and record the results with real numbers, not just the feeling that they worked well. None of these ten strategies guarantees a profit: all of them carry the risk of loss, and what separates a consistent result from a random one is the discipline of following the tested rules, not the strategy chosen itself.

Also avoid testing all of them at once with the same capital: mixing different strategies without separating the results makes it harder to know which one really works for your profile. A simple notebook, with the date, strategy used, result, and a brief note about what happened, is usually worth more than any sophisticated indicator at this comparison stage.