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. 8.2% of the account per stock.
- 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
- 1-minute
- Position size
- 8.2% of equity per stock at entry, never rebalanced
- Rebalance
- Once a session, at 15:58
Results
| Measure | Orbital test | SPY, same days |
|---|---|---|
| Window | Oct 30, 2023 to Oct 30, 2026 | Oct 30, 2023 to Oct 30, 2026 |
| Total return | +63.13% | +88.60% |
| CAGR | +17.71% | +23.54% |
| Sharpe | 0.92 | 1.22 |
| Discounted Sharpe | −0.76 | — |
| Max drawdown | −16.6% | −18.7% |
| Win rate | 30.3% | — |
| Profit factor | 1.60 | — |
| Trades | 515 | — |
Hypothetical: a backtest with modeled costs, not traded with real money.
Hypothetical growth of $10,000
I15 AI leaders, 20-day close hold · +63.1% 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-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. 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
- 0.58
- Alpha vs SPY
- +2.7% a year
- Costs paid
- $5,990, 9% 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 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. The selection expected it to trail SPY: it misses the first four weeks.