Best RSI Settings, Tested 330 Ways on USD/JPY
RSI run as a 30/70 fade and as a 50-line cross: 330 settings on USD/JPY, 2024 and 2025. The fade won 65% of its trades and lost money; the cross won 24% and made it.
RSI compares how much price rose against how much it fell over the last N bars and turns that into a number between 0 and 100. Almost every description of it says the same thing: below 30 is oversold, above 70 is overbought. A second, quieter reading treats 50 as the dividing line — above it the buyers are ahead, below it the sellers are.
The first is a mean-reversion tool. The second is a trend-following one. The same line produces opposite rules, and the usual advice does not say which reading the settings belong to.
So both were measured side by side, on the same pair, the same years and the same costs. On USD/JPY in 2025, 150 fade settings run long and short separately (6 periods × 5 entry levels × 5 exit levels) plus 30 midline-cross settings (6 periods × 5 levels) — 330 in all, on the fifteen-minute, hourly and four-hour charts, then repeated over 2024.
The short version: on the hourly chart the fade won 65.3% of its trades on average and survived both years in 31 of 150 settings. The midline cross won 23.7% and survived in 17 of 30. Not one cross setting won more than three trades in ten.
What RSI actually measures
Take the last N bars. Average the size of the up moves, average the size of the down moves, and express the up average as a percentage of the total. Period is the only knob.
- Nothing but up bars gives 100
- Nothing but down bars gives 0
- Up and down in balance gives 50
So 50 is the point where gains and losses cancel, and distance from it measures how lopsided the recent bars have been. "Overbought" and "oversold" are an interpretation laid on top of that; the arithmetic only reports the imbalance.
A longer period does not reach 30
This is where the practical problem starts. Averaging over more bars mixes the ups and downs together and pulls the number toward 50. Counting every hourly bar of 2025 on which RSI was defined:
| Period | Bars below 30 | Bars above 70 | Lowest value all year | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | 13.97% | 14.13% | 1.0 | 97.0 |
| 9 | 10.81% | 11.20% | 2.4 | 94.5 |
| 14 | 5.73% | 6.54% | 8.0 | 89.5 |
| 21 | 1.80% | 4.17% | 16.4 | 84.7 |
| 30 | 0.39% | 2.03% | 24.9 | 80.8 |
| 50 | 0.00% | 0.32% | 31.2 | 74.7 |
A period-50 RSI never once closed below 30 in all of 2025. Its lowest reading was 31.2. "Use a longer period for cleaner oversold signals" describes something that does not happen — the signals do not get cleaner, they stop existing. On the four-hour chart both period 30 and period 50 stayed above 30 for the entire year.
The sweep shows the consequence directly: on the four-hour chart, 50 of the 150 long-fade settings never took a single trade, and 20 did nothing on the hourly chart either.
Putting RSI on a chart
| Platform | How |
|---|---|
| MT4 / MT5 | Relative Strength Index in the Navigator's indicator list; set the period |
| TradingView | Search the indicator list for RSI and set the period |
| Browser (Formiq) | On the chart by default; the backtester switches between the level reading and the level cross with a trigger |
Drawing it is the same everywhere. The decision that matters is whether the rule fires when the line reaches a level or when it crosses one — this article treats those as two separate systems.
How this was measured
Enter the settings below and the same numbers come out.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Pair | USD/JPY |
| Window | 2025-01-01 to 2025-12-31, with 2024 run identically for comparison |
| Timeframes | M15 / H1 / H4 |
| Bars tested | 24,903 on M15, 6,226 on H1, 1,610 on H4 in 2025 |
| Fade, long | Buy the close of the bar where RSI drops below the entry level; sell the close of the bar where it rises above the exit level |
| Fade, short | The long reflected around 50: sell above 100 − entry, cover below 100 − exit |
| Midline cross | Buy when RSI closes through the level from below, sell when it closes through from above, reversing on the same bar |
| Stops and targets | None (measured in their own section) |
| Spread | 0.3 pips, no slippage, 0.1 lots, charged on entry and exit |
| Fade grid | 6 periods (7, 9, 14, 21, 30, 50) × 5 entry levels (20, 25, 30, 35, 40) × 5 exit levels (50, 55, 60, 65, 70) = 150, run long and short separately |
| Cross grid | 6 periods × 5 levels (40, 45, 50, 55, 60) = 30 |
| Measurement | Run through Formiq's backtester; pips recomputed from each trade's own fill prices |
The long and short fades are separate systems because a level rule points one way. "Buy below 30" and "sell above 70" produce entirely different results.
The win rate points the wrong way
| System | Timeframe | Profitable 2025 | 2025 median | Profitable 2024 | 2024 median | Both years | Mean win rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fade long | M15 | 77 / 150 | +5 pips | 67 / 150 | −45 pips | 29 / 150 | 64.6% |
| Fade long | H1 | 78 / 150 | +11 pips | 58 / 150 | −65 pips | 31 / 150 | 65.3% |
| Fade long | H4 | 81 / 150 | +95 pips | 36 / 150 | −211 pips | 13 / 150 | 67.6% |
| Fade short | M15 | 42 / 150 | −264 pips | 33 / 150 | −367 pips | 5 / 150 | 57.7% |
| Fade short | H1 | 48 / 150 | −137 pips | 23 / 150 | −727 pips | 9 / 150 | 61.2% |
| Fade short | H4 | 84 / 150 | +272 pips | 17 / 150 | −1,075 pips | 1 / 150 | 61.0% |
| Midline cross | M15 | 8 / 30 | −347 pips | 12 / 30 | −408 pips | 4 / 30 | 22.3% |
| Midline cross | H1 | 25 / 30 | +830 pips | 22 / 30 | +846 pips | 17 / 30 | 23.7% |
| Midline cross | H4 | 7 / 30 | −885 pips | 28 / 30 | +1,388 pips | 6 / 30 | 23.0% |
(Mean win rate covers the 2025 settings that took at least one trade. The median is over every setting on that timeframe.)
The figure at the top plots the hourly rows one point each, leaving out settings that traded fewer than ten times — win rate across, net pips up. The red and purple fade settings spread across a 40–90% band; the blue cross settings sit in a narrow 17–30% band. The medians still come out at +830 pips for the cross, +11 for the long fade and −137 for the short.
Selling the overbought line is the weakest of the three, surviving both years in 9 of 150 hourly settings. USD/JPY rose 1,632 pips through 2024, and a rule that sells strength gets run over in a year like that.
The same knob points opposite ways
The clearest result in the sweep is what the period does.
Settings profitable in both 2024 and 2025, hourly chart:
| Period | Fade long | Midline cross |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | 2 / 25 | 4 / 5 |
| 9 | 3 / 25 | 5 / 5 |
| 14 | 7 / 25 | 3 / 5 |
| 21 | 7 / 25 | 2 / 5 |
| 30 | 8 / 25 | 2 / 5 |
| 50 | 4 / 25 | 1 / 5 |
Both curves peak, and they peak at opposite ends of the knob. The fade is at its best at period 30 (8 of 25); the cross at period 9 (5 of 5), falling to 1 of 5 by period 50.
The mechanism follows from the reach table. A fade waits for a rare extreme, so a longer period raises the quality of each signal — right up to the point where the extreme stops arriving. Period 50 averaged three hourly trades a year. That is why the fade peaks at period 30 and falls away on either side: two forces meet there.
The cross is the opposite. Every crossing is a sample. Period 9 crossed 775 times a year on the hourly chart, period 50 only 231, and the smaller count leaves the year's result at the mercy of a handful of trades.
Levels behave more simply:
| Fade entry level | Both years |
|---|---|
| 20 | 6 / 30 |
| 25 | 13 / 30 |
| 30 | 4 / 30 |
| 35 | 2 / 30 |
| 40 | 6 / 30 |
| Cross level | Both years |
|---|---|
| 40 | 3 / 6 |
| 45 | 5 / 6 |
| 50 | 4 / 6 |
| 55 | 4 / 6 |
| 60 | 1 / 6 |
The fade's exit level survived best at 70 (9 of 30, against 6 at level 50 and 5 at 65). The back half of "buy at 30, sell at 70" holds up in this test even where the front half does not.
What the standard 14 / 30 / 70 did
The most-quoted settings, run both ways. The cross column uses the same period 14 with the level at 50.
| Reading | Timeframe | 2025 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fade long (30 → 70) | M15 | 105 trades, 63.81% win, +332.1 pips | 93 trades, 75.27% win, +9.0 pips |
| Fade long (30 → 70) | H1 | 25 trades, 60.00% win, −250.7 pips | 22 trades, 63.64% win, +26.1 pips |
| Fade long (30 → 70) | H4 | 9 trades, 66.67% win, +1,148.4 pips | 7 trades, 85.71% win, +209.2 pips |
| Fade short (70 → 30) | M15 | 106 trades, 62.26% win, +435.5 pips | 94 trades, 50.00% win, −1,545.0 pips |
| Fade short (70 → 30) | H1 | 25 trades, 64.00% win, −256.1 pips | 22 trades, 40.91% win, −1,429.7 pips |
| Fade short (70 → 30) | H4 | 9 trades, 66.67% win, +1,059.2 pips | 8 trades, 50.00% win, −1,150.7 pips |
| Cross the 50 line | M15 | 2,840 trades, 22.64% win, −265.7 pips | 2,820 trades, 21.99% win, +94.9 pips |
| Cross the 50 line | H1 | 638 trades, 24.14% win, +1,272.0 pips | 681 trades, 22.17% win, +666.0 pips |
| Cross the 50 line | H4 | 164 trades, 27.44% win, −790.1 pips | 141 trades, 23.40% win, +1,798.5 pips |
Three of those nine rows came through both years: the long fade on M15 and H4, and the cross on H1.
The 2024 fifteen-minute row is the one worth staring at. 93 trades, 75.27% of them winners, +9.0 pips for the year. Three winners in every four, and what is left over after a year is nine pips.
On the hourly chart the standard fade fires 25 times a year. There is not much to say about a sample that size. A 60% win rate there means fifteen winners and ten losers.
The hourly cross took 638 trades for +1,272.0 pips, then 681 for +666.0 pips. The count is two orders of magnitude larger, and the year-to-year swing correspondingly smaller.
Why the higher win rate loses
The two sides of the trade are different sizes. Averaged over every 2025 setting:
| System | Timeframe | Mean win | Mean loss | Mean bars held |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fade long | H1 | +88.6 pips | −120.8 pips | 188.9 |
| Fade short | H1 | +80.7 pips | −129.6 pips | 273.4 |
| Midline cross | H1 | +71.5 pips | −20.5 pips | 21.6 |
The cross wins 3.5 times what it loses. At a 23.7% win rate, 0.237 × 71.5 − 0.763 × 20.5 still comes out positive. It rides a move as long as the line stays on one side of the level and reverses on the same bar when it does not, so a wrong call is cut early.
The fade does the reverse: its win is 0.73 of its loss. It collects small profits when price returns to the exit level and takes a large one when price does not come back. The holding times differ just as sharply — 188.9 hourly bars for the fade, about eight days, against 21.6 for the cross.
The same relationship holds on the other timeframes. The long fade ran +49.6 / −73.1 on M15 and +126.2 / −196.2 on H4; the cross ran +36.8 / −10.4 and +120.1 / −42.8.
Carrying last year's best setting forward
| System | Best of 2024 | Its 2024 result | Applied to 2025 | 2025 rank | 2025 median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fade long, H1 | period 14, 40 → 70 | +1,139.8 pips (44 trades) | −798.8 pips | 147 / 150 | +11.2 pips |
| Midline cross, H1 | period 9, level 45 | +3,601.3 pips (725 trades) | +1,254.9 pips | 7 / 30 | +830.3 pips |
The fade's 2024 winner finished 147th of 150 the following year. A 77.27% win rate over 44 trades and +1,139.8 pips became −798.8.
The cross's 2024 winner held 7th of 30 in 2025. Read the other way round, 2025's winner (period 9, level 40, +1,815.4 pips over 672 trades) made +1,003.6 pips in 2024 for 12th of 30. What carries over is the direction of the system, not the ranking of a setting.
Rank correlations sit at or below zero throughout:
| System | 2024 ↔ 2025 | H1 2025 ↔ H2 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Fade long | −0.002 | −0.202 |
| Fade short | −0.032 | −0.299 |
| Midline cross | −0.075 | −0.523 |
Filters, stops and targets
Two representative hourly settings with the usual additions bolted on.
| Condition | Fade long 14 / 30→70, 2025 | 2024 | Cross 14 @ 50, 2025 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baseline | 25 trades, −250.7 pips | 22, +26.1 pips | 638 trades, +1,272.0 pips | 681, +666.0 pips |
| ADX ≥ 20 | 25, −225.0 pips | 21, −99.2 pips | 290, +389.4 pips | 334, −827.0 pips |
| ADX ≥ 25 | 25, −58.2 pips | 20, −164.8 pips | 163, +710.9 pips | 165, +94.6 pips |
| ADX ≥ 30 | 22, −200.8 pips | 16, −403.2 pips | 79, +420.8 pips | 89, −152.8 pips |
| London + NY | 22, −561.0 pips | 20, +100.2 pips | 370, +1,669.9 pips | 400, −117.9 pips |
| Tokyo | 21, −113.6 pips | 18, +53.1 pips | 247, +284.3 pips | 236, +1,254.5 pips |
The ADX filter left the cross worse off in both years. It does raise efficiency per trade — profit factor goes from 1.146 to 1.322 at ADX ≥ 25 — but the total falls from +1,272.0 to +710.9 in 2025 and from +666.0 to +94.6 in 2024. Filtering a trend system by trend strength did not help it.
The session filters reversed between years. London and New York took 2025 to +1,669.9 and 2024 to −117.9; Tokyo did the opposite. Either choice looks correct on one year's data.
| Exit rule | Fade long 2025 | Fade long 2024 | Cross 2025 | Cross 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | −250.7 pips | +26.1 pips | +1,272.0 pips | +666.0 pips |
| SL 30 / TP 60 | −379.4 pips | +72.0 pips | +1,392.7 pips | −343.9 pips |
| SL 50 / TP 100 | −256.9 pips | +175.5 pips | +1,947.4 pips | −317.7 pips |
| SL 100 / TP 200 | −519.3 pips | −737.3 pips | +2,118.0 pips | +755.1 pips |
| Time exit, 24 bars | −536.7 pips | −878.1 pips | +2,960.5 pips | −84.7 pips |
Only the widest pair beat the baseline in both years for the cross (+2,118.0 and +755.1). Tight stops helped in 2025 and turned 2024 negative. The 24-bar time exit produced the best single number in the table and the worst kind of evidence for it: 2024 came out below baseline.
Nothing improved the fade in both years.
Cost lands differently on the two systems
| Spread | Fade long 14 / 30→70 (25 trades) | Cross 14 @ 50 (638 trades) |
|---|---|---|
| 0.0 pips | −243.2 | +1,463.4 |
| 0.3 pips | −250.7 | +1,272.0 |
| 0.6 pips | −258.2 | +1,080.6 |
| 1.0 pips | −268.2 | +825.4 |
| 1.5 pips | −280.7 | +506.4 |
| 2.0 pips | −293.2 | +187.4 |
At zero spread the fade still loses 243.2 pips. Going from 0 to 2.0 pips costs it 50.0 pips — 25 trades times 2.0. The finding that runs through this series, that a losing system is usually losing its trade count times the spread, does not apply here. The fade is not losing to costs; it is losing on the trades.
The cross is the case the identity does describe. It pays 191.4 pips at 0.3 (638 × 0.3), 13% of its +1,463.4 gross, and 1,276.0 pips at 2.0, which leaves +187.4. The same arithmetic held exactly in the Bollinger Band and moving average cross runs.
What this test supports
Only the findings that pointed the same way in both years:
- One line, two systems, opposite conclusions. On the hourly chart both years were profitable for 31 of 150 long-fade settings, 9 of 150 short-fade settings and 17 of 30 cross settings
- Sorting by win rate sorts the wrong way. Mean win rates were 65.3% for the fade and 23.7% for the cross; the size of each side cancels the difference out
- There is no best RSI period on its own. The fade wanted a long one (period 30, 8 of 25), the cross a short one (period 9, 5 of 5)
- A long period removes "oversold" rather than cleaning it up. Period 50 never printed below 30 on the hourly chart in 2025; its floor was 31.2
- The fade's losses are not a cost problem. At zero spread the standard hourly setting still finished at −243.2 pips
Choosing RSI mean reversion because it wins often is not supported by this test. The same inversion appears in other indicators, and the Bollinger Band article measures both sides within one indicator the way this one does. QQE smooths RSI and Stochastic RSI runs a stochastic over it; both were measured the same way. If you want to check this on your own pair and your own window, the conditions can be assembled without writing code.
Limits of this test
- One pair, two years. Nothing here promises the same behaviour on another pair or another year
- The two years were very different markets. 2024 rose 1,632 pips over a 2,237-pip range; 2025 finished 56 pips below where it started over a 1,900-pip range. The short fade's collapse in 2024 owes a lot to that trend
- The fade holds until the exit level arrives, with no stop. A wrong call shows up at full size. Stops were measured separately
- Many fade settings trade too rarely to judge. The hourly median is 29 trades a year, and 50 of the 150 four-hour settings never traded at all. Win rates and profit factors on counts like those are wide numbers
- The cross grid holds only 30 settings, which affects every rank statistic computed from it
- Entries and exits are taken at bar closes. Real fills differ
- Spread is a flat 0.3 pips throughout. Real spreads move with the session and around releases
- Volatility varies by hour, which the session-filter rows inherit
Questions people ask
- What are the best RSI settings?
- It depends entirely on which of the two RSI systems you are running, and the same knob points opposite ways in each. On the hourly USD/JPY chart, the oversold fade survived both 2024 and 2025 in 8 of 25 settings at period 30 but only 2 of 25 at period 7. The midline cross did the reverse: 5 of 5 at period 9, 1 of 5 at period 50. Choosing a period before choosing the system is choosing at random.
- Is the standard RSI 14 with 30 and 70 any good?
- On the hourly chart it fired 25 times in a year. It made −250.7 pips in 2025 from 25 trades at a 60.00% win rate, and +26.1 pips in 2024 from 22 trades at 63.64%. On the fifteen-minute chart in 2024 it won 75.27% of 93 trades and finished the year at +9.0 pips. A high win rate on that few trades says very little.
- Does RSI mean reversion or trend following work better?
- On the hourly chart, buying the oversold line survived both years in 31 of 150 settings and selling the overbought line in 9 of 150, while crossing the midline survived in 17 of 30. Mean win rates were 65.3% for the fade and 23.7% for the cross. The lower win rate finished ahead because its average win was 3.5 times its average loss.
- Should I use a longer RSI period to get cleaner oversold signals?
- A longer period does not produce cleaner oversold readings — it stops producing them. Across 6,226 hourly bars in 2025, RSI closed below 30 on 13.97% of bars at period 7, 5.73% at period 14, 0.39% at period 30 and 0.00% at period 50. The lowest value period 50 printed all year was 31.2.
- How do I add RSI to a chart?
- In MT4 and MT5, pick Relative Strength Index from the indicator list in the Navigator and set the period. TradingView has it under RSI in the indicator search. Formiq has it on the chart by default, and its backtester switches between the level reading and the level cross with a trigger.
Formiq is a free browser-based FX terminal with replay practice and no-code backtesting. Open the chart or see what the free plan includes.