Daily Alpha Brief — 2026-07-25 — SIDEWAYS regime across majors

Bayesian crypto brief for 2026-07-25: SIDEWAYS regime, strategy performance, weight shifts, and quant-vs-crowd sentiment across 9 symbols.

TL;DR

• Dominant regime: SIDEWAYS (0 bullish / 2 bearish of 9 symbols).
• Top signal: bollinger on SUI cut 0.410 (0.75 → 0.34).
• Shadow portfolio: $742 (-25.77%), 0 open, 35% win rate.

Shadow portfolio value since inception (dashed line = $1,000 starting capital).

Current Bayesian reliability weights, averaged across the universe.

Detected regime per symbol (EMA200 + ADX); % = lead-strategy conviction.

🌐 Market Indices

Crowd reads fear at 36/100; BTC dominance 58.9% signals balanced.

🌐 Market Overview

Economic (FRED):

Stablecoin dominance 11.2% (risk-off, money fleeing crypto); yield curve regime Flat.

Funding Rates (contrarian — heavy positive = crowded longs to fade):

Economic Calendar: Next FOMC: in 4 days | Next CPI: in 18 days | position-size modifier 1.00×.

📊 Regime Analysis

Regime per symbol from EMA200 + ADX on daily candles, with the fusion signal.

The book is broadly bearish: 0 BULL / 2 BEAR of 9 symbols.

🔗 Correlation Signals

Stable pairs (r > 0.70): ETH/SOL: r=0.88 ✅ | BTC/ETH: r=0.87 ✅ | ETH/DOGE: r=0.83 ✅ | BTC/BNB: r=0.82 ✅ | BTC/SOL: r=0.82 ✅ | ETH/BNB: r=0.81 ✅

Index signals: BTC dominance NEUTRAL → no rotation; Fear & Greed contrarian NONE.

⚙️ Strategy Performance

Aggregate 7-day performance per strategy (replayed across the universe). Edge = win-rate × avg P&L per trade — the table is sorted by it.

All P&L figures normalized to a 100 USDT position size for comparability (not summed across symbols).

🧠 Bayesian Weight Shifts

SUI/USDT (SIDEWAYS):

Bollinger is the biggest cut: despite a SIDEWAYS regime favouring mean reversion, its 7d record (24% win, -2.43 Sharpe, -80 pnl) triggers rules 2 and 3 — the data clearly overrides the regime prior, so it is slashed from 0.755 toward 0.20. post_shock_reversal earns the largest raise: 7d shows 81 trades, 31% win is below the 55% threshold but the 5.93 Sharpe and +232 pnl are strongly positive; combined with SIDEWAYS mean-reversion alignment it moves up to 0.60, though the sub-30% win rate caps the enthusiasm. volume_spike has a sharp 24h drawdown but the 7d Sharpe of 2.51 and +108 pnl on 66 trades is credible; SIDEWAYS gives it a small regime bump to 0.55. walk_forward_ema has only 1 trade (7d) with a -9.86 Sharpe, so rule 1 applies but the single negative trade nudges it slightly below its current 0.188; rsi_macd, ema_cross, tsmom, correlation_strategy, and macro_strategy all have zero trades and are held near their current weights, while sentiment_strategy stays close to current given weak coverage (2 sources, 50% confluence).

WIF/USDT (SIDEWAYS):

Bollinger (24% win, -2.89 Sharpe, -112 pnl on 29 7d trades) is persistently underperforming despite the SIDEWAYS regime that should favour it — data overrides the regime prior (rule 6), so I cut it significantly from 0.656 toward 0.35 per rules 2-3; it retains some residual credit as the regime’s natural fit but cannot stay elevated on these numbers. volume_spike is badly broken (21% win, -5.28 Sharpe, -206 pnl on 39 trades) — both 24h and 7d show sub-30% win with deeply negative pnl, so I cut it toward 0.10 per rule 2. post_shock_reversal (23% win, -1.05 Sharpe, 70 trades) and walk_forward_ema (1 trade, thin but negative) are each cut to 0.20 for persistent negative signals; walk_forward_ema also hits the low-sample guard at the same time. The zero-trade strategies (rsi_macd, ema_cross, tsmom, correlation_strategy, macro_strategy) have no data to act on so they hold at current weights per rule 1; sentiment is nudged fractionally down to 0.44 given weak 50% confluence and sparse two-source coverage.

SOL/USDT (SIDEWAYS):

volume_spike is the clearest cut: 45 trades, 20% win-rate, Sharpe -4.16, pnl -121 on 7d triggers rule 2+3 hard, so I slashed it toward 0.15. tsmom similarly has 6 trades at 17% win / Sharpe -3.33 / pnl -83, firing rules 2+3 and its momentum nature is wrong for SIDEWAYS, so it drops to 0.10. post_shock_reversal has a strong 7d Sharpe (4.40) and positive pnl (+145) but the 24h window is severely negative (Sharpe -21, pnl -137) with 0% win on 6 trades, signalling very recent deterioration; I apply a cautious reduction from 0.556 to 0.52 rather than a full rule-4 raise. bollinger gets a modest SIDEWAYS regime bump to 0.42 despite only 2 trades (rule 1 caps the move at +/-0.05 from current), and all zero-trade strategies (rsi_macd, ema_cross, walk_forward_ema, correlation_strategy, macro_strategy) are held near their current weight of 0.263 per rule 1; sentiment is held near its current 0.609 given moderate but consistent 3-source coverage and 67% confluence.

📡 Signal Outlook

💼 Shadow Portfolio

$1,000 USDT paper portfolio, 1% risk/trade, MEXC fees modelled. No real capital is deployed.

📡 Discourse Radar

Crowd-vs-quant sentiment from CryptoCompare news, crypto RSS, the macro feeds (FT / Fed / CNBC), and the Fear & Greed index. (Reddit retired — Responsible Builder Policy restrictions, 2026.)

• Fear & Greed: -0.50 (bearish crowd).
• Macro signal (FT/Fed/CNBC): +0.08 (neutral) — “Shortsighted stock market can no longer brush off war: ‘It’s too hard to ignore $100 oil’”.

Most-talked alt: DOGE/USDT at -0.50 (bearish crowd lean).

📰 Today’s Key Reads

Curated from 3 sources monitored today:

⚠️ Fund firms deploy ETF ‘spaghetti cannon’ in hunt for next hot trade — ft_markets — Score: +1.00

🔴 Bitcoin, Ethereum-linked protocols lose $35 million in multiple attacks hours apart — coindesk — Score: -0.68

🔴 Arbitrum protocol AFX Trade hit by $24 million bridge exploit: Blockaid — theblock — Score: -0.53

🟢 ‘Not currently the right capital solution’: Smarter Web sells 178 bitcoin to repay $11.7M convertible instrument — theblock — Score: +0.50

🟢 Ripple’s RLUSD gets two boosts as transfer volume drops 25% — coindesk — Score: +0.32

Academic Footnote

Tzouvanas et al. (2020) — moving-average trading rules for Bitcoin.

Disclaimer

This is algorithmic analysis only, not financial advice.