The rules
At the close of each month's first trading day, sell every holding at the next open. At that next day's close, rank the ten stocks by their return over the last 126 trading days, about six months, and buy the best three at the following open, 33% of the account each, skipping any whose return is not above zero. Money not in a stock stays in cash.
- Universe
- The ten largest holdings of First Trust's cybersecurity fund (CIBR) on November 5, 2026: CRWD, CSCO, PANW, AVGO, FTNT, ZS, OKTA, NET, ACN, FFIV
- Bars
- daily
- Position size
- 33% of equity in each of up to three stocks
- Rebalance
- Monthly
Results
| Measure | Orbital test | SPY, same days |
|---|---|---|
| Window | Nov 21, 2016 to Oct 30, 2026 | Nov 21, 2016 to Oct 30, 2026 |
| Total return | +2071.23% | +302.23% |
| CAGR | +36.30% | +15.03% |
| Sharpe | 0.95 | 0.63 |
| Discounted Sharpe | 0.48 | — |
| Max drawdown | −51.6% | −33.7% |
| Win rate | 61.8% | — |
| Profit factor | 1.85 | — |
| Trades | 335 | — |
Hypothetical: a backtest with modeled costs, not traded with real money.
Hypothetical growth of $10,000
T15 Cybersecurity leaders, monthly top three · +2071.2% vs SPY +302.2%
Rebuild it in Orbital
Paste this into Orbital Chat. The Strategy Developer builds the workflow and asks before it runs any backtest.
Trade CRWD, CSCO, PANW, AVGO, FTNT, ZS, OKTA, NET, ACN and FFIV on daily bars, built as a program. On the first trading day of each month, sell every holding. On the next trading day, score each stock by its return over the last 126 trading days and buy those scoring above zero, 33% of equity each, keeping the three highest scores with at most three positions. Backtest from November 21, 2016 to October 30, 2026 with $100,000.
Is it real?
- Strategies tested together
- 16
- Beta to SPY
- 0.94
- Alpha vs SPY
- +22.0% a year
- Costs paid
- $82,404, 4% of the gain before costs
- Data
- Daily bars, 2,499 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. CIBR's top ten include Broadcom, Cisco and Accenture alongside the security companies. Okta (April 2017), Zscaler (March 2018), CrowdStrike (June 2019) and Cloudflare (September 2019) listed during the test and join once they have enough history of their own: at once for holding, after 126 sessions for the monthly rule and after 200 for the other two. These rules were fixed on November 8, 2026, before any of them was run, and each is published whatever it showed. Each is a textbook setting, not tuned to these stocks.