Backtest: Buy OXY at the close when its 5-day RSI closes below 30 while Brent crude clo...
A 75% win rate and a 4.14% return, from just eight trades. That's the tension at the center of this study: buying OXY at the close when its 5-day RSI drops below 30 while Brent crude is still above its 20-day moving average, then exiting once OXY closes above its own 5-day average or after five days, whichever comes first.
The premise is that a high-beta producer selling off while oil's trend holds is a positioning flush rather than a change in the underlying story, and the stock tends to recover once the forced sellers are done. The hit rate supports that read. The payoff does not — and the strategy finishes far behind a plain SPY buy-and-hold over the same window.
The full trade-by-trade evidence, including where the returns actually came from, is below.
Buy OXY at the close when its 5-day RSI closes below 30 while Brent crude closes above its 20-day simple moving average; exit when OXY closes above its 5-day simple moving average or after 5 trading days, whichever comes first. A high-beta producer hitting short-term oversold while oil holds trend is a positioning flush, so OXY tends to snap back once the forced selling clears.
How this was measured
This is a simulated backtest generated from the plain-English strategy below, executed bar-by-bar on historical market data using the price + news data mode with $100,000 starting capital. Strategy: Buy OXY at the close when its 5-day RSI closes below 30 while Brent crude closes above its 20-day simple moving average; exit when OXY closes above its 5-day simple moving average or after 5 trading days, whichever comes first. A high-beta producer hitting short-term oversold while oil holds trend is a positioning flush, so OXY tends to snap back once the forced selling clears.
The key numbers
The charts
The takeaway
The strategy returned +4.14% on $100,000 starting capital across 8 closed trades with a 75% win rate. Over the same window SPY buy-and-hold returned +76.34%, so the strategy finished trailing the benchmark by 72.20 points. Best single trade +3.81%, worst -5.09%.
The fine print
- Simulated results on historical data — fills, slippage and costs are idealized.
- Past performance does not predict future results.
- Only 8 closed trades in the window — a small sample.