In hypothetical 5-year backtests to Oct 2026, after costs, we ran 2548 and judged 2407 of them — 29% beat buy & hold
A real minority of strategies genuinely does beat buy & hold — and the single most useful thing for finding one is knowing the odds you're up against. So we ran every well-known strategy on every famous asset the same honest way — fees and slippage on, never acting on a price the rule couldn't have known, always measured against simply buying and holding — to get that number honestly. It's your starting line: know the base rate, and a good-looking backtest stops fooling you — you know to make it prove itself before you trust it.
What this number means for your idea
Pick a famous strategy and a famous asset at random and the honest odds are that the combination lags buy & hold — most do. That's your starting prior: a new idea is more likely to underperform holding than to beat it, before you've looked at anything specific. It doesn't mean nothing works — a real minority genuinely beats. It means the burden of proof is on the strategy, and “it looked good in a backtest” is not that proof (a good-looking backtest is often just luck).
These are famous names that still trade today. Names that delisted, went bankrupt or were wound down aren't in the set (survivorship bias) — and that history isn't available from the free public data this tool runs on — so this rate isn't a representative base rate for every stock or ETF that has ever traded.
Why most of them lag
- • Buy & hold is a strong benchmark. It has zero trading costs, stays fully invested, and collects dividends. A rule that steps in and out has to overcome all of that friction just to draw level.
- • Costs are charged here. Fees and slippage on every fill quietly turn many “profitable” rules negative — the friction was always real; most backtests just hide it.
- • The winners often won for an unflattering reason. A strategy most often beats buy & hold on an asset that fell over the window — sidestepping the decline is where the timing added value. That's a statement about the asset's decline as much as the strategy's skill.
The whole scoreboard is public — every winner and every loser, no cherry-picking. Read it, then run your own idea and see honestly which side of the line it lands on.
Figures are computed live from simulated backtests over roughly the last five years and update as new bars close. Hypothetical / simulated results — past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. This is an educational, analytical tool, not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. You make all decisions and execute on your own broker.