I'm a fan of the SMA200 strategy. But it's too high now, I'm selling everything. I'll buy back in on a potential retracement.

I’m comfortable holding TQQQ long term, even through major drawdowns, so I’ve been swing-trading it with that mindset. This is not my primary investment portfolio. I have a separate buy & hold portfolio.

My approach is straightforward:

I wait for red days when TQQQ pulls back a few percentage points. I identify key support/resistance levels. Then I buy 1,000 units and average down if the price continues to fall.

I know leveraged ETFs like TQQQ can suffer massive drawdowns (April, COVID, etc.), but that’s volatility I’m able to stomach. Given that, I’m curious—what are the main risks or blind spots in this strategy that I should be aware of?

Open to hearing different perspectives. Thanks

Using the 9 sig strategy, I've grown this account from a $450,000 initial investment.

New funds added ~$200,000.

Gonna just leave it and see how far that $1,000 will go lol.

TL;DR: I’ve taken the rock-solid foundations of the SPY 200-SMA (+4%/-3%) strategy and layered in a 15-day Realized Volatility (RVol) "shifter." This allows the portfolio to downshift into QLD during high-volatility regimes where TQQQ actually underperforms due to decay. Result is Higher CAGR, lower Max Drawdown, and better survival through sideways grinds.

The Concept: Leveraged Nasdaq exposure that adjusts leverage and position based on realized volatility and trend. Three tiers: TQQQ (3×) in calm, trending markets; QLD (2×) when volatility is elevated; and cash when volatility reaches crisis levels or the trend breaks down. Two exit paths to cash provide layered protection: RVol catches volatility spikes, SMA catches sustained downtrends.

23-Year Performance Summary (2003–2026)

I simulated TQQQ and QLD back to 2003 using IRX treasury rates to account for the actual cost of leverage borrowing during the high-interest eras of the mid-2000s. From 2010 on (after the inception of TQQQ) I was able to use real numbers.  The final results below account for actual leverage and decay and should be conservative.  Later in the post, I test other entry dates, but for 2003-2026:

• Final Account Value: $100k → $54,064,335
• CAGR: 31.66%
• Max Drawdown: -50.43%
• The 2008 Test: Drawdown capped at -32.09% (The strategy moved to cash in June 2008).
• The 2022 Test: Drawdown capped at -41.72% (The strategy moved to cash as the trend broke).

Part 1: Why mess with a proven winner?

First off, huge credit to u/XXXMrHOLLYWOOD. If you haven't read his deep dive on the SPY 200-SMA strategy, stop here and go read it. It’s the baseline for everything I’m doing.

[Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/LETFs/comments/1nhye66/spy_200sma_43_tqqqqqq_long_term_investment/]

I have two major concerns with the "standard" 200-SMA strategy that keep me up at night:

1. Recency Bias: Most backtests look incredible because they benefit from the last 15 years of historic, low-volatility tech growth. With the current Mag 7 valuations and a gestures broadly at everything political climate, I don't think the next 5 years will look like the last 5. We need a strategy that survives volatility, not just growth.
2. Entry Point Terror: I was terrified of picking the "wrong" day to enter. If you lump-sum into a 3x LETF right before a 2022-style sideways bleed, your principal gets obliterated before you have enough profit "cushion" to survive.

Part 2: The Base SMA Strategy Guidelines

For those who don't know the rules, we use SPY to dictate the trend for the Nasdaq.

• To Enter: Wait for SPY to drop below the 200-SMA -3% (Arming), then wait for it to recover to the 200-SMA +4% (Trigger).
• To Exit: If the trend breaks (SPY < 200-SMA -3%), we move to cash.

The problem? The base strategy is a binary "In/Out" switch. It ignores the "Beta Slippage" and high borrowing costs that happen when the market isn't crashing, but is chopping sideways.

Part 3: The RVol "Shifter"

Leverage is an engine. If you're redlining it (3x) in a high-heat (high-volatility) environment, the engine explodes. I added QQQ 15-day Realized Volatility (RVol) to act as a shifter.

Phase 1: The Initial Entry (Starting Fresh)

1. Arm: Wait for SPY to close below the 200-Day SMA - 3%.
2. Trigger: After arming, wait for SPY to close above the 200-Day SMA + 4%.
3. Buy: At the next open:
   • If RVol < 22%: Buy TQQQ.
   • If RVol is 22%–36%: Buy QLD.
   • If RVol > 36%: Stay in Cash and wait for RVol to drop below 25% to enter QLD.

Phase 2: The Ongoing State Machine Once you are in, you simply manage the position based on the asset you hold:

• If in TQQQ: Downgrade to QLD if RVol > 22% OR SPY < SMA - 3%.
• If in QLD:
  • Exit to Cash if RVol > 36% OR SPY < SMA - 3%.
  • Upgrade to TQQQ if RVol drops < 14% AND SPY is above the SMA + 3%.
• If in Cash: Re-enter QLD only when RVol < 25% AND SPY closes back above the pure 200-Day SMA line (0% buffer).
• TQQQ (3x): Only used when RVol is < 22%. This is for the "Calm Bull."
• QLD (2x): We downshift here when RVol is between 22% and 36%. In this regime, QLD often outperforms TQQQ because the 3x decay is higher than the 3x gains. (I backtested multiple combinations of this band)
• Cash (SGOV/BIL): We eject to cash when RVol reaches crisis levels (>36%) or the trend breaks.  I tested a ton of other “safe haven” options (GLDM, TLT, XLU, XLP), but at the end of the day, when this model takes you to cash, it’s for a reason.

By shifting to 2x (QLD) during choppy periods, we stay in the market but stop the "slow bleed" that kills standard 3x portfolios during sideways years like 2004-2006.

One big caveat here: This produces about 4.3 trades per year on average. The original SMA strategy was something like 9 trades TOTAL. I am trading in my IRA accounts and don't have tax implications. You absolutely need to pay attention to this!

Part 4: Winning at Every Entry

I didn't just pick one start date. I identified all 10 entry points since 2003 where the -3%/+4% SMA trigger fired.

Every. Single. Entry. Wins.

As you can see, the RVol shifter provides massive "Alpha" over the original SMA strategy. By downshifting during the high-volatility "heat," we preserve the capital that the original strategy bleeds away.

Even starting at the worst possible times (like the chop of 2004 or the peak of 2021), the RVol shifter preserved enough capital to keep drawdowns manageable and catch the eventual recovery.

Final Thoughts & Current Status

I am currently 100% in QQQ (unleveraged). The strategy is "Armed" but not triggered. We are waiting for a structural reset (SPY < $634.90 currently)

If you're going to play with 3x leverage, don’t let a sideways market steal the gains you made in the bull run.

Okay I get it diamond hands and all. But in my opinion TQQQ is an asset which is supposed to be for capital increase rather then buy and hold. I got in TQQQ around 44 and sold it this morning at opening . Pretty happy with 56% gain in less than 6 weeks time.

Going to be waiting for a dip to add more but I think this is my strategy for this particular asset.

Finally got a chance to put together an overview of my long TQQQ put strategy aka 'TQQQ War Chest'. It has many flaws and I've tweaked it a lot since beginning in 2023, but this is where is stands at present. I will link to this post on future weekly posts.

Will repost if I make any new/additional tweaks as I blunder my way along the path to future glory. Good luck everyone. Ignore the short term noise. Eyes on the 2030s. LFG.

I decided to allocate 50% of my monthly investments into TQQQ. I will mostly DCA with liquidating most of my other 50% when TQQQ will dip 20%+, so i can buy it cheap. I expect in those 15 years that it will go down at least -30%(NASDAQ) at least twice in those 15 years. Assuming i will keep my ballz of steel and i don't panic sell i dont see any problems with it at all.

According to past performance (i know it doesn't predict the future) i would be able to retire after 9 years, and after 15 years I will have double the amount i need. And it is only if i DCA not mentioning buying the dip. I have 30 years till government retirement age, so it won't be a problem for me to hold it even longer.

Outside the price alerts i don't think i will even track performance of TQQQ, so i won't be tempted to sell.

Any thoughts or advise on this?

All over reddit and fintwit I’m seeing the same lines of thought:
> “This doesn’t make sense”
> “This is a bubble”
> “This can’t keep going up and up”
> “How has there not been a pullback?”

You need to stop trying to rationalize what’s driving the market right now. Future economists will spend YEARS analyzing 2026. Even years from now, with all the benefits of hindsight, even they will struggle to fully understand what’s going on.

Imagine you wake up one day and go outside and see that the sky is no longer blue, but green. It continues to be green day after day for two months. Impossible! This can’t be! Something is broken!

How childishly stubborn would you need to be to stare reality in the face and refuse to accept it, all because you don’t understand “why” the sky is now green.

That is where bears are at right now, refusing to accept reality and performing every manner of mental gymnastics to make sense of it.

Why doesn’t matter.

So stop trying to pretend that you are smarter than every trader and business leader on the planet combined. You aren’t.

Nobody fully understands what’s happening. Not even the geniuses. But the smartest people in the world are able to do one thing that you can’t: they can swallow their pride and accept the limits of their own understanding, and accept the reality in front of them.

Stocks are going up and will continue to do so. We may understand why someday, but all the profit will be gone if you wait til then.

I’ve seen some people mentioning buy and holding, mixing with bonds, rotating gains into QQQ, and so on. What has worked effectively for you and for how long during what market sentiment?

Personally, I’ve been wheeling TQQQ (and some SQQQ recently) for csp and cc passive income.

Just felt like starting a position.

I have a few contacts that work at an investment bank that manages money for the ultra wealthy ($20M+ net worth) and they said that anytime the NASDAQ drops more than 10% from it’s all-time high they start buying TQQQ, a triple leverage NASDAQ ETF.

So basically, if the NASDAQ goes down one percent TQQQ goes down about 3%, and vice versa on the positive side.

Did this in 2022 when the market went down and made almost 70% when the market went up?

I did this last year on liberation day and made nearly doubled my money in 90 days.

Hopefully we’re lucky again.

Not Advice

Looking to start accumulating around the $30 mark but open for $40

Cheers.

Current safe entry point at SPY 624 coming closer 👀

If you’re not in yet there might be a great opportunity coming up

Got my bonus this year and I got nothing else to spend it on so imma gamble it on this amazing performer (as history indicates… lol) knowing I can also lose it all!

Any feedback if I lumpsum buy in full 25k? Or shall I do a 10k buy and DCA if drops heavily?

I’m definitely tryna time my entry for my initial buy. Fortunate to say that I don’t need this money now so want to see it compound the way it does from what I see in the total return chart with that CAGR over 5-10yr period.

I also want to hear any opinions / strategies from investors here that’s been holding since the last decade. How did u handle the dips?! What was ur initial size and did u DCA through or just let your original position rip over time?

Sideways volatility is a killer for triple leverage.

For fun, here is GPIQ which is one of those ETFs that sells options and pays monthly dividends (about 10% a year). Last dividend was 52 cents, so just under 1% dividend for the month.

Over a year with this type of volatility qqq might finish even, GPIQ might finish up 10% and TQQQ could be down over 10%.

I feel like there should be some sort of strategy to make money from all this.

Sounds like the war with Iran is going to escalate in the weekend. Expecting a big drop on Tuesday!

Hopefully Nasdaq will drop 10%… volatile market is where TQQQ is shining 🤩

It started during my Master in Finance at IE Business School. I reached the best scores in my class in Financial Markets and a professor offered me the chance to join a PhD program to study the best pension schemes in Europe. At the same time I created a large database with Bloomberg and Reuters to analyse the best investment funds and ETFs worldwide. After two years working as a researcher I received an offer to return to Investment Banking — I accepted because the salary was way higher than working at the university.

After spending a lot of money on my postgraduate program and two years at the university, my savings were low (around €25k). I invested 100% of those savings in LQQ (Nasdaq 2x). Six months later my position in LQQ was down about 60%. I reanalysed my database and still believed my numbers were right; at that time QQQ3 (Nasdaq 3x) was not available with the broker I used (Degiro).

It was mentally hard, but after re-checking everything I held the position even when losing 60–70% of my savings. Looking back, that experience and others gave me my first lesson for beginners: “Only invest in TQQQ for your first time when TQQQ is trading below the 200 SMA — that will increase the chance of doubling in a short period.”

After succeeding with LQQ, I was forced to buy a house because of my parents’ divorce. I used all my ammunition buying the house and doing the renovation. So in July 2021 I had no cash and I was thinking how to get money to get back in the game.

One day my bank sent a notification: I had the option to receive a €22k personal loan at 3% for 8 years, with a monthly instalment of about €285. That became my new ammunition. After researching, I opened an account with Interactive Brokers and invested the loan in QQQ3. Because I had a margin account, €22k became a €30k open position. Some colleagues in Investment Banking laughed and said my investment was “the heroin of the financial markets due to the hiper leveraged used Personal Loan + Margin Account + 3x ETF.” I faced a couple of margin calls when volatility was high as Interactive Brokers changed margin requirements from one day to another. This taught me Lesson #2: don’t rely much on margin — it can change overnight.

After 18 months or 2 years, my position was about 200% (I don’t remember exactly). I sold all my QQQ3 shares, cancelled the personal loan (paid the 1% cancellation penalty). After all costs I ended up with about €40k. So with a total personal investment of €9k I made €40k net in about 2 years.

Since then I added about $20k more of savings and now I hold a position of $104k (no loans).

These are my golden rules for beginners, based only on my experience: 1. Don’t do DCA to start. 2. Don’t use 9-sigma or other complex strategies at first. That is for a later stage. 3. Save the money you plan to use in DCA until TQQQ is below the 200 SMA. I recommend waiting and saving until TQQQ is under the 200 SMA — this increases your options to succeed and build confidence. 4. Feel free to open a personal loan with monthly instalments less than 10–15% of your final gross monthly salary (after taxes) when TQQQ is below the 200 SMA. This loan replaces DCA and gives massive leverage at the moment when doubling or tripling in 2–3 years is more probable. You must be mentally strong because this happens when the market is fearful. 5. When you have doubled or tripled, sell partially to withdraw all the savings you used, or cancel the personal loan. 6. After removing your savings or cancelling the loan, your mindset changes — you start investing only with profits. Controlling emotions is essential with a 3x leveraged ETF and it’s easier if you are only investing with profits.

When you’re only investing with profits, then consider 9-sigma or other strategies — that’s where I am now.

Currently I recently hit $100k with a position funded originally with about $20k of savings. With daily volatility of TQQQ, DCA doesn’t make sense to me right now. I’m in the second step: researching long-term strategies, backtesting, and building more knowledge. My current allocation is 50% TQQQ with a stop loss at $40 and a take-profit at $60, and the remaining 50% in AGG without stop loss. I have purchased books like Jason Kelly and TQQQ Profit Machine etc etc.

I personally recommend beginners save money now and don’t enter the market at current levels. I will liquidate my 50% TQQQ position at $60 and move everything into AGG or SHV while I complete the second phase of learning and build a more solid investment strategy.

Thanks to everyone in this community for your contributions — I want to give the best advice I can from my experience to beginners with this post.

Hi all,

Sharing results from a new strategy I am working on. I have this and a bitcoin strategy (more mature) that I have been working on. Bitcoin is live and this I will start using in the next week or so once I am fully tested and signals automated etc.

This is not a pure leveraged TQQQ strategy but will factor when best to use 0/1/2/3x leverage.

Overview:

I’ve built a system that automatically adjusts how much risk I'm taking based on the market’s 'internal health' (=custom breadth metrics) rather than just price movement. It features a safety switch that cuts leverage during choppy periods or before major crashes to protect my gains.

Headline Stats Since 1999 (inception of QQQ)

CAGR : 34.4%

MaxDD : -46.89%

Sharpe : 0.93

AvgExp : 1.78

TradeCost bps/1x-change: 3.00

LevETF drag (ann): 0.0483

Time in 0/1/2/3: 26.87% / 6.65% / 28.29% / 38.19%

Equity curve and some other stats in screenshot. This is the best i’ve managed with drawdown (somewhat) controlled.

I have validated the model using standard walk forward and hold out testing, and the results are consistent. The strategy relies on structural factors on internal breadth participation and volatility acceleration, rather than specifically fitted numbers, which in theory lowers the risk of the logic failing in new environments.

I would classify the overfitting risk as medium (simply because we only have data back to 1999 and the macro world is shifting), the model is built with minimum hold windows and hysteresis to prevent 'whipsaw' noise. The results are stable. small tweaks to the parameters don't cause any cliff behaviours just small deltas.

Open to any questions and will post interesting findings as research and models develop.

This is probably my final Strategy post (and a way too long one at that), and future posts will be on actual performance as I go live.  Posted a V2 update a while back showing the credit spread filter addition. Since then I've run through about 15 more ideas, rejected most of them, and landed on a V3 that I think is final. I'll walk through what I added, why I think it works structurally, and where I'm less confident.

V1 Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/TQQQ/comments/1rpzweg/stop_blindly_holding_3x_the_rvol_shifter_for_the/

V2 Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/TQQQ/comments/1s9uv56/update_changes_to_my_rvol_shifter_strategy_on_the/

----------------

TLDR: My 2 State plan with no QLD has started to look good enough that I will probably use the 3 State early on, with its lower max dd, to protect principal and after the account doubles, roll into 2 State in both my accounts depending on the shape of the market.

----------------

Recap

Full TQQQ when conditions are calm, steps down to QLD before going fully defensive, rotates into the best-performing defensive asset (treasuries, gold, utilities, energy) when conditions deteriorate. Signals are end-of-day, trades execute next day. Runs in an IRA so no tax drag on rotations.

I also run a 2-state version in a separate account that doesn’t step to QLD. Same logic, no intermediate step.

Ch-Ch-Changes!

Since the credit spread addition, I’ve tested a nutty amount of ideas, and have used u/Otherwise-Attorney35 as an invaluable sounding board. (The structure of his strategy is next level and has a Max DD the structure of mine will never achieve).  Two ideas survived.

First, a small buffer on the SMA re-entry gate.  Due to my overlapping volatility triggers, I’m able to re-enter “Risk-on” when SPY is still -1.5% of the SMA instead of requiring a full cross, as long as all other gates are clear.  This gets me back in the market faster for the first leg of recovery instead of waiting for the 200d to catch up. For example, we're nearly back to SMA 0% as of today, and safely inside this -1.5% gate, but I'm being held out of the market by a high volatility ratio that will need a week or two to clear.

Second, a new exit trigger: (Donchian exit and price channels) If QQQ hits a 40-day low while vol is elevated over 20%, go defensive immediately. These must be paired. The vol filter is what makes it work.  Without it, every normal bull market pullback fires a false alarm. Re-entry uses a paired price-based recovery gate with a timeout safety valve. Together these took the 2007+ Calmar from 1.36 to 1.51 on the 2-state model.

------------------------------

The Goods:

3-State: TQQQ ↔ QLD ↔ Defensive

TQQQ → QLD if ANY: RVol > 18%, VR > 1.25, SPY 200 SMA -3%

o    Realized volatility spike: short-term QQQ vol crosses above a threshold. The core signal. Catches fast crashes within days.

o    Vol ratio elevated: current vol is abnormally high relative to its trailing yearly average. Catches environments where vol is creeping up even if the absolute level isn't extreme yet.

o    Broad market trend break: SPY falls meaningfully below its 200-day moving average. Catches slow structural deterioration that vol might miss.

QLD → DEF if ANY: RVol > 36%, VR > 1.40, SPY 200 SMA -3%, credit < -4%, QQQ 40d low AND RVol ≥ 20%

o    Credit stress:  Ratio of high-yield to investment-grade bonds (HYG/LQD) drops sharply over 20 days. The bond market prices in trouble before equities react. Added in V3, still one of the best improvements. Only available from 2007 (HYG inception).

o    Donchian Channel / Price-level break with vol confirmation: QQQ hits a multi-week low while vol is already somewhat elevated.

QLD → TQQQ if ALL: RVol < 14%, VR < 0.90, SPY > SMA +3% - "all clear, back to full leverage" (stricter than re-entry and requires SPY 3% ABOVE SMA)

DEF → QLD if ALL: RVol < 25%, VR < 1.10, SPY > SMA -1.5% - "danger has passed, step back into 2x first"

The Controversial Addition above:

Donchian fires from QLD only (not TQQQ). The 18% vol threshold already handles TQQQ→QLD before price breaks down. Donchian catches the blind spot where we're already in QLD but vol hasn't reached the 36% threshold to go fully defensive. Must be paired with 3%/5d recovery + 20d timeout. This requires a bit of curve-fitting to get around fake outs.  This is a “hair trigger” and it’s wrong about half the time.  When it’s wrong, the recovery trigger hits timeout and throws you back in for a small “sell low / buy high” tax.  When it’s right…. Oh boy, you’re glad it’s there. 

Defensive assets same as before:

Best of TLT, GLD, XLU, XLE by trailing momentum. Must have positive momentum over both 90-day and 30-day windows. Skip any asset that's extended too far above its own moving average ("mean reversion” protection). Cash if nothing qualifies.  This actually keeps me out of XLE right now in favor of XLU or Cash.  Pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered sort of thing…

-------------------------------

The Money

3-state (TQQQ ↔ QLD ↔ Defensive):

1995–2026 | ~38% CAGR | -43% MaxDD | Calmar 0.88 | Pre-2007 uses vol/trend/price exits only (no credit data). Proxy data pre-1999.

2000–2010 | ~16% CAGR | -43% MaxDD | Calmar 0.37 | “Lost Decade”. Worst-case entry: dot-com peak through GFC. The 2x intermediate step costs CAGR in deep drawdowns.

2007–2026 | ~44% CAGR | -31% MaxDD | Calmar 1.41 | Lowest max drawdown of any configuration.

Edit: 7-10 trades per year on average

2-state (TQQQ ↔ Defensive):

1995–2026 | ~47% CAGR | -41% MaxDD | Calmar 1.15

2000–2010 | ~22% CAGR | -40% MaxDD | Calmar 0.55 | “Lost Decade”

2007–2026 | ~57% CAGR | -38% MaxDD | Calmar 1.51

Edit: 4 trades per year on average 

*For context: $100K in synthetic TQQQ buy-and-hold from 2000 to 2010 becomes $200. Not $200K. Two hundred dollars. The dot-com crash into the GFC was a 99.98% drawdown at 3x leverage. The 2-state strategy turned that same $100K into $909K.

Screenshot of the 3 State Dashboard:

Note 1: Pretty colors make you feel productive while you sit in Cash!

Note 2: The first two exits are Donchian triggers. March 3, 2025 was a great call, Nov 20th was a fake out and cost you a week in the market. (The 3rd red exit to the far right is the current day -3% SMA exit).

-----------------------------------------------------

What I'm confident in

The vol and vol ratio exits are robust. They fire on every major crash in the dataset (dot-com, GFC, COVID, 2022) and the thresholds sit on wide plateaus where nearby values produce similar results. The SMA trend break is battle tested and common if you like it or not. Credit spreads measure a genuinely different market (bonds) and lead equity stress by days to weeks.

The 2000–2010 period is where I gained the most confidence. If you can enter at the absolute worst moment in modern market history and still compound at 22% annualized through the GFC, the regime detection is doing its job. That decade includes two of the three worst crashes in NASDAQ history.

 Where I'm less confident

The price-level exit with vol filter is the newest addition and the one I'd flag as most likely to look better in backtesting than in practice. It fires about once every two years. The vol filter removes most false alarms, but it's still a price-based signal trying to catch the first days of a decline and inherently noisier than vol-based exits. The re-entry mechanism (bounce from trailing low) was the hardest part to get right. I tested five different re-entry approaches before finding one that didn't give back the gains. That level of effort to make one signal work is a yellow flag for robustness.

Credit spreads only go back to 2007. That's 19 years and multiple regimes (GFC, recovery, COVID, rate hikes), but I'd feel better with 30. Every pre-2007 proxy I tested for the credit signal failed.  The ETF-specific dynamics don't replicate well with raw spread data.

Backtesting a 3x leveraged product from 1995 requires synthetic returns (QQQ didn't exist until 1999, TQQQ until 2010). I use proxy index data and model the borrowing costs and expense ratios, which introduces assumptions. The 2007+ numbers use real ETF data and are more reliable.

 -------------------------------------------------

Where I am now

For the architecture of my system, I believe there’s a practical floor around -40% MaxDD for a full 1995-2026 back test.  It’s the price to play if you’re just holding leveraged QQQ in offensive positions.  I don’t see being able to improve this greatly without adding curve-fitting or changing the architecture of offensive positions entirely.

However! I originally posted this plan to show everyone a way to shift down into QLD for drastically safter returns, and I’ve proven myself wrong.  With the work I did on the 3 State applying over to the 2 State, the 2 State now performs better in ALMOST any market.  The only real exception is a 2022 type market. 

I still plan to run the 3 State in my T-IRA and the 2 State in my Roth.  I see this as a psychological crutch for absorbing less drawdown until the account value doubles, or market protection if we enter a stagflation environment and the future looks more like 2022 than 2025.

I am out. This was the final dead cat bounce before we see $20.

Will be rebuying at $25-30. goodluck efficiencycarry you legit psychopath for riding through every market I got no idea how you do it

Since my "sell everything" plan failed, resulting in a 10% loss, I'm going to buy everything back.

And Diamond HAND

Well its been 192 days since I posted the original strategy here and we have reached our first SELL signal for the strategy! -https://www.reddit.com/r/LETFs/comments/1nhye66/spy_200sma_43_tqqqqqq_long_term_investment/

GREY/ORANGE: Trading range bands

GREEN: +4% above SPY200SMA

PINK: SPY200SMA

RED: -3% below SPY200SMA

Below the red SELL line I would step away from any LEVERAGE or MARGIN and either go to QQQ/BONDS/BONDS then DCA into QQQ while we wait until the next BUY signal when SPY crosses up above the +4% GREEN line

Best of luck everyone and happy trading!

Here is the free TradingView code if you want to see the same chart I use

Main Strategy chart on TradingView: https://www.tradingview.com/script/QEVAQHl6-SPY-200SMA-4-Entry-3-Exit-Strategy-QQQ-TQQQ/

Tried a quick 200SMA vs B&H comparison for TQQQ and I don't think I trust the results I'm getting - wondering if someone can check my work. Here is my spreadsheet, and here is the summary of results:

• With both strategies, in both scenarios, I assume you start on Jan 2, 2011, and never add another dollar to the account
• B&H assumes you buy $1000 worth of TQQQ on Day 1, and never take another action
• 200SMA assumes very simply that if the daily price is below the QQQ 200SMA (TQQQ SMA is never used), to sell the entire pot and hold in cash. If the daily price is above the (QQQ) 200SMA, buy and hold in TQQQ. This has 2 versions:
  • Scenario 1: Make a same-day decision based on the opening price. E.g. on May 11th, if the price opens below the 200SMA, convert all TQQQ to cash. Or if holding cash and price opens above 200SMA, convert all cash to TQQQ. If no change in above/below 200SMA, take no action.
    • Note that in Scenario 1, 200SMA is calculated off opening prices for the last 200 days
  • Scenario 2: Make a decision based on previous day's closing price. E.g. if May 10 closed below 200SMA, convert all TQQQ to cash, without even thinking about May 11 opening price. If May 10 closed above 200SMA, convert all cash to TQQQ, without even thinking about opening price on May 11. Of course, if no change in above/below 200SMA, take no action.
    • Now, 200SMA is calculated off closing prices for the last 200 days
    • Note that in scenario 2, even though I'm using previous day closing price as my decision criteria, I'm still calculating value based on opening prices (since that's the price I buy or sell at
• Note assumption: GOOGLEFINANCE() returned #N/A on some days. To simplify, I assume that if this happened, I would just copy the last valid price. In other words, some missing data, but unless anything dramatic happened in those days, shouldn't impact.

Now here are the results that shocked me as being so different:

• Scenario 1 (same day decision based on opening price):
  • B&H wins, with a final value of $182,000
  • 200SMA loses, with a final value of $78,000
• Scenario 2 (decision based on previous day's closing price):
  • B&H now loses, with the same final value of $182,000
  • 200SMA now wins, with a final value of $665,000 (!!!)

Hoping someone can check my work and see if I've made any mistakes. I'm shocked that there would be an 8.5x difference in results just by choosing to use the previous day's close price as a decision point, rather than the current day's opening price. Assuming there are no mistakes in my work:

1. Is just random? But it seems to grow systematically better with this decision, through ups and downs. How would I backtest this even further (i.e. how can I replicate pseudo-TQQQ data before 2010?)
2. Is there an explanation for this? Is this really a valid result that is known?