Energy is the worst-completing sector in three unrelated studies

Energy failed to produce a usable backtest more often than any other sector in three unrelated studies published here: 52-week high momentum, MACD signal cross, and golden cross. Three different entry rules, three different exit rules, three different overall completion rates. Energy was the single worst-completing sector in every one.

• 52-week high momentum: Energy failed 19 of 20 tickers, 95.0 percent, against a study-wide failure rate of 57.3 percent (126 of 220)
• MACD signal cross: Energy failed 17 of 20 tickers, 85.0 percent, against a study-wide failure rate of 35.0 percent (77 of 220)
• Golden cross: Energy failed 6 of 20 tickers, 30.0 percent, against a study-wide failure rate of 12.3 percent (27 of 220)

Real Estate sits near the other end in the same three studies, without ever quite claiming the single best spot. It tied for the lowest failure rate in 52-week high momentum, 7 of 20, was the single lowest in MACD signal cross, 2 of 20, and was tied for second lowest in golden cross, 1 of 20, behind two sectors that failed zero. Across three studies built on three different rules, Real Estate never finished worse than the middle of the eleven sectors, and Energy never finished better than last.

The gap between first and second worst varies by study, and that variation is worth stating rather than smoothing over. In MACD signal cross, Energy's 17 failures sit far clear of the next worst, Industrials at 10, a wide seven-ticker margin. In 52-week high momentum, Energy's 19 failures lead Financials and Industrials, tied at 16 each, a much narrower three-ticker gap, all four sectors clustered near the top of that study's failure list. In golden cross, where failures are rare overall, Energy's 6 barely clears Consumer Staples' 5, a one-ticker margin that would not survive a single ticker landing differently. Energy's rank stays constant across all three studies. The size of its lead over the next worst sector does not.

Tenachine does not publish why any individual ticker's run fails, a limit Tenachine's guide on 52-week high momentum's own failure rate and its guide comparing MACD's two crossover rules both already state plainly. Neither guide looked at where the failures landed. This is the where, not the why. A sector consistently failing more often across three separate rule sets is a pattern in the data worth naming, not a diagnosis of a cause the data does not contain. Energy stocks are known for sharper price swings around earnings and commodity moves than the average large cap, and a wider bar-to-bar range is one plausible way a backtest could run into a data or execution edge case more often, but that is a guess, not something these three studies actually show.

What the pattern does support is a narrower, more useful habit: before trusting any study's headline number for a stock in a specific sector, check that sector's own completion rate rather than the study's overall one. A reader interested in Energy names specifically would be working from a thinner, more failure-prone slice of the universe in all three of these studies, regardless of how complete or clean the study looked at the aggregate level. This is not investment advice and not a claim that Energy stocks trade worse than other sectors, only that backtests on them complete less often here, for reasons this data does not explain.