One of the most powerful and simple trading strategies is mean reversion. The XBTUSD swap features a funding rate that is exchanged between longs and shorts every 8 hours. The rate is calculated based the observed premium or discount of the swap over the spot index from the previous 8 hours. The lag between observation, announcement, and payment of funding gives this rate predictive power.
The intent of the funding rate is to entice traders to take the counter-trend position. If the market is falling, those trading with the trend will pay funding (shorts). If the market is rising, those trading with the trend will pay funding (longs). The trend is your friend until it ain’t. Anecdotally traders notice that the funding is elevated in absolute terms directly preceding a turn in the market’s direction.
Last September I presented a simple mean reversion funding strategy. If funding is high in positive terms, short XBTUSD right before funding is charged. Receive the funding payment, then cover the short position 8 hours later. If the funding is high in negative terms, go long XBTUSD right before funding is charged. Receive the funding payment, then close the long position 8 hours later. Depending on your criteria for when you put on this trade, there is a historically positive profit.
Armed with slightly longer than one year’s worth of data (March 2017 to April 2018), I have calculated the historical returns for this strategy. The trading triggers happen at one and two standard deviations away from the mean on the positive and negative side. The below are the results:
Sigma – This is the number of standard deviations away from the mean.
Count – For negative funding, this is the number of observations where the funding rate is below or above the Sigma for negative and positive funding rates respectively.
% Passes – This is the percentage of observations in the Count sample set where if the Sigma is negative, the next log 8-hour return is positive; or if the Sigma is positive, the next log 8-hour return is negative.
Cumulative Funding – This is the total amount of funding received from the observations in the Count sample set. If the Sigma is negative you will be going long XBTUSD and receiving funding. Therefore, even though the Cumulative Funding is listed as negative, you will receive this as income.
Cumulative XBTUSD Return – This is the sum of the next log 8-hour return of observations in the Count sample set.
Cumulative Return – This is how much you will earn from this mean reversion strategy. That is the funding income net of the return from the XBTUSD trades.
% of Total Observations – [Count / Total Number of Observations]
The most profitable range in this simplistic study is between the one and two Sigma absolute ranges. That fundamentally makes sense. If the funding is at the maximum, the counter-trend trade will very likely blow up in your face as the trend continues. Bitcoin, as readers know, is a very emotional market. The highs go higher and lows lower.
As the funding moderates during an extended rally or dump, that is when the tide is most likely to change. And that is when placing a counter-trend trade which receives the funding and direction change is the most profitable.
The more sophisticated statisticians amongst us can concoct much more advanced and nuanced mean reversion strategies centred around the XBTUSD funding rate. The data for the analysis I conducted are all freely available via our public API. This study is yet another proof that plenty of juice remains in the Bitcoin market for cool-headed analytical traders.