A useful hypothesis names the market condition, the trigger, the confirmation, and the failure. Vague language such as ‘strong momentum’ fails the first editing pass in class because no two students mark it the same way.
We ask participants to write the hypothesis in if-then form, then have a neighbour attempt to mark the same chart using only that text. Wherever the marks diverge, the wording needs work — before any historical sample is collected.
Timeframes belong in the hypothesis, not as an afterthought. A two-hour breakout rule tested on daily bars is a different animal. Mixing horizons mid-test is one of the fastest ways to invent an edge that never appears in live conditions.
Once the wording is stable, history becomes a referee rather than a muse. You are no longer looking for inspiration on the chart; you are counting how often the written conditions appear and what follows.
That discipline feels slower at the start of training. By week three of the Intensive, most participants prefer the slower start because it saves them from rebuilding a broken rule set after weeks of optimistic scrolling.