Does the ADX / DMI Trend strategy beat buy & hold on Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ)? (QQQ · backtested honestly)
The Directional Movement system splits into +DI and -DI (which side leads) and ADX (how much of a trend is present, 0-100).
Over this period, ADX / DMI Trend on Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ) returned +25.5%, while simply buying and holding returned +92.9% — it lagged buy & hold by 67.5 points, with a worst drawdown of -17.1%. It traded 17 times and sat in cash about 77% of the time. It's a mechanism you test.
It lagged buy & hold over this window — that's a result, and a backtest you can kill for free just did its job. Re-tuning this same idea until it looks better only adds another shot at looking good by luck, so the honest next move is a fresh one: test a different strategy on Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ), or build your own — free. Most ideas die cheaply right here, and that's exactly how the rare one that holds up gets found.
Or stop here — walking away from an idea that didn't beat simply holding is a result, not a failure.
Run it yourself
Change the parameters and the window, then re-run — no account needed.
Change the rules? Open the ADX / DMI Trend rules on Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ) in the no-code builder — the same rules tested here — and make them your own.
Open in the builder →Two real trades from this backtest
Shown at the modeled fills — entries at the next open; a stop at its level, or at that day's open if the day opened past it; a target at its level; costs on. A single trade is never a signal and says nothing about the next one — not the best or worst, a middling winner and a middling loser among the completed trades.
17 trades total — 6 winners, 11 losers (35% won). Below is one of each, not a scoreboard.
- Entry. A long entry fired; filled at the next open on 2026-06-16 at $742.25 — never the signal bar's own close.
- Held. 2 daily bars.
- Exit. Exited on 2026-06-18 at $737.20 (the exit rule fired (filled at the next open)).
- Result. -0.78% after costs.
The worst single trade in this whole test reached -6.25%.
- Entry. A long entry fired; filled at the next open on 2023-11-17 at $385.21 — never the signal bar's own close.
- Held. 31 daily bars.
- Exit. Exited on 2024-01-04 at $396.44 (the exit rule fired (filled at the next open)).
- Result. +2.82% after costs.
Trading costs + slippage (0.10%) are already deducted from every figure above. One trade is never the edge — it's the whole distribution (the win rate, the losers, the reality-check) that matters; this just makes the mechanics concrete. It describes the past; it is not a prediction.
A live badge that re-runs itself and links back here. Free to embed on any blog, newsletter or forum — it shows the honest result, beat or lagged.
<iframe src="https://stratsemble.com/embed/nasdaq-etf-adx-backtest" width="360" height="340" style="border:0;border-radius:12px;max-width:100%" loading="lazy" title="Does the ADX / DMI Trend strategy beat buy & hold on Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ)?"></iframe>See which strategies actually beat buy & hold — and which only look like they do.
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- Prove any strategy — free
- See if it's an edge, or just luck
- Read today's names that cleared every check
Put it to the proof the honest way — real costs, every loss, measured against simply holding. Free, no sign-up.
Prove it →Paste their exact claim and watch the honest engine put it to the test — free, losses and all.
Test the claim →Check a strategy against the real drawdown and profit-target rules of a prop-firm evaluation.
Put it through →an honest backtest — real costs on, measured against simply buying & holding
- • The strategy line is ADX / DMI Trend on Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ); the dashed line is simply buying and holding QQQ. Beating the dashed line is the whole point — many strategies don't.
- • Max drawdown is the worst peak-to-trough fall you'd have sat through. A higher return with a much deeper drawdown is not obviously better.
- • Every fill assumes next-open execution with costs & slippage on — no acting on prices you couldn't have known.
- • A small number of trades means a small sample. Treat a great-looking result on a handful of trades with suspicion.
This is a hypothetical backtest of a well-known mechanism on past data. It is not advice, not a prediction, and not a claim that the strategy works. We hold no funds and place no orders. The value here is the ability to test an idea honestly — see where it would have helped, and where it would have hurt — before you ever risk real money on your own broker.
How this is computed → · who's behind it · where a backtest fits
See what actually beats buy & hold — most don't, here are the rare few that do →