Way Too Long Backtest Switchboard
Today’s Change (Mar 17, 2026)
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A symphony is an automated trading strategy — Learn more about symphonies here
About
A daily, multi-asset regime-switching backtest that moves between stocks, leveraged Nasdaq bets, bonds, and cash using RSI and moving-average signals to chase trends and defend during downturns.
Think of it as a big, automated decision tree that watches several markets at once. When signals show upward momentum and a favorable trend, it tends to tilt toward equities—sometimes using leveraged Nasdaq bets. When signals turn negative or risk rises, it tilts toward hedges, safer sectors, or bonds. It also uses rules to pick the strongest candidates from a pool and to shorten or lengthen exposure accordingly. All decisions are evaluated daily and backtested over many years to see which rule-sets would have worked best. Keep in mind levered and inverse ETFs can amplify results (both up and down) and past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.
What you’re effectively doing is a form of tactical asset allocation that tries to ride multi-asset trends while trying to protect capital during downturns, using a wide mix of ETFs (broad market, tech-focused, sectors, bonds, oil, currency) and several momentum/trend indicators to decide where to put your money.
Because the setup tests many variants, outcomes depend heavily on which specific rule-paths fire on any given day.
Out-of-sample, this adaptive, multi-asset regime-switching strategy seeks higher risk-adjusted gains: ~41.7% annualized vs ~21.7% for the S&P, Sharpe ~1.31, Calmar ~1.47, aided by hedged, trend-following bets across assets.
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Invest in this strategy
OOS Start Date
Dec 17, 2023
Trading Setting
Daily
Type
Stocks
Category
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- the selection mechanisms include filters like top/bottom by a metric (for example, strongest momentum or lowest drawdown), and sort options (max drawdown, moving-average returns, standard deviation). when a group selects assets, the capital weight is typically shown as a 100/100 weight (representing full allocation within that group) and can switch to cash or to other groups depending on the rule outcome.
- the assets used are a mix of broad market etfs and leveraged/inverse variants to express different directional bets and hedges (for example qld, rom for levered tech exposure; qid, qsl for inverse/short exposure; sso for another levered s&p tilt; spy and qqq as core market exposures). the framework also uses standard fixed-income proxies (tlt, iei, shy, shv, bnd, bsv) and a few commodity/dollar exposures (dbo, uup) to diversify risk.
- the backtest aspect is explicit: the structure contains historical backtest blocks (such as “what more do you need? (even longer backtest)” and timestamps like may 30 2007) to probe how the rules would have behaved across different market regimes and time periods. the intention is to see which combination of signals and assets would have performed best over a long horizon.
important caveats about interpretation and risk:
- this is a highly engineered diy strategy with many moving parts. it relies on levered and inverse etfs, which magnify both gains and losses and can behave very differently from unlevered exposures over time due to compounding and path dependence.
- backtests can overfit to the data if rules are tuned to past periods. real-world results can differ due to slippage, costs, liquidity, and execution delays.
- daily rebalancing in a real portfolio could incur transaction costs, bid-ask spreads, and tax implications; these factors matter in practice.
- the sheer number of rule interactions makes it hard for a single, simple narrative to capture the true behavior; in practice, you’d want to stress-test simpler, more robust versions and test out-of-sample results.
in short: this is a comprehensive, rule-driven, daily tactical asset-allocation system that cycles through stocks, leveraged nasdaq exposure, hedges, bonds, and cash based on momentum and trend signals across many etfs. it’s designed to test a wide range of regime-switching ideas and pick combinations that historically looked favorable, rather than to provide a single, simple buy/sell rule for a casual investor.
Tickers in this symphonyThis symphony trades 21 assets in total
Ticker
Type
BIL
State Street SPDR Bloomberg 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF
Stocks
BND
Vanguard Total Bond Market
Stocks
BSV
Vanguard Short-Term Bond ETF
Stocks
DBO
Invesco DB Oil Fund
Stocks
IEF
iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF
Stocks
IEI
iShares 3-7 Year Treasury Bond ETF
Stocks
PSQ
ProShares Short QQQ
Stocks
QID
ProShares UltraShort QQQ
Stocks
QLD
ProShares Ultra QQQ
Stocks
QQQ
Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1
Stocks