Gian Buschor🇨🇭

Swiss Financial Analyst & Buschor Invest-Research / Valbura Founder | Insightful Market Perspectives | Performance, Simplicity, Transparency, Knowledge | 📈🌍

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

Hi, I’m Gian, founder of Valbura 🇨🇭

In a world full of hype, FOMO and noise, I believe one thing is a real responsibility: financial clarity.

Here I share what truly matters in global markets. No clickbait, just clear perspective.

👇 Why I post and what Valbura stands for

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

Learned today: First, some of my own earlier VWAP results rested on a flawed test: the first candle of the day counted as a "touch" even if price never reached VWAP, and two trades I had labeled mean-reversion were actually continuation trades. I corrected the log instead of defending the numbers. Second, my backtest was filling exits at the next bar's open instead of at the stop or target price. I rebuilt it with real stop and limit orders and re-ran everything that mattered.

Tested today:
- H002 (pullback continuation with volume, candle strength and an active-day filter) with realistic fills on YM, ES, NQ and RTY. All four markets positive, 545 trades combined, +0.054% per trade after costs. But the four markets move together: 545 trades fall on only 383 distinct days, and counted per day the t-stat drops from 2.1 to 1.3. Promising, not proven.
- VWAP side as a context filter for H002: trades with VWAP on the right side did better (+0.071% vs +0.027%), not statistically significant.
- Previous-day high/low breakout: no edge after costs.
- Classic VWAP 2-stdev band fade, three time windows plus a full-day run: no edge in any of them. The opening window was best at break-even, the afternoon was clearly negative, the opposite of what I expected.

Open questions: H002 only fires about 40 times a year across all four markets. Even if it holds, it is a building block, not a strategy. The real question is how to find setups that trigger every day. Also: my market experience says VWAP matters, the mechanical test says it does not. The difference is probably which days I choose to trade, and I have not modeled that yet.

Tomorrow: Start defining volume profile levels (VAH, VAL, POC) from scratch. They exist on every single trading day, which is exactly the frequency H002 lacks.

Hours today / total: 1h10 / 8h59

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

Learned today: Tested four reference levels systematically, overnight high/low, opening range, VWAP, previous RTH high/low, same touch-and-classify method each time. Found a real pattern, the more recent/local a level is, the more price tends to bounce off it, the older it is, the more it tends to break through. VWAP showed the strongest bounce tendency by far. Built an actual entry rule on it, twice, both versions came back clearly negative after costs, even with a tighter stop. Good reminder that a strong directional skew in screening doesn't automatically survive contact with a real entry/stop/target.

Tested today: Full screening pass on OR, VWAP, and Previous RTH high/low (touch, bounce/break, forward MFE/MAE). Two Gate 1 attempts on VWAP mean-reversion, both discarded with statistical confidence. Started on a VWAP standard-deviation-band version instead of plain crossings.

Open questions: Does VWAP actually need real deviation (2 stdev extension) to mean-revert reliably, rather than just any crossing? That's what the band version is testing right now, debugging a zero-trade result before I get an answer.

Tomorrow: Fix or confirm the VWAP band logic, then move to Previous RTH breakout as the other lead from today's level comparison.

Hours today / total: 1h10 / 7h49

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

Learned today: Volume declining mid-trade isn't the warning sign I thought, trades that showed it actually did slightly better, not worse, though not statistically significant. More useful lesson, worked out why most of our signals stay small-sample by nature, each extra condition multiplies the odds down, not adds, so a 4-condition setup will always be rare almost regardless of how good it is. Then found a new idea just by watching the chart, candle-1 retracement combined with the 20 EMA as a trend filter, looked genuinely convincing across several hand-picked examples. Built it properly and tested it, came back clearly and strongly negative, both the continuation and reversal version, both statistically significant, no ambiguity this time. Good reminder that a handful of chart examples that look compelling can be exactly the trap backtesting exists to catch.

Tested today: Range-decay direction and predictability (does it mean reversal or just slowdown, no), timing delay on H002 (almost everything triggers within 1 candle), volume decline as an in-trade warning signal (opposite of expected), and a full new hypothesis, candle-1 retracement + EMA trend filter, discarded with high confidence.

Open questions: None left that are actionable right now, H002 stays in data-accumulation mode, everything else from today is closed one way or another.

Tomorrow: Back to the chart, this time with overnight high/low as the reference point instead of candle 1.

Hours today / total: 1h15 / 6h39

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

Learned today: Pushed H002 further by adding an "active day" filter (candle 1 volume above its own 20-day average). Small improvement became a real one, IS and OOS now agree in direction for the first time (both positive), instead of contradicting each other like before. Sanity-checked the sample size itself, multiplying out the four independent conditions roughly predicts the observed trade count, so this is a genuinely rare setup, not a bug in the backtest.

Tested today: Re-ran H002 with the active-day filter added on top. Then worked out why sample size stays small, four simultaneous conditions naturally produce few hits, confirmed the math lines up with what the backtest actually returned.

Open questions: Is 13 OOS trades enough to trust the direction, or do I need to either wait for more live days to accumulate, or test the same unmodified rule on ES, NQ, RTY to see if it holds across related markets without touching the rule itself.

Tomorrow: Run the identical H002 rule on the other three index futures, no parameter changes, just checking if the same edge shows up elsewhere.

Hours today / total: 1h05 / 5h24

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

Learned today: Turns out the retracement fact needed two more rounds before yesterday's plan (move to volume) made sense. Tested the fade version (enter opposite direction right after candle 1) instead, statistically significant negative after costs, that one's dead for good. Then tested a volume+strength filtered version of the continuation idea, more promising on paper but the sample size over 15 years is too small to call, even after loosening the thresholds once.

Tested today: Fixed two real bugs in the backtest engine (inverted stop-loss logic, a position-tracking issue), added commission and slippage properly. Full Gate 1 tests on both the fade setup and the volume-filtered continuation setup, IS and OOS.

Open questions: Same one as yesterday, actually, is the volume-filtered version worth more data over time or is it just too rare an event to build a strategy around. Still open.

Tomorrow: For real this time, volume/range decay after 10:00 ET. Starting with a pure measurement pass, no trade logic yet.

Hours today / total: 1h00 / 4h19

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

Learned today: The candle-1 retracement finding holds up (confirmed twice now), but turning it into an actual trade with a simple entry-at-extreme + fixed RRR didn't survive real costs. Win rate ~30% looked fine on paper, commission and slippage ate the edge. Both plain and filtered versions came back statistically flat, not negative enough to panic, not positive enough to trade.

Tested today: Full Gate 1 backtest with commission + slippage baked in, IS 2011-2024, OOS 2024-2026. Then one refinement (retracement depth filter) to see if it helps. It didn't.

Open questions: Is the retracement fact useful as a filter for a different entry trigger instead of being the trigger itself? That's the next thing to figure out, not more parameter tweaking on this version.

Tomorrow: Move to a fresh idea (volume/range decay after 10:00 ET) instead of continuing to optimize this one. Keep the retracement finding on file as confirmed market behavior.

Hours today / total: 1h40 / 3h19

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

Tomorrow: Define exact entry/stop/target rules for the pullback setup. Start screening the second idea (volume/range decay after 10:00 ET).

Hours today / total: 1h 39m / 1h 39m

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

Learned today: Candle 1 after NY open isn't a reliable continuation signal - candle 2 or 3 retraces it by 50%+ in ~70% of cases (IS n=1135, 2011–2024) and ~67% OOS (n=172, 2024–2026). Backtesting on YM (not MYM) for deeper history - same price action, just scaled.

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

Open questions: Does a pullback-confirmation entry (waiting for the retracement) actually produce positive expectancy after costs? That's the real test - today was screening, not proof.

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

→ Weekly/monthly: hours, sample progress, biggest mistakes

What I don't post:
→ PnL, open positions, real-time calls

This isn't a signal service. It's a public log of the process —
research, backtests, no shortcuts.

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

Starting a public trading research journal.

Trading MYM (Micro Dow) in the NY opening window (9:30–11:00 ET).
18-month runway. Rule #1: test before I trade real size.

What I post:
→ Daily: what I learned, what I tested, open questions

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

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[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

🚨 Valbura Insight Snap Week 20

⚠️ Silver drops sharply after recent rally
🛢️ $XOM, oil and gas continue higher
☢️ $URNM added after uranium weakness
🍫 Cocoa exposure increased on pullback
🌱 Watching soybean futures for entries

👇 Link in comments

#Markets #Investing

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

📥 Download the full newsletter (EN/DE):
https://t.co/NqnHkbudGZ

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

🚨 Valbura Insight Snap Week 19

🥈 Silver miners volatile after strong earnings
🍫 Cocoa extends momentum on short covering
⚡ $FCX and copper rebound sharply
🛢️ New longs in oil and $XOM
🌾 Watching cocoa, corn and iron ore setups

👇 Link in comments

#Markets #Investing

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

📥 Download the full newsletter (EN/DE):
https://t.co/NqnHkbudGZ

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

🚨 Valbura Insight Snap Week 18

🛢️ Oil jumps on Hormuz supply fears
🔥 Natural gas and $BOIL keep rising
🥇 $XAUUSD weakens despite geopolitical tension
⚡ $FCX added on copper weakness
✅ Profits locked in on oil and $RIO

👇 Link in comments

#Markets #Investing

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

📥 Download the full newsletter (EN/DE):
https://t.co/NqnHkbudGZ

[Gian Buschor🇨🇭 @gianbuschor]

🚨 Valbura Insight Snap Week 17

🥈 $XAGUSD under pressure but demand remains strong
🛢️ $WTI rebounds as supply concerns return
🥇 $XAUUSD in focus after new short position
🌽 Corn rises on tightening crop outlook
⚠️ $FCX drops after mixed earnings

👇 Link in comments

#Markets