Question
Returnstream’s chart shows a 1-yr gold trend filter converging with gold buy-and-hold by ~2023 — did gold’s 2024–26 rally flip the comparison, making the vendor’s own chart stale the day it was published?
Why it matters
This claim is the most generalizable one in the wiki: whipsaw cost of a 12-month filter on a long-uptrend asset can exceed its crash-avoidance benefit (whipsaw is bounded by volatility; trend-following’s crash-payoff scales with trend persistence; an asset that mean-chops for 20 years then compounds — stocks 1982–2026, gold 2001–2026 — wins the trend-following game while chop dominates). If the reversal is just gold’s recent run, the lesson needs a bigger sample: rerun the same trend-filter-vs-B&H test on SPX and on a third asset (BTC if we allow it, or TLT/bonds since 2000). A cross-asset pattern here is a wiki-grade concept page; a gold-only result is an artifact.
First cheap check
Gold trend filter vs B&H, 1971→present, monthly, LBMA/FRED data — this is already the baseline leg of gold-spx-switching-replication. Then SPX 1950→present as the out-of-sample.
Status notes
- 2026-10-08: opened. Note the irony: the source that admits this is a vendor marketing switching — one honest chart worth verifying on its own.