JJ Simon fair price strategy backtest on NQ futures: 7,112 trades, 2016–2026

Date tested: 2026-10-16

Summary

JJ Simon’s 09:30 fair price strategy, tested on NQ futures from 2016-06-01 to 2026-10-07 before costs, took 7,112 trades with a 40.2% win rate, +0.0104R average and +73.99R in total. Run through $50,000 evaluation rules with $15 per contract in commission and slippage, 4.5% of evaluations produced any payout; over forty evaluations a year, seven of nine years paid nothing. Tested by CE Market Solutions (cemarketsolutions.com), a backtesting service for CME futures strategies.

The claim tested

JJ Simon, in his video “The EXACT Trading Strategy That Made Me $1,200,000 in the Last 12 Months” (2026-03-28).

He says the strategy produced $1.2 million in prop firm payouts in 12 months, that he spent about $200,000 to $250,000 on evaluations, and that he runs 40 accounts and copy trades five at once. He also says the strategy only suits prop firm evaluations and that on a live account it would probably break even.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L8xdh3oPm4

Rules exactly as tested

Fair price: the 09:30 ET open, or the 08:30 ET open if the 08:30 one-minute candle’s range is at least 3 times the median one-minute range from 07:30 to 08:29.
Candle one: the 09:30 one-minute candle. Its colour sets the side.
Continuation trades (09:31–09:40): a fast change in state of delivery (CISD, trigger range above 1.0 × the 14-bar ATR) in candle one’s direction.
Reversion trades (09:41–11:00): a fast CISD toward the fair price, where the signal candle does not contain the fair price.
Entry: the next one-minute open.
Stop 25 points and target 38 points, scaled by price: entry divided by 24,895.25. The break-even win rate at 1 to 1.52 is 39.7%.
At most 4 trades a day, no more trades after 2 losses, one position at a time, flat at 16:00 ET.
Only the 09:30 open was tested. He says he trades six session opens a day.
Evaluation simulation: a $50,000 account, +$3,000 profit target, $2,000 end-of-day trailing loss limit, 21-day cap, $500 risked per R in the evaluation and $250 per R when funded, with the funded-account payout rules used in earlier evaluation runs. Real rolling starts on every trade day.
Arms: A all of his trades; B his first trade of each day; C a coin flip on his entries; D a coin flip on the first trade of the day; E an independent zero-advantage sequence at exactly the break-even win rate (39.68%); F an independent sequence at 40.2%.

Assumptions where the rules were ambiguous:

A bar that touches both the stop and the target is scored as a loss.
The evaluation fee in the spend ratio is a parameter ($100 evaluation plus $130 activation), not a quoted price.
Costs: $15 per NQ contract per trade, from $5 commission round turn plus 1 tick of slippage per side.
The 40-evaluation setup runs five accounts at once and re-buys on a fail; yearly figures are the mean of 2017–2025.

Data

Instrument: NQ (E-mini Nasdaq-100) futures, 1-minute continuous data, bar-open labels in ET
Date range: 2016-06-01 to 2026-10-07
Sample size: 7,112 trades: 2,955 continuation and 4,157 reversion
Costs: The backtest table is gross: no cost is subtracted. The costed evaluation tables subtract $15 per NQ contract per trade, which is $5 commission round turn plus 1 tick ($5) of slippage per side. Contracts per trade are the larger of 1 and the whole number of $20-per-point NQ contracts that fit the risk ($500 in the evaluation, $250 when funded) divided by the stop in points. The cost is taken from each trade before the day is summed.
In-sample or out-of-sample: All in-sample: no holdout was reserved.

Results

Backtest of the 09:30 rules, gross
Trade type	Trades	Win rate	Average R (95% interval)	Total R	Max drawdown (R)
Continuation	2,955	41.9%	+0.0533 (+0.0089 to +0.0976)	+157.53	46.41
Reversion	4,157	38.9%	−0.0201 (−0.0559 to +0.0153)	−83.54	125.89
All	7,112	40.2%	+0.0104 (−0.0173 to +0.0386)	+73.99	124.51

Cumulative R at each year end, all trades, gross
Year	Cumulative R
2016	33.24
2017	27.78
2018	40.62
2019	82.54
2020	72.61
2021	20.75
2022	−15.29
2023	53.92
2024	79.66
2025	112.84
2026	73.99

Simulated $50,000 evaluations, gross (5%–95% bands for the random arms)
Arm	Evaluations passed	Evaluations with any payout	Expected payout per evaluation	Passed evaluations that later lost the funded account
A: all of his trades	31.3%	11.4%	$368	95.9%
B: his first trade each day	28.6%	15.2%	$555	83.4%
C: coin flip on his entries	28.4% (24.4 to 32.1)	8.4% (5.1 to 11.4)	$201 ($73 to $446)	99.2%
E: zero-advantage sequence	28.3% (24.1 to 32.6)	8.3% (4.8 to 12.3)	$215 ($77 to $496)	98.8%

Simulated $50,000 evaluations with $15 per NQ contract per trade
Arm	Evaluations passed	Evaluations with any payout	Expected payout per evaluation
A: all of his trades	21.6%	4.5%	$77
B: his first trade each day	19.6%	8.8%	$245
C: coin flip on his entries	19.6%	2.9%	$40
D: coin flip, first trade each day	17.0%	3.3%	$61
E: zero-advantage sequence	20.6%	3.2%	$45

His setup: 40 evaluations a year, 5 live at a time, re-buying on a fail (mean of 2017–2025)
Costs and arm	Evaluations a year	Payouts a year	Years with $0 paid	Payout dollars per $1 spent on evaluations
Gross, A: all of his trades	36.1	$12,217	55.6%	2.60
Gross, E: zero-advantage sequence	39.4	$7,983	44.4%	1.50
$15 per contract, A: all of his trades	38.3	$4,569	77.8%	0.93
$15 per contract, B: first trade each day	39.4	$4,940	66.7%	1.06
$15 per contract, E: zero-advantage sequence	40.0	$1,767	77.8%	0.34

Average R per trade at $15 per contract: arm A went from +0.0104 gross to −0.049, and arm B from +0.052 to −0.009.
Arm A gross payouts by year: 2016 $17,000; 2017 $0; 2018 $4,000; 2019 $37,500; 2020 $0; 2021 $4,050; 2022 $0; 2023 $64,400; 2024 $0; 2025 $0; 2026 $0.
The per-evaluation payout distribution for arm A, gross: median $0, 90th percentile $970, 99th percentile $7,500, maximum $12,880.
Neither trade type was above zero in both halves (2016–2020 and 2021–2026). A trade in candle one’s own direction, without the CISD, averaged +0.0508R (+0.0188 to +0.0831).

Video transcript

JJ Simon says this strategy made him one point two million dollars on prop firms in one year. So I ran it on forty evaluations a year, five at a time, every New York open since twenty sixteen, with real commissions. Fewer than one in twenty evaluations ever paid out. Average payouts: about four and a half thousand dollars a year. And seven out of nine years paid nothing at all. One point two million, or four and a half thousand. You decide.

Questions and answers

How was the JJ Simon fair price strategy backtested?

On NQ futures 1-minute data from 2016-06-01 to 2026-10-07, using only the 09:30 ET open. The first candle’s colour sets the side, continuation trades run 09:31–09:40 and reversion trades 09:41–11:00, with a 25-point stop and a 38-point target.

What sample size was used?

7,112 trades, 2,955 continuation and 4,157 reversion, with a 40.2% win rate and +73.99R in total before costs.

How often did the strategy pay out in simulated evaluations?

Gross, 11.4% of simulated $50,000 evaluations produced any payout. With $15 per contract in commission and slippage it was 4.5%.

How many years paid nothing in the 40-evaluation setup?

With $15 per contract in commission and slippage, 77.8% of years (seven of nine, 2017–2025) paid $0, and payouts averaged $4,569 a year against 38.3 evaluations a year.

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