Control choice in price-and-volume event studies: reference geometry, costs, and calibration

A hedge fund researcher needs to know whether a reported event contrast depends on the control used to judge it. This study compares downside-reversal, 52-week-high-breakout and reported-volume-event masks on 20 admitted, existing long-history equity series. The application to Axiocairn is a replayable check of the evidence attached to these conditions, rather than a return forecast. The revised protocol, code and source hashes were locked before these market outcomes were computed. No method passed every registered calibration cell, so this study makes no confirmatory market claim. The historical sample is conditional on the available cached histories and contains survival and selection bias. Differences between control distributions do not identify an amount of true economic overstatement. Generative AI tools were used in preparing this work. The author reviewed all content and takes full responsibility for it.