Backtested Strategies Announces BTS Strength Zones — Dow-65 Stocks Backtest Results

SAN FRANCISCO - Aug. 7, 2026 - PRLog -- During that 23-year period, a $10,000 starting value grew to $5,955,157 for the strategy versus $116,729 for SPY.

Time in Market was 99.6%, indicating near-continuous equity exposure rather than a defensive cash posture, while volatility was slightly higher at 19.2% versus 18.7% for SPY.

The drawdown profile was materially better than the benchmark's but still demanding. Maximum drawdown reached -36.2% versus -55.2% for SPY. The strategy's deepest decline occurred during the 2020 shock and recovered by August 21, 2020. Its longest underwater period lasted 459 calendar days during 2008–2009, compared with 1,773 days for SPY's longest drawdown. The evidence supports a shallower catastrophic loss and shorter recovery burden, not an absence of deep or extended losses.

The return advantage appeared in both SPY up years and SPY down years. In SPY up years, BTS Strength Zones produced 37.4% filtered CAGR versus 17.1% for SPY, although the strategy's worst within-year drawdown was slightly deeper because the 2020 shock falls inside that group. Across the three SPY down years—2008, 2018, and 2022—the strategy produced 1.4% filtered CAGR versus -21.0% for SPY, with a -31.2% worst within-year drawdown.

The full-period result was not driven by a single endpoint. BTS Strength Zones beat SPY on CAGR and Sharpe ratio in all 241 rolling three-year windows and all 217 rolling five-year windows. Lower volatility appeared in 19.9% of three-year windows and 28.6% of five-year windows, while smaller maximum drawdowns appeared in 55.6% and 57.6%, respectively. The evidence supports broad historical return and risk-adjusted-return leadership, not a consistently smoother daily path.

Backtest results follow BTS Methodology, which sets common conventions for data and calendar alignment, execution pricing, missing-data and end-of-range handling, trading costs and spread-aware slippage, portfolio accounting, cash and dividend treatment, benchmark conventions, reporting windows, performance metric calculations, and, where reported, market-capacity screening.

Read the full press release:
https://www.backtestedstrategies.com/articles/bts-strengt...

Access the BTS Strength Zones — Dow-65 Stocks Backtest Results report:
https://www.backtestedstrategies.com/strategies/bts-stren...

About Backtested Strategies
Backtested Strategies (BTS), operated by Marquantex LLC, is a financial research publisher built around the BTS Methodology, a standardized framework for testing trading strategies with stated rules, consistent assumptions, benchmark discipline, cost and slippage treatment, portfolio accounting, and clear interpretation so readers can evaluate market ideas through evidence rather than hype or unsupported claims.