Strategy Research

Analytics of Trading and Investment Strategies

Find out which trading strategies actually work before you risk a cent. 42 popular strategies, put to the test and ranked so the winners stand out at a glance.

How Scoring Works

Every strategy is run on every symbol × timeframe cell, on both real and resampled price history. Each cell gets five 0–100 sub-scores, blended into one composite score by the weights below. A strategy's total score (shown next to its name) is the average of its composite score across all cells, then averaged again across the real and resampled datasets.

Score Calculation What it shows
Beats Hold Sbeats_hold = clamp0100(50 + 25 log2EnetEhold) Compares final net equity to what simply holding the asset would have returned over the same window. 50 is break-even; every doubling versus buy-and-hold adds 25 points. Whether the rule was worth running at all. A rule that cannot beat owning the asset over the same window is an expensive way to own the asset.
Risk Adjusted Srisk = clamp0100(55 · Sharpe + 5) A linear read on the rolling annualized Sharpe ratio at the last trade — 0 Sharpe scores 5, roughly 1.7 Sharpe maxes out the scale. What the return cost in volatility, which is what separates a steady rule from a lucky one. It carries the most weight of the five.
Profitability Sprofit = clamp0100(20 log2EnetE0) How many times the starting cash multiplied, on a log scale — each doubling of capital is worth 20 points. How far the account actually grew, with no question of how it got there — the plain result a reader came for.
Win Rate Swin = clamp0100(2.5 (W% − 20)) The share of trades that closed profitable, rescaled so a 20% win rate scores 0 and a 60% win rate maxes out the scale. How often the rule was right. On its own it says little, since one large loss outweighs many small wins, which is why it is worth a tenth.
Fee Efficiency Sfee = clamp0100(Enet/Egross − 0.40.6 × 100) The share of the fee-free (gross) result that survives after fees — 60% survival scores 0, keeping the full gross result scores 100. How much of the result survives the exchange. This is where a rule that changes its mind often loses what it made.
Composite Composite = 0.25 Sbeats_hold + 0.35 Srisk + 0.20 Sprofit + 0.10 Swin + 0.10 Sfee The five sub-scores blended by weight into one 0–100 number per symbol × timeframe cell — risk-adjusted return and beating a hold carry the most weight. The number every ranking on this site is sorted by, and the one shown beside a strategy's name.

Strategies

Rank Strategy Family Score
01 WMA 20 50 Crossover Trend 64
02 Golden Cross 50 200 Trend 62
03 Faber Timing Model Trend 60
04 WMA 20 50 200 Stack Trend 60
05 WMA 20 200 Crossover Trend 58
06 Turtle Breakout 55 20 Breakout 56
07 WMA 13 21 34 Stack Trend 56
08 Ichimoku Cloud Breakout Trend 55
09 Aroon Crossover Trend 54
10 Cci Trend Momentum 54
11 Donchian Breakout Breakout 54
12 WMA 7 20 50 Stack Trend 54
13 WMA 20 50 ATR Trailing Stop Trend 52
14 Time Series Momentum Momentum 51
15 Skip Month Momentum Momentum 50
16 Dual Momentum 90 252 Momentum 48
17 Keltner Channel Breakout Breakout 48
18 Time Series Momentum 252 Momentum 48
19 Turtle Breakout Breakout 47
20 High Watermark Momentum Momentum 43
21 Adx Dmi Trend Trend 42
22 WMA 20 50 Proximity Crossover Trend 41
23 MACD Signal Crossover Trend 40
24 WMA 50 Price Cross Trend 40
25 Double 7 Mean reversion 38
26 Connors RSI 2 Mean reversion 36
27 Vwap Cross Trend 36
28 Parabolic Sar Trend 34
29 Obv Trend Momentum 32
30 Price WMA 20 Crossover Trend 32
31 RSI Oversold Overbought Mean reversion 30
32 Mfi Reversal Mean reversion 28
33 RSI WMA Crossover Trend 28
34 Bollinger Band To Band Mean reversion 26
35 Momentum WMA Crossover Momentum 26
36 Stochastic Oscillator Mean reversion 26
37 Bollinger Mean Reversion Mean reversion 25
38 Williams R Mean reversion 23
39 Support Resistance Bounce Mean reversion 22
40 Bollinger Squeeze Breakout Breakout 20
41 WMA 20 50 200 Short Stack Trend 14
42 WMA 20 50 Short Crossover Trend 12

Score By Category, Timeframe, Symbol And Strategy

Score By Category

Score By Timeframe

Score By Symbol

Score By Strategy

Best Strategy Per Symbol And Timeframe

The Markets

Every score above is earned on the same markets. Asset Characteristics measures those markets themselves rather than the rules run on them: what each one returned, how roughly and how evenly it moved, how much of its life it spent going nowhere, and how closely it tracks the rest.