Many signals, few trades
Every second, I-Trade's models evaluate more than 12,000 market signals: price movements, order book imbalances, on-chain metrics, news flow. If the strategy executed every signal, it would make thousands of trades per hour — and almost all of them would be unprofitable after fees and slippage.
That is why the central element of our architecture is not a signal generator but a filter. We call it the confidence threshold: a trade is opened only when the model ensemble consistently estimates the probability of success above a defined level.
How the confidence threshold works
Seven models with different horizons — from minutes to weeks — independently assess each signal. The final confidence level is built from the consistency of their "votes": if the short-term model sees momentum while the weekly model sees a trend reversal, the signal is discarded no matter how strong it appears.
In practice, the threshold filters out approximately 80% of candidates. The remaining 20% are trades where the statistical edge is confirmed by multiple independent market perspectives simultaneously.
What losing periods taught us
In the sideways markets of 2024, strategies with an aggressive threshold lost less precisely because they barely traded: the algorithm recognised the 'noise' regime and reduced activity dramatically. This is counterintuitive for a newcomer — it looks as though the algorithm is 'not working'. In reality, it performs best precisely when it is inactive.
We publish the trade frequency of each strategy on its profile page: a decline in activity during uncertain periods is a sign of a healthy system, not a malfunction.
What this means for the investor
When selecting a strategy, look not only at returns but also at execution discipline: how many signals the model rejects, and how its activity changes across different market regimes. This data is publicly available for every I-Trade strategy and is verified by records in I-Trade Chain.
- I-Trade models reject ~80% of signals — only statistically confirmed setups are traded.
- The confidence threshold — consensus of an ensemble of 7 models with different horizons.
- A decline in trading activity during a sideways market is a sign of a healthy algorithm.
This material is for informational purposes only and does not constitute individual investment advice. Investing involves risk.