Does the Time-Series Momentum strategy beat buy & hold on UnitedHealth Group? (UNH · backtested honestly)
Time-series (absolute) momentum measures the asset against itself, not a ranking: it compares the asset's own trailing 12-month return (skipping the last ~month) to its own history.
Over this period, Time-Series Momentum on UnitedHealth Group returned -41.9%, while simply buying and holding returned +1.8% — it lagged buy & hold by 43.7 points, with a worst drawdown of -53.8%. It traded 21 times and sat in cash about 72% of the time. It's a mechanism you test — not a recommendation.
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 UnitedHealth Group, 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 Time-Series Momentum rules on UnitedHealth Group 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, protective stops and targets at their 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.
21 trades total — 10 winners, 11 losers (48% won). Below is one of each, not a scoreboard. One position is still open at the window end — its result is unrealized and is counted in the totals above at its current mark, not shown as a card below.
- Entry. A long entry fired; filled at the next open on 2024-05-28 at $506.65 — never the signal bar's own close.
- Held. 2 daily bars.
- Exit. Exited on 2024-05-30 at $482.32 (the exit rule fired (filled at the next open)).
- Result. -4.90% after costs.
The worst single trade in this whole test reached -24.33%.
- Entry. A long entry fired; filled at the next open on 2025-03-21 at $511.68 — never the signal bar's own close.
- Held. 1 daily bars.
- Exit. Exited on 2025-03-24 at $515.08 (the exit rule fired (filled at the next open)).
- Result. +0.56% 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/unitedhealth-momentum-backtest" width="360" height="340" style="border:0;border-radius:12px;max-width:100%" loading="lazy" title="Does the Time-Series Momentum strategy beat buy & hold on UnitedHealth Group?"></iframe>- • The strategy line is Time-Series Momentum on UnitedHealth Group; the dashed line is simply buying and holding UNH. 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. I 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 →