Back-testing as a market-entry gate

New markets do not reach the firm's live book until back-testing demonstrates strategy profitability in simulation. The process is deliberate and rarely short. A candidate market enters a shortlist when it passes basic venue-quality and listing-stability filters; from there it sits in the research queue alongside every other candidate, and is scored on back-test performance, cost structure, liquidity characteristics, and settlement reliability.

Fads and newly-launched tokens usually complete their price discovery before the firm's evaluation cycle closes. A token that launches in March at a euphoric reception and settles into its steady state by June has, by July, passed through the market's own filter without requiring the firm to deploy capital. The firm is comfortable letting the market run this experiment for free.

The rejection rate on the candidate queue is high. Markets that demonstrate profitable strategy in simulation but fail the cost-of-venue or operational-reliability filter are held out regardless. Markets with thin book depth or inconsistent settlement behaviour do not pass the gate even if a strategy back-tests well.

The output of the gate is a narrow book, not a broad one. The firm's market set grows deliberately, and the list of markets considered and rejected is longer than the list it trades.