Which Way Is Up? Trading 1.3
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, regime-based, momentum-driven strategy that rotates into one levered ETF pick per regime (volatility, aggressive long, defensives, or bottom-fishing) using RSI momentum rankings and a trend filter (200-day MA).
- The system runs daily and looks back about 14 days to rank candidate ETFs by momentum (using RSI).
- It first checks a market trend filter: is the broad market (SPY) above its 200-day moving average? This helps decide which regime bucket to consider.
- If the market is in the uptrend, it leans into the 'Let's Volatile' bucket and selects the single volatility-oriented pair (VIXM and UVXY) with the weakest/strongest momentum signal according to RSI, effectively aiming to profit from rising volatility when conditions permit.
- If not, it travels through other buckets in a fixed order: 'Up We Go - To The Top!' (levered long bets on SPXL, TQQQ, SOXL), 'Defensives To The Upside!' (defensive-like plays such as consumer staples proxies and other defensive or balanced exposures), and 'From the Bottom - Up We Go!' (bottom-fishing style picks like SPXL and TQQQ when the market breadth shows a rebound potential).
- Within each bucket, the strategy chooses one asset (or a small set) based on RSI screens and then allocates to it. Some branches also compare current price to a moving-average threshold or to other benchmarks (e.g., SPY vs SPY 200-day MA, SPY RSI thresholds) to refine the regime that’s active.
- Rebalance occurs daily, and the weights shown (e.g., 90/100 or 100/100) indicate emphasis on the chosen regime’s assets rather than spreading evenly across a broad basket.
- The result is a single-position-per-regime approach that aims to ride momentum in the chosen ETF while staying sensitive to market regime shifts and volatility spikes.
Out-of-sample, regime-rotating momentum shows stronger risk-adjusted gains vs SPY: ~113% annualized vs ~19%, Sharpe ~1.34 vs ~1.12, Calmar ~1.63. Daily regime picks target bigger upside with disciplined risk; drawdowns can be larger.
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Invest in this strategy
OOS Start Date
Mar 13, 2024
Trading Setting
Daily
Type
Stocks
Category
Tactical asset allocation, regime rotation, momentum-based stock/etf picking, leveraged etf trading, volatility trading
Tickers in this symphonyThis symphony trades 21 assets in total
Ticker
Type
BND
Vanguard Total Bond Market
Stocks
DRN
Direxion Daily Real Estate Bull 3X ETF
Stocks
DWSH
AdvisorShares Dorsey Wright Short ETF
Stocks
PSR
Invesco Active U.S. Real Estate Fund
Stocks
SOXL
Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X ETF
Stocks
SPXL
Direxion Daily S&P 500 Bull 3x ETF
Stocks
SPXS
Direxion Daily S&P 500 Bear 3x ETF
Stocks
SPY
State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust
Stocks
SQQQ
ProShares UltraPro Short QQQ
Stocks
SSO
ProShares Ultra S&P500
Stocks