Gold & SPX Switching Strategy — citation card
Source: Returnstream (returnstream.com). Full article text is third-party copyrighted and is NOT republished here; it is held in the private raw layer for provenance (sha256 above). The site sells the full rule set (ebook) and backtest spreadsheet; only publicly displayed content is recorded, as facts attributed to the source.
The system as stated by the source
- Measure the trailing relative strength of gold vs the S&P 500; hold the asset with stronger trailing momentum.
- Risk-free-rate filter: if neither asset outperforms the 3-month T-bill yield, move to a money-market position (cash leg).
- The site first considers a simpler variant — hold gold when its trailing 1-year trend is positive, cash when negative — and reports it cuts some drawdowns but loses to gold buy-and-hold over the long run, motivating the two-asset switch.
- The site’s formal rule list (“Here are the basic rules of this strategy:”) renders EMPTY in the public page — the full rule set is behind a paid ebook; the 1977+ backtest spreadsheet is also paid. Everything below is what the public page displays.
Numbers as reported by the source (vendor claims, unverified)
Growth-of-$1,000 backtest, 1977–2026 (as displayed on the page):
| GOLD | SPX | SYSTEM | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CAROR | 7.5% | 9.0% | 12.7% |
| Max DD | 62% | 53% | 31% |
Stress windows:
| Period | GOLD | SPX | SYSTEM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dot-com (Mar 2000 – Oct 2002) | 14.5% | -40.9% | 7.2% |
| Subprime (Nov 2007 – Mar 2009) | 17.0% | -46.1% | 5.2% |
- No universe definition, no cost assumptions, no reimplementation disclosed; treat all figures as vendor claims. This is exactly what our replications (gold-spx-switching-replication) exist to test.
Chart inventory (descriptions; images in private store / on the source page)
- spot-price-history.webp — gold spot history; underwater.webp — gold B&H underwater chart; TF-backtest.webp — 1-yr trend gold system vs B&H; system-eq-curve.webp — growth of $1,000 with CAROR/MAX DD legend; stress-eq-curve.webp / stress-perf.webp — stress windows; underwater-2.webp — system vs assets drawdowns 1977+.
Related: gold-spx-switching-strategy · gold-spx-switching-outperforms-both-assets · switching-positive-in-dotcom-subprime · gold-trend-filter-underperforms-bnh · returnstream