Index futures are not one homogeneous market
ES, NQ, YM and RTY respond differently to volatility, liquidity, sector concentration and intraday participation. A rule that appears robust on one contract may rely on conditions that are less common on another.
Session segmentation matters
Separate overnight, European and U.S. session behavior where the strategy trades across them. Within the U.S. session, opening activity, midday trade and the afternoon can produce meaningfully different distributions of range, velocity and follow-through.
Long and short behavior can diverge
Do not assume directional symmetry. Compare long and short expectancy, MAE, MFE, holding time and loss clustering separately. A direction-specific weakness may come from market structure, session interaction or trade management rather than the entry rule itself.
Measure market context
Use market regime analysis to test whether trades perform differently during trend, range, volatility expansion or compression. The objective is not necessarily to block a condition; sometimes the better response is risk mitigation or a different exit process.
Research the path of the trade
Two trades with the same final P&L may have completely different paths. MAE/MFE research helps reveal whether a trade was immediately wrong, recovered after adverse excursion, reached significant unrealized profit, or gave back an otherwise strong move.
Ask better questions about your strategy.
EdgeQuery is being built to analyze automated trading-system history beyond headline statistics. The founding beta focuses on trade-level behavior, market context, failure patterns and research priorities.