Profitability, Consistency, and Coverage of Contiguous Intraday Boundaries Across Bullish Engulfing Risk-Reward Configurations in XAUUSD M15

This study evaluated the profitability, calendar consistency, and participation characteristics of contiguous intraday boundaries identified for unfiltered Bullish Engulfing events in XAUUSD M15. The complete evidence universe comprised 5,639 events observed from 24 April 2023 through 1 July 2026 and 50 direction-risk-reward configurations formed from BUY and SELL directions across a five-by-five absolute risk-reward grid. Twenty-one configurations produced a qualifying historical boundary, comprising 10 direct and 11 fallback boundaries, while 29 configurations remained no-boundary and were retained in the complete denominator. Boundary quality was evaluated as a multidimensional construct rather than through cumulative return alone. Profitability measures included cumulative R, average R, win rate, and trade count. Calendar consistency was represented by non-negative day and week rates. Participation was assessed through selected-window event share and estimated trade frequency. Active-day and active-week coverage were not inferred because the available aggregate source did not contain the date-level counts required to calculate those measures reliably. The highest historical cumulative and average return was produced by the BUY 4:3 configuration, with 356R and an average return of 0.4450R per trade. The BUY 5:1 configuration recorded the highest win rate, at 86.13%, and the highest non-negative day rate, at 81.53%. The BUY 4:2 configuration produced the highest non-negative week rate, at 68.90%. The SELL 3:1 configuration had the largest selected-window participation, with 998 trades and an event share of 17.70%. Nine of the 21 detected boundaries were located on the multidimensional Pareto front, indicating that no single configuration dominated all others across profitability, consistency, and participation. Direct boundaries generally displayed stronger win-rate and calendar-consistency characteristics, whereas fallback boundaries produced higher mean cumulative and average returns. BUY configurations were stronger on return measures, while SELL configurations generally exhibited greater participation and calendar consistency. Recent 30-day and 7-day frozen-boundary results were evaluated separately and were not included in the historical quality ranking. The findings show that boundary quality is metric-dependent. A configuration with the highest return was not necessarily the most consistent or the most frequently active. Consequently, selecting a boundary through one performance statistic alone can conceal material trade-offs. The study supports a multidimensional evaluation framework that preserves the complete configuration universe, separates direct and fallback evidence, and avoids assigning synthetic zero performance to no-boundary cases. Bullish Engulfing events were generated using a proprietary rule-based identification framework, with the exact detection logic withheld to protect trade-secret methodology. The findings are historical and exploratory and do not constitute investment advice or evidence of future profitability.