Do Indicator Settings Transfer Between Pairs? 3,024 Tests

Every indicator article here carries a "run this setting" button. At the time of this run there were 44 of those buttons, and every one held a setting chosen on USD/JPY. So the question a reader asks next, whether the setting also works on EUR/USD, has never been answered.

(Two articles do measure other pairs: the currency-strength one covers 28 of them, and the article on how long RSI stays overbought runs EUR/USD beside USD/JPY. Neither carries a trading rule on its button, so neither is among the 42 below.)

Answering it depends on not choosing the settings again. Each article carries a "run this setting" button holding exactly the rules that article published. Those 42 settings ran again with only the pair and the window changed: four pairs including EUR/USD, GBP/USD and EUR/JPY, three years from 2023 to 2025, three timeframes.

Three results before the detail.

One. The ordering does not carry. Ranking the 42 settings by annual pips on USD/JPY and comparing with the same 42 ranked on another pair gives correlations from -0.515 to +0.47 across 27 cells, median -0.011. Only 13 of the 27 are above zero.

Two. The count of settings profitable on both pairs is about what two unrelated pairs would give. If 36 of 42 are profitable on USD/JPY and 5 on EUR/USD, then unrelated pairs would overlap on 36/42 x 5 = 4.3 settings. The measured overlap was 3. Across 27 cells the difference runs -4 to +6, median -0.2.

Three. No setting was profitable on all four pairs in all three years, on any of the three timeframes.

USD/JPYEUR/USDGBP/USDEUR/JPYhourly chart, out of 42

Why this test was missing

The indicator articles are all built the same way: sweep dozens of settings for one indicator, count how many were profitable across two years, then take the previous year's winner and run it in the next. The across-years check happens every time.

What never happened was an across-pairs check. The cost of leaving it out shows up immediately.

Settings that ended the year with positive pips on the hourly chart, out of 42:

In 2024, 36 of 42 settings made money on USD/JPY. The same 42 settings managed 5 on EUR/USD in the same year.

The median year says it too. Pairs move different distances, so each year is divided by that pair's own mean bar range (14-bar true range). The unit is "how many average bars did the year make".

USD/JPY is the only pair whose median was positive in all three years. GBP/USD was negative in all three, EUR/USD in one, EUR/JPY in two.

So the 42 settings were chosen inside one pair, in a window where even the median setting made money. That is not a criticism of the settings. It is a fact about where they were found.

How this was measured

The settings were not chosen for this article. Each article's "run this setting" button holds them. There are 44 such buttons, and the three Bollinger articles publish identical rules (period 20, 2σ, breakout), which leaves 42.

The pairs were chosen for a reason. EUR/USD and GBP/USD share USD/JPY's dollar and drop the yen. EUR/JPY shares the yen and drops the dollar. If USD/JPY settings travel to EUR/JPY but not to EUR/USD, the yen leg is what carries; if it goes the other way round, the dollar does. With no cross in the set, neither could be told apart from "some pairs are just easier".

Pips are not added across pairs untouched. One hourly bar averages 24.85 pips on USD/JPY, 15.27 on EUR/USD, 17.12 on GBP/USD and 24.72 on EUR/JPY. The same "1,000 pips" means different things, so every annual figure is also shown divided by that range.

Does the USD/JPY ordering predict another pair's

Rank the 42 settings by annual pips on USD/JPY, rank the same 42 by annual pips on another pair, and measure how alike the two orderings are. +1 is the same order, 0 is no relation, -1 is reversed. Tied ranks are averaged.

The 27 cells run from -0.515 to +0.47 with a median of -0.011. Thirteen are above zero.

The signs cluster by timeframe, which is worth a second look. All nine hourly cells are negative and seven of the nine 4-hour cells are positive. Three of the 15-minute cells are negative. A real relationship between what worked on USD/JPY and what works elsewhere would not change sign when the timeframe changes.

How many would overlap if the pairs were unrelated

A correlation on its own is hard to size. Here is the same question in counts.

Suppose 36 of 42 settings were profitable on USD/JPY and 5 on EUR/USD. If the two pairs were entirely unrelated, the number profitable on both would be 36/42 x 5 = 4.3. The measured count was 3.

All 27 cells, measured count first and the unrelated-pairs count second:

The measured count differs from the unrelated-pairs count by -4 to +6, median -0.2. Knowing a setting was profitable on USD/JPY barely moves the odds that it is profitable on another pair.

Sharing the yen does not bring them closer

This is what EUR/JPY is in the set for.

Sharing the yen did not produce a higher figure. The 15-minute chart is marginally higher, the hourly marginally lower, and the 4-hour clearly lower at +0.117 against +0.3005. The EUR/JPY column is the middle of three values and the other the middle of six, which is why the second carries a fourth decimal. Neither a shared yen nor a shared dollar carried the ordering.

Carrying USD/JPY's best setting to the others

This series runs the same check across years every time. Here it runs across pairs. For each timeframe and year, the setting with the highest annual pips on USD/JPY is picked and run on the other three, with its rank on the new pair.

Of the 27 carries, 12 made money. The ranks spread from 1st to 36th. Sixteen beat the new pair's median and seven landed in its top ten.

The timeframe splits the result. The 15-minute chart made money in 1 of 9 carries; the 4-hour in 7 of 9. The hourly managed 4.

Two rows carry the point. The morning-and-evening-star setting that won the 4-hour chart in 2023 made money on EUR/USD, GBP/USD and EUR/JPY alike, ranking 5th, 6th and 4th. WaveTrend, which won the hourly chart in 2025 with +3,283.4 pips on USD/JPY, ranked 34th on EUR/USD and 33rd on EUR/JPY. The same selection procedure produced one winner that travelled and one that did not.

Any setting that works on all four

The strictest count the data allows:

Between 0 and 5 of the 42 cleared all four pairs in a given year. Requiring all four pairs and all three years at once leaves 0 of 42 on every timeframe.

The hourly chart in 2024 makes it plain: 36 of 42 were profitable on USD/JPY alone, and 1 was profitable on all four.

What the spread removes depends on the timeframe

A losing year can be a setting that was wrong or a setting that paid too much to trade. Re-running at a zero spread separates them. Profitable counts at a zero spread first, then at 0.3 pips:

On the 15-minute chart the 0.3 pip spread lowered the count in all twelve cells, by as much as 8 (USD/JPY 2023, 23 down to 15). On the 4-hour chart seven of the twelve cells lost nothing at all.

That matches what this series finds every time: cost is trade count times spread, and a shorter timeframe trades more. It also means the gap between pairs is not a spread effect. EUR/USD's 5 profitable settings on the hourly chart in 2024 are 10 even with the spread removed.

Related reading

• Do Trend Filters Remove False Signals? 1,596 Backtests: the same 42 settings, crossed with filters rather than with pairs
• Is the Golden Cross Profitable on Forex? 280 Moving Average Tests: one of the settings carried here
• Is the Ichimoku Three-Signal Buy Profitable? 280 Settings Tested: the setting that won the 15-minute chart in 2024 and 2025
• How to Backtest a Forex Strategy Without Coding: how to re-run one of these settings on a pair of your own
• Do Support and Resistance Lines Work? 5,184 Backtests: written after this one, and it found a condition that had never taken a trade

Notes on scope

• Four pairs over three years, on the 15-minute, 1-hour and 4-hour charts
• Fills at the close, one 0.3 pip spread for every pair, 0.1 lots, no slippage. Real spreads differ by pair, so these figures exist to compare pairs with each other
• One published setting per article, not that article's full parameter sweep
• EUR/JPY is the only pair here without the dollar in it, so on the question of which leg matters this article can say only that neither carried