Nasdaq-100 (Oct 2023), 20-day close hold

The rules

Once a session, at 15:58 (12:58 on a half day), buy a stock whose price is above its 20-day average, that price and the previous 19 official closes, and sell one that has fallen below it; orders fill at 15:59 or the closing print. It decides first on November 27, 2023, once 19 closes are on file. 1% of the account per stock.

Universe

The 93 Nasdaq-100 members on October 27, 2023, the last session before the test, that still traded under their tickers on October 30, 2026: AAPL, ABNB, ADBE, ADI, ADP, ADSK, AEP, ALGN, AMAT, AMD, AMGN, AMZN, ASML, AVGO, BIIB, BKNG, BKR, CDNS, CEG, CHTR, CMCSA, COST, CPRT, CRWD, CSCO, CSGP, CSX, CTAS, CTSH, DDOG, DLTR, DXCM, EBAY, ENPH, EXC, FANG, FAST, FTNT, GEHC, GFS, GILD, GOOGL, HON, IDXX, ILMN, INTC, INTU, ISRG, JD, KDP, KHC, KLAC, LCID, LRCX, LULU, MAR, MCHP, MDLZ, MELI, META, MNST, MRNA, MRVL, MSFT, MU, NFLX, NVDA, NXPI, ODFL, ON, ORLY, PANW, PAYX, PCAR, PDD, PEP, PYPL, QCOM, REGN, ROST, SBUX, SNPS, TEAM, TMUS, TSLA, TTD, TXN, VRSK, VRTX, WDAY, XEL, ZM, ZS

Bars

1-minute

Position size

1% of equity per stock at entry, never rebalanced

Rebalance

Once a session, at 15:58

Results

Hypothetical: a backtest with modeled costs, not traded with real money.

Hypothetical growth of $10,000

Rebuild it in Orbital

Paste this into Orbital Chat. The Strategy Developer builds the workflow and asks before it runs any backtest.

Trade AAPL, ABNB, ADBE, ADI, ADP, ADSK, AEP, ALGN, AMAT, AMD, AMGN, AMZN, ASML, AVGO, BIIB, BKNG, BKR, CDNS, CEG, CHTR, CMCSA, COST, CPRT, CRWD, CSCO, CSGP, CSX, CTAS, CTSH, DDOG, DLTR, DXCM, EBAY, ENPH, EXC, FANG, FAST, FTNT, GEHC, GFS, GILD, GOOGL, HON, IDXX, ILMN, INTC, INTU, ISRG, JD, KDP, KHC, KLAC, LCID, LRCX, LULU, MAR, MCHP, MDLZ, MELI, META, MNST, MRNA, MRVL, MSFT, MU, NFLX, NVDA, NXPI, ODFL, ON, ORLY, PANW, PAYX, PCAR, PDD, PEP, PYPL, QCOM, REGN, ROST, SBUX, SNPS, TEAM, TMUS, TSLA, TTD, TXN, VRSK, VRTX, WDAY, XEL, ZM and ZS on 1-minute bars, built as a program. Once a session at 15:58 (12:58 on a half day), compare the price with the average of it and the previous 19 official closes: buy if above, sell a holding if below. 1% of equity per stock, long only. Backtest from October 30, 2023 to October 30, 2026 with $1,000,000.

Is it real?

Strategies tested together

15

Beta to SPY

0.38

Alpha vs SPY

−4.7% a year

Costs paid

$43,332, 18% of the gain before costs

Data

1m decisions on 1-minute bars, 754 sessions

Fills

Next open at market, sized at the fill

Read this before you trust it

This basket uses no hindsight: the Nasdaq-100 as it stood the day before the test began, from its published membership. Alphabet is held once, as GOOGL, and seven members are out because they stopped trading here before the test ended: SGEN, SIRI, ANSS, WBA, AZN, EA and WBD. Its runs start with $1,000,000 so that a 1% share buys whole shares of the dearest members; at $100,000 a stock above $1,000 could never be bought. Picked on November 8, 2026 by a rule written before any run: published evidence, yearly costs at most a quarter of the published gross return, buildable in Orbital, and the source's own parameters. Every rule is published whatever it shows. Orbital's engine cannot rank entries for a program that decides more often than daily, so instead of the source's position cap each stock gets an equal share and every signal is taken. The selection expected it to trail SPY: it misses the first four weeks.