Statistical arbitrage (or pairs trading based on anticipation of reversion to the mean) works reasonably well in my experience when diversified to multiple 'high liquidity' stocks...
In theory (charts/academic-papers), the assumption for the sometimes grandiose equity-curve, is to be able to buy (and short) shares at some printed market price (open, close or high-low avg of the day), but seldom does that work in reality... The biggest killer in my experience, of an otherwise reasonable trading strategy (which pairs trading is) is 'slippage' - trying to get a fill on 1,000 shares of a low-liquidity stock (to hedge the long position, or vice versa) on a Monday morning - the stuff of utter frustration, and you end up foolishly chasing the shares (remember, you have to buy/short both sides - it's not as easy as the theory suggests)...
Lesson: Stick to high liquidity pairs (eg., KO/PEP, or XLY/XLP which works well on sector rotations), test them using mean-reversion charting, and (most important) don't rely entirely on statistical reversion - be aware of fundamentals/goings-on in each of the two businesses - and spread out the risk with multiple [high-liquidity] pairs. It's as good a strategy as any, without any guarantee of success.
Best,
Shiraz