There’s a quiet problem with most retail trading strategies: they bet on one market. A stock-only system lives and dies with the S&P 500’s mood. When equities chop sideways for three years, so does the strategy’s equity curve — even if bonds, gold, or commodities were quietly trending the whole time.
The idea tested here tries to sidestep that. Instead of asking “will stocks go up,” it asks a simpler, more mechanical question every month: which of six major asset classes are actually trending right now, and which of those are trending the hardest? Then it holds the strongest three, in equal size, and steps aside from everything else.
The Setup
6 ETFs stand in for 6 very different sources of return:
Symbol What it represents SPY US equities TLT Long-term US Treasuries GLD Gold EEM Emerging-market equities EFA Developed international equities (ex-US) DBC Broad commodities
The rankings use price only, so every coupon TLT pays counts against it in the race with gold. That income shows up in the profit but not in the ranking that picks the fund.
