On-Balance Volume strategy — on every asset
On-Balance Volume keeps a running total that adds the day's volume when the price closes up and subtracts it when the price closes down, so the line rises when volume is flowing in on up-days ('accumulation') and falls when it flows out on down-days. This rule goes long while a fast average of that line is above a slow average of it (the flow is turning up) and steps aside when it turns down - effectively a moving-average crossover of the volume-flow line, a cousin of the Moving Average Crossover already in this library. It is a trend/momentum rule that lags turns and whipsaws in sideways markets. The running total has no natural zero - its starting point is arbitrary - so only the crossing of its own averages is traded, never its absolute level, and we deliberately do not trade OBV-versus-price 'divergence', which is a subjective, non-mechanical read. Volume itself can be noisy or patchy: on a thin or volume-less feed the line carries little information.
Most of these did not beat buy & hold — but a real few did, and finding out which is the whole point. This one strategy was tested on 47 different assets. With that many attempts, some will beat buy & hold by chance alone — which is why these are listed neutrally, not ranked by which ones came out ahead. To see whether any single result survives scrutiny, run the out-of-sample, walk-forward and multiple-testing checks on its backtest.
Of the 36 with enough data to judge, 9 beat buy & hold · 11 didn't have enough data to judge yet. Results are simulated backtests over the last ~5 years (less for younger assets), shown whole — losses included — not live or future performance. These are famous names that still trade today. Companies that delisted or went bankrupt 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 that has ever traded.
Listed in a neutral catalog order — not ranked by performance. Combinations we can't judge yet — too little data — are grouped separately below.
Here, “beat” means only a higher total return than buy & hold over this one past window — not risk-adjusted, not luck-checked. The out-of-sample, walk-forward and luck checks live on each individual backtest.
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.
HYPOTHETICAL OR SIMULATED PERFORMANCE RESULTS HAVE CERTAIN LIMITATIONS. UNLIKE AN ACTUAL PERFORMANCE RECORD, SIMULATED RESULTS DO NOT REPRESENT ACTUAL TRADING. ALSO, SINCE THE TRADES HAVE NOT BEEN EXECUTED, THE RESULTS MAY HAVE UNDER- OR OVER-COMPENSATED FOR THE IMPACT, IF ANY, OF CERTAIN MARKET FACTORS, SUCH AS LACK OF LIQUIDITY. SIMULATED TRADING PROGRAMS IN GENERAL ARE ALSO SUBJECT TO THE FACT THAT THEY ARE DESIGNED WITH THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT. NO REPRESENTATION IS BEING MADE THAT ANY ACCOUNT WILL OR IS LIKELY TO ACHIEVE PROFITS OR LOSSES SIMILAR TO THOSE SHOWN.
On the 36 assets with enough data to judge, the same rule swung from +86.6 pts vs buy & hold on Netflix to -612 pts on Nvidia. The typical (median) result was -69.4 pts — and even across these runs, the deepest drawdown you'd have sat through was -64% on Coinbase.
That range is the whole point: one rule is not universally good or bad — it depends entirely on the asset, and with 47 tried, some beat by chance. Shown to reveal the variation, not to pick one to trade.
On-Balance Volume on stocks
On-Balance Volume on etfs
On-Balance Volume on commodities
On-Balance Volume on crypto
Backtesting is one stage of preparing to trade, not the finish line. The full discipline runs five: Understand, Test, Stress-test, Forward-test, then Decide — eyes open. Most ideas should die in the first three, and every stage is a place to stop, for free — but the rare idea that survives all five is a real edge you can finally trust with money.
See the five stages →