Claim
Holding gold only when its trailing 1-year trend is positive (else cash) “helps mitigate some drawdowns … but falls short of beating the simple buy-and-hold returns in the long run” — per returnstream’s chart (~1975–2023), in gold-spx-switching-strategy.
- Interesting because it inverts the usual trend-following pitch: on a single long-uptrend asset with violent mean-chop (gold 1980–2000), the whipsaw cost of a 12-month filter can exceed its crash-avoidance benefit.
- Chart-only claim (no stats table in article); curves converge by 2023 — sensitive to the chosen end date and to gold’s post-2024 rally.
- Test: cheap to check in gold-spx-switching-replication as the baseline leg (gold-only trend vs gold B&H, 1971+ using London Fix / spot).