Analyst’s summary
Arthur Hayes is a co-founder of BitMEX and the CIO of Maelstrom, who writes long essays on Substack. He reaches this record through his X posts: almost all the items read are posts there, and almost none are his Substack essays or YouTube interviews. Across the record, a minority of his claims name an asset with no direction and a minority carry a direction. Of the directional calls, a small share name a price level and almost none concern business outcomes. The calls are mostly crypto, with small shares in single equities and gold. His most-called names are BTC, ETH and HYPE.
How accurate is he?
He is accurate 34.1% of the time against a base rate of 35.8% for the assets he calls, so he scores 1.7 points below it. Accurate means he hits or partially hits the hurdle in the direction his signal implies, inside the window he named or the calculated window determined from our algorithm; for a price target it means the target was reached inside the window, or half the stated move was. Of his 61 resolved price-target calls, 15 reached the target and 39 never got halfway.
How does he compare to just holding Bitcoin, and to the S&P 500?
If you had put $1 into Bitcoin on the day of his first crypto call in May 2019 and left it there until his last crypto call was settled, you would have $10.22. If you had put $1 into every one of his 217 crypto calls instead, buying when he posted and selling when each call was due, you would have $0.69; Bitcoin held on those same days made $1.91.
If you had put $1 into the S&P 500 on the day of his first equity call in May 2020 and left it there until his last equity call was settled, you would have $2.72. If you had put $1 into every one of his 28 equity calls instead, buying when he posted and selling when each call was due, you would have $0.89; the S&P 500 held on those same days made $1.94.
Taking profit early, at twice the hurdle (at the target, on a price-target call) with no stop-loss, turned $1 into $2.05. The base rate on the assets he picks is $22.53: the same assets, bought on random dates in the same period, held for the same lengths of time, with the same long and short sides.
Explainer on his accuracy against his return
Accuracy counts how often he was right; return counts how far the price went. He was right less often than chance, and a dollar compounds the path, not the average: his hits averaged +57.2% and his misses -32.6%, and three positions lost more than their whole value. (* see the footnote below for a fuller explanation)
How does following his timing compare to the base rate of the assets he chose?
A dollar following every one of his calls to the end of its window became $0.35 against a base rate of $22.53; with a stop at the hurdle and a take-profit at twice it (at the target, on a price-target call), $3.63. In three of his seven years he beat the base rate, in 2020, 2023, 2024; over the last twelve months he scored 26.9% against a base rate of 37.5% on 75 calls.
What is the best holding period if we follow Arthur?
One day: a dollar following every call for one day became $0.49 against a base rate of $0.74, and no other plain hold does better. On tracking, at no horizon are his calls ahead of the assets' own path.
Does he have any names where he has a particular edge?
On SOL, ZEC, ETH his calls beat the asset's own 30-day move; on BTC, the name he calls most, they beat it by 0.3 points; they trailed it on PENDLE.
In our opinion, a follower should treat Arthur Hayes as a source of ideas rather than a timing signal. Following his calls to the end of their windows turned one dollar into $0.35, while the same assets on random dates made $22.53, so his timing added no value. His edge is narrow: his calls beat the asset's own thirty-day move on SOL, ZEC and ETH, but five issuers carry half his calls and on BTC, his most-called name, the edge is only 0.3 points. Take his named assets and manage them yourself.
Notes
1 Right means the hurdle test. Every asset carries a hurdle, T, that depends on its class and on how long the call was given (the table on page 2): 5 percent for a single equity at ninety days, under half a percent at next close, eleven at a year; 13 percent for crypto at ninety days. A full hit is a move of at least twice T in the direction he called by the end of the window and counts 1.0; a partial hit is at least T and counts 0.8; a miss, and a flat outcome that moved less than T either way, count zero. A price-target call is a full hit when the target is reached inside the window, a partial at half the stated move and a miss otherwise; it has one reading, the touch, so a later fall does not change it and the hit rate is not a holding return. Every resolved call is scored and every one is in the denominator. At expiry reads the price once at the window's end; one-touch counts the same move if it happened at any point inside the window.
2 Base rate: for each call, over every window of the same length on the same asset across the record, from two years before his first call to the last price and leaving out the call's own window, the share that cleared the same hurdle in his direction, with a partial at 0.8 and everything else zero; built exactly as the hit rate is, then averaged over his calls. Lift is his rate minus it. The percentiles and the drift in Parts 2 and 3 use a narrower set, the 730 days before each call.
3 The percentile is where a call's return ranks among all windows of the same length in that stock's own past two years; the 50th is chance. The placebo band is what random posting dates on the same assets produce; a reading inside it is indistinguishable from chance.
4 The dollar base rate: the same assets, the same number of calls, the same long and short sides, bought on random dates; the median of 150 such runs. Each call is held to its own window, and a price-target call is sold at its target if that comes first, on his dates and on the random ones alike.
5 Win rate and return per call: a follower buying at the first close after each post and selling thirty days later, costs deducted; the share of calls that made money, and the average result.
6 Drawdown: the deepest fall of that follower's account from its peak.
7 A bracket is a take-profit and a stop-loss set in advance; here both are set in units of the call's own hurdle, and a price-target call takes its target as the take-profit, so a take-profit fill is a hit banked and a stop fill is a miss taken. It is a rule of ours, not part of his record, and it never feeds the alpha gate.
* Accuracy counts calls. Every call counts once, whatever the size of the move: a full hit is one, a partial is 0.8, a miss or a flat is zero. Sixty-eight of his 270 calls were full hits, thirty partial, 172 were misses or flats. Random windows on the same assets clear the hurdle more often than that, because assets of this kind move the hurdle's distance inside the window about 28.1% of the time on their own. So by count he is right less often than chance. Return weighs calls by how far they moved. His sixty-eight hits averaged +57.2%, one of them, ZEC, +291.9%. His 131 misses averaged -32.6%, and his forty-one flats were small. Add them up and the winners are worth +5309 points against -5134 for the losers. A dollar compounds the path, not the average: three of his positions, shorts held through a rally, lost more than their whole value, and with no stop-loss they took the account down whatever the other calls did; 2.14b shows the same calls with a stop.
Summary of metrics
Integrity: 1848 posts were read, yielding 951 claims, 329 directional calls and 270 resolved. (see section: the worked claim, Part 5, annex)
Information: scoring for accuracy by our rules, he is accurate 34.1% of the time, against a base rate of 35.8% for the same assets, so he scores 1.7 points below it. On tracking his calls, at no horizon are they ahead of the assets' own path. At the ninety-day horizon his calls return +0.3% on average, 26.6 points behind the assets' own return of +26.9% over the same days. (see section: 1.3, 1.18, 2.19)
Robustness: in 3 of his 7 years he scored above the base rate, in 2020, 2023, 2024; over the last twelve months he scored 26.9% against a base rate of 37.5% on 75 calls; the record holds 270 resolved calls on 70 assets. (see section: 1.6, 1.9, 5.3, 5.4)
Concentration: his calls beat the asset's own 30-day move on SOL, ZEC, ETH; on BTC, the name he calls most, they beat it by 0.3 points; they trailed it on PENDLE. (see section: 2.8)
Response profile: if we follow all of Arthur's calls, the holding period most profitable is one day. One dollar following every call for one day became $0.49 against a base rate of $0.74. There is no benefit to holding his calls for 7 days, 30 days or each call's own window. (see section: 1.3, 2.13, 2.14b)
Distribution: one call is worth +0.3% on average, after costs; the middle half of his calls end between -29.4% and +22.6%, and 50.7% of them end positive. Following every call to the end of its window turned one dollar into $0.35 against a base rate of $22.53, and the account fell 97.1% from its peak along the way. (see section: 2.13 to 2.16)
accuracy at expiry (vs base rate at expiry of 35.8%)
accuracy on one-touch (vs base rate one-touch of 55.5%)
$0.69 vs $10.22 (hold Bitcoin, crypto calls)
one dollar following his equity calls vs holding the S&P 500, and his crypto calls vs holding Bitcoin, each for its own period
ZEC +11.9%/+4.1%
ETH +5.2%/-0.1%
the names where his edge is biggest: his average 30-day return / the asset's own
51.9% / +1.7% (30 day)
41.9% / -0.8% (7 day)
45.6% / -0.0% (1 day)
win rate / return per call, by holding period; aggregate is each call held to its own window
$3.01 vs base rate $5.03 (30 day)
$0.15 vs base rate $1.00 (7 day)
$0.49 vs base rate $0.74 (1 day)
one dollar following every call vs the base rate for following the same assets on random dates
selling each call as soon as it is up twice its hurdle, no stop-loss: 60.0% of calls win against 50.7% on a plain hold to the window, and one dollar ends at $2.05 against $0.35
+3.3% vs +41.4% (180d)
his average return against the assets' own, at the horizons he uses most (ten or more calls); the difference is his edge in points
Following Arthur Hayes's calls from the first close at or after each post and holding each call to the end of its own window, one dollar became $0.35 over 2212 days in market, against just holding the S&P 500 for his equity calls ($0.89 following those calls against $2.72 held) and Bitcoin for his crypto calls ($0.69 following those calls against $10.22 held), and against holding the same assets Arthur chooses on random dates, which would have produced $22.53.
This report does not establish an investment advantage. Comparison data for similar assets was unavailable.
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