The rules
Buy at the next minute's open after an hourly close tops the highest high of the last 55 completed sessions, with a stop 2N below the decision close, where N is the 20-session Wilder average of the day's true range. On each session's first bar the stop rises to the higher of 2N below the fill and the lowest low of the last 20 sessions, and the stock is sold if it is already at or below it. Long only, 8.2% of the account per stock. It needs 55 sessions on file, so its first entry can come on December 19, 2023.
- Universe
- The twelve largest holdings of Global X's AI and technology fund (AIQ) on November 5, 2026: MSFT, PLTR, AMZN, TSLA, AAPL, ORCL, NFLX, GOOGL, NVDA, SAP, TSM, CSCO
- Bars
- hourly
- Position size
- 8.2% of equity per stock at entry, never rebalanced
- Rebalance
- Checks every hourly close; the stop moves once a session
Results
| Measure | Orbital test | SPY, same days |
|---|---|---|
| Window | Oct 30, 2023 to Oct 30, 2026 | Oct 30, 2023 to Oct 30, 2026 |
| Total return | +37.95% | +88.60% |
| CAGR | +11.32% | +23.54% |
| Sharpe | 0.63 | 1.22 |
| Discounted Sharpe | −1.05 | — |
| Max drawdown | −10.2% | −18.7% |
| Win rate | 43.8% | — |
| Profit factor | 2.16 | — |
| Trades | 105 | — |
Hypothetical: a backtest with modeled costs, not traded with real money.
Hypothetical growth of $10,000
I12 AI leaders, Turtle System 2 · +38.0% vs SPY +88.6%
Rebuild it in Orbital
Paste this into Orbital Chat. The Strategy Developer builds the workflow and asks before it runs any backtest.
Trade MSFT, PLTR, AMZN, TSLA, AAPL, ORCL, NFLX, GOOGL, NVDA, SAP, TSM and CSCO on 1-hour bars, built as a program that keeps each session's high, low and close. Buy when an hourly close tops the highest high of the last 55 sessions, with a stop 2N below the close, N being the 20-session Wilder average true range; each session raise the stop to the higher of 2N below the fill and the lowest low of the last 20 sessions, and sell at or below it. 8.2% of equity per stock, long only. Backtest from October 30, 2023 to October 30, 2026 with $100,000.
Is it real?
- Strategies tested together
- 15
- Beta to SPY
- 0.38
- Alpha vs SPY
- +0.3% a year
- Costs paid
- $1,123, 3% of the gain before costs
- Data
- 1h decisions on 1-minute bars, 754 sessions
- Fills
- Next open at market, sized at the fill
Read this before you trust it
This basket was picked in November 2026, with hindsight: a fund's biggest holdings today are the companies that grew, which tilts any backtest of them toward beating SPY. It runs beside the same rules on the October 2023 Nasdaq-100, which has no hindsight, to show how much of a result the basket carries. 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. Orbital's minute data starts in September 2023, so the session records start on October 2, 2023: early in the test a record is a short one. The selection expected it to trail SPY: it is flat for the first seven weeks.