Thesis (modestly working only with drawdown): A close below the trailing 20-day low on volume, followed by a reclaim above that level within 1-3 days, marks a fake-out — shorts get squeezed and the price recovers.

Code: research/failed_breakdown.py Report: research/failed_breakdown_report.json (n=24,204)

Where it lands: same family as the broader contrarian set — unconditional edge is essentially 0 ; deep-drawdown sub-cohort produces +3.4 % at 40 d OOS but the magnitude is dominated by other triggers (RSI div, consensus, gap-cap).

Verdict: Modest. Not productized as a standalone cohort but is one of the triggers feeding consensus_capitulation.

Working signals — discoveries from session 2

These were the most impactful findings of the second pass.