BTFD Bot's NEW Buy Signal Scoring System

Disclaimer: the BTFD Bot buy signal scores are shown for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as a recommendation to buy a particular security at the specific price.

What Are Signal Scores?

BTFD Bot classifies entry signals as cards_starHIGH, cards_starMEDIUM or cards_starLOW. Extensive backtesting and testing with real money has demonstrated that the HIGH ranked buy signals consistently outperform the MEDIUM ranked signals and the MEDIUM ranked signals outperform the LOW ranked signals. You can see this by going to the daily/weekly backtester and adjusting the Signal Scoring dropdown list to filter the buy signals by their signal score.

How does the scoring system work? The scores are a combination of human built algorithm that scores on a percentage scale plus a machine learning (AI) driven scoring system called ML4. This ranks trades on a scale from 0 to 1.

ML4 also has a dedicated model that scores Double Seven trades separately to the other buy signals. In backtests ML4 only has a small boost to Double Seven win rates. However it is extremely good at finding entries that are more likely to result in faster profits. ML4 highly scored trades also exhibit lower average drawdowns.

Sector Ranking System

Many buy signals also have a Sector Score associated with them. An example is this one: electrical_servicesHIGH. They can also be ranked as electrical_servicesLOW. My research has shown that making what appears to be a decent swing trade entry has a high chance of failure if the stock's market sector itself is overbought. For stocks whose market sector is known, a new sector score will appear next to the main signal score. In backtests buy signals with a MEDIUM signal score and a HIGH sector score will perform well. Some market sectors are also better for swing trading than others. For example Consumer Staples generally have very mixed results in BTFD Bot's backtests. The real money is to be made buying Consumer Discretionary or Industrials when the time is right. For example Steve Madden (SHOO) returned a monster 70% swing high during 2025.

Incidentally the icon on the Sector Score button is different for each market sector.

Some trades are marked as FIRE SALE entries. These are rare opportunities to buy high quality securities at knockdown prices. You can see this in the daily/weekly backtester by changing the Signal Type dropdown list to only show the Best Buy Signals entries. These are rare opportunities to buy high quality securities at knockdown prices. You can see this in the daily/weekly backtester by changing the Signal Type dropdown list to only show the Best Buy Signals.

Useful tip: with all of these scoring systems, most large losses in backtests are due to stocks falling out of bubbles. Avoiding stocks that have made parabolic moves up and then started falling is the easiest way to avoid major losses in longer term swing trading. Then all we need to worry about are market corrections (which are usually short-lived) and unpleasant surprises (which are usually difficult to avoid with individual stocks). If you have access to fundamental data then stocks that have made dividend cuts are usually a major red flag.

Another useful tip: it is the patient investor who makes money. Signals with higher scores are somewhat rare but they always appear during market corrections, pullbacks and outright panics. So be sure to bookmark this site and return when other investors are losing their minds.

Do They Make a Difference?

I have extensively tested the scoring system. Entering trades for only the higher quality buy signals does appear to improve the results of backtesting BTFD Bot's trading strategies

Here are some results from my real money trades:

There aren't really enough trades here to be statistically significant. But it's looking good for BTFD Bot!

Case Study

The table below shows buy signals for the Zoetis. The buy signal on 21 January 2022 was assigned a score of 45, which is fairly low. This buy signal was never profitable. It also had a maximum drawdown of 34.9% - the highest recorded of all the buy signals in this particular table. There was a lower rated signal: the signal with the score of 30 on 13 November 2025. This buy signal was in fact profitable, returning 5% and 6%. However at the time of writing it had not returned more than this.

The highest rated signal is the one on 25 March 2020 and has a score of 85. This was a very profitable entry point and returned 20% after just 13 days. It also had minimal drawdown.

The other signals are more mixed but in general the higher rated signals have fared better. Given enough swing trades over time and the scoring system appears to be highly effective.