DeployQuantQQQE trading strategies, backtested
Direxion NASDAQ-100 Equal Weighted Index Shares: the Nasdaq-100 with every stock weighted equally, so less mega-cap concentration. Every DeployQuant template run on QQQE over 5.7 years of minute data, same engine, same window, sorted by return.
QQQE holds the Nasdaq-100 stocks at equal weight, so no single company dominates the way Apple or Microsoft dominate the cap-weighted index. Over 2021-01-04 to 2026-10-02 it returned 76.64% in total, a 10.42% CAGR, with annualized volatility of 20.24%. Buying it on day one and holding turned $10,000 into $17,128 with a 9.83% CAGR and a maximum drawdown of 31.44% in the strategy engine's accounting.
Twelve templates were run on it with identical rules. One beat holding: the weekly 7% target, at 11.21% CAGR and $18,406. All 12 had a shallower maximum drawdown than holding, and 11 finished with a positive CAGR. The one template that lost money, the 3-month momentum switch, ended at $8,464.
That mix tells most of the story. QQQE rose, so a rule that spent time in cash had to give up some return. In exchange, the rules that exit early cut the 2022 loss. The question this page answers is which of the 12 rule sets kept enough of the rise to justify the smaller drawdown, and what in QQQE's behaviour explains the ranking. The tables show the numbers. The text below explains them, using the fund's own statistics: its calendar years, its biggest days, how it reacted after RSI extremes, and how often it crossed its 200-day average.
| Strategy | CAGR | max DD | Sharpe | trades | win rate | final value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly Entry + 7% Target | 11.2% | −19.3% | 0.72 | 122 | 26% (+1 open) | $18,406 |
| RSI(2) Dip Snapback | 9.5% | −13.2% | 0.72 | 156 | 62% | $16,825 |
| First-to-Last Day of Month | 8.0% | −29.1% | 0.51 | 69 | 61% (+1 open) | $15,511 |
| RSI(14) Mean Reversion | 7.2% | −27.1% | 0.55 | 16 | 81% (+1 open) | $14,921 |
| Golden Cross (SMA 50/200) | 7.0% | −21.0% | 0.55 | 2 | 50% (+1 open) | $14,731 |
| SMA-200 Trend + 15% Trailing Stop | 6.8% | −22.1% | 0.56 | 2 | 50% (+1 open) | $14,566 |
| 200-Day SMA Regime Filter | 5.7% | −15.3% | 0.51 | 15 | 33% (+1 open) | $13,709 |
| Drawdown Dip Buyer + 8% Target | 5.4% | −25.1% | 0.42 | 4 | 100% | $13,530 |
| EMA 12/26 Trend | 1.9% | −20.1% | 0.21 | 25 | 36% (+1 open) | $11,120 |
| 20-Day Momentum + Trailing Stop | 1.8% | −21.2% | 0.21 | 6 | 50% (+1 open) | $11,064 |
| SMA 10/50 Trend | 1.2% | −25.6% | 0.16 | 21 | 43% (+1 open) | $10,683 |
| 3-Month Momentum Switch | −2.9% | −27.6% | -0.20 | 19 | 37% | $8,464 |
| Buy & hold QQQE | 9.8% | −31.4% | 0.59 | – | – | $17,128 |
How the ranking came out
The ranking runs from 11.21% down to -2.86%. After the weekly target come the RSI(2) snapback at 9.49%, the monthly cycle at 7.95%, RSI mean reversion at 7.22%, golden cross at 6.98% and trend plus trailing stop at 6.77%. The 200-day regime filter returned 5.65% and the dip buyer 5.41%. The three fast trend rules sat at the bottom: EMA 12/26 at 1.87%, momentum breakout at 1.78%, and SMA 10/50 at 1.16%.
The weekly target's lead over holding is 1.38 points of CAGR and $1,278 of ending equity. Its maximum drawdown was 19.33%, against 31.44% for holding. It beat holding in four calendar years: 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. It lost to holding in 2021 and 2026. In 2021 it returned 12.6% against 19.2% for holding, and in 2026 so far it returned 13.5% against 18.8%. The 2022 year did most of the work. The template lost 16.5% that year while QQQE fell 23.9%.
The win rate on the weekly target was 26%, with 32 winning round trips out of 122. The average win was 7.13% and the average loss was 1.77%. With wins that size against losses that small, the template needs only about one winner in five trades to come out ahead, and QQQE gave it one in four. The profit factor was 1.42. The longest losing streak ran to 8 trades. A fund that moves 7% in a week is rare, and QQQE has an average daily range of 1.35%, so most weeks ended at the Thursday exit. The best trade, 8.19%, started on 2023-10-30 and ended on 2023-11-14.
The RSI(2) snapback had the shallowest drawdown of the 12, at 13.16%, and it was invested only 40.3% of the time. It earned 9.49% a year from 156 round trips with a 62% win rate. It missed holding by 0.34 points of CAGR. Time in market of 40.3% against 100% for holding means the return per day invested was high, and the cost of that is the exposure to trading costs, covered below.
The monthly cycle bought on the first session of each month and sold on the last, and it was invested 95.2% of the time. That is close to buy-and-hold with a month-end gap. It returned 7.95% with a 29.11% drawdown, which means it went through the 2022 decline almost intact. Its 2022 loss was 26.9%, worse than holding's 23.9%. It is the least protective of the active templates in a bear year, and it only beat holding in 2024 and 2025.
Trend rules and the 2022 decline
QQQE fell 24.49% in calendar 2022 and spent 332 days getting from the 2021-11-16 peak to the 2022-10-14 trough. A trend rule that works on a drop like that has to sell early and buy back before the recovery is gone. The rules in this study did the first part and mostly missed the second.
The 200-day regime filter returned -11.6% in 2022 and 19.2% in 2023, ending 5.65% a year with a 15.29% drawdown. It made four round trips in 2022 and won none of them. Golden cross made one trade in 2021 that lost 6.12% (2021-10-19 to 2022-02-11) and then sat in cash until 2023-01-25. It bought again then and held for 812 days, to 2025-04-16, for a 24.56% gain. Two closed trades plus one open one produced a 6.98% CAGR and a 20.96% drawdown. The open position, entered on 2025-06-24, was up 27.08% at the end of the window.
Trend plus trailing stop looks similar. It bought on 2021-10-19, was stopped out on 2022-01-24 for a 10.7% loss, re-entered on 2022-12-01 and held to 2025-04-04 for a 21.69% gain. A second position opened 2025-05-09 was up 35% at the end. These trend rules show how few trades a slow signal makes on a fund with 30 crossings of its 200-day average. Their 2022 results were -8.6% for golden cross and -18.9% for the trailing-stop version.
The faster trend rules did worse. EMA 12/26 lost 6.4% in 2021, 12.5% in 2022 and 0.6% in 2024. Its 25 round trips won 36% of the time. The average win was 6.49% and the average loss 2.77%, which is a workable shape, but a long losing streak of 6 trades ate the gains. SMA 10/50 lost 19.1% in 2022, and its drawdown ran from 2021-09-03 to a trough on 2023-01-19, and did not recover until 2025-10-27. The 3-month momentum switch lost 20.5% in 2022 and 10.8% in 2024, with a 27.64% drawdown that never recovered in the window.
The fast rules failed for a plain reason. A 12/26 EMA cross or a 10/50 SMA cross reacts to a move that is already under way, and QQQE changed direction often enough that the reaction came after the move. The fund's lag-1 daily autocorrelation was -0.03, which is effectively no day-to-day persistence. Rules built on persistence had little to work with at that horizon.
How each strategy traded QQQE
| Strategy | Time in market | Avg hold (days) | Best trade | Worst trade | Profit factor | With 10 bps slippage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| weekly 7% target | 81.2% | 12 | 8.2% | −6.8% | 1.42 | 7.8% |
| RSI(2) snapback | 40.3% | 5 | 9.4% | −8.6% | 1.58 | 3.8% |
| monthly cycle | 95.2% | 28 | 10.6% | −12.0% | 1.52 | 5.4% |
| RSI mean reversion | 32.8% | 41 | 9.7% | −8.7% | 3.09 | 6.6% |
| golden cross | 66.5% | 464 | 24.6% | −6.1% | 3.77 | 6.9% |
| trend + trailing stop | 69.5% | 476 | 21.7% | −10.7% | 1.82 | 6.7% |
| 200-day regime filter | 64.2% | 78 | 11.4% | −4.1% | 1.83 | 5.1% |
| dip buyer | 31.2% | 164 | 8.1% | 8.0% | – | 5.4% |
| EMA 12/26 trend | 61.0% | 51 | 14.4% | −7.1% | 1.26 | 1.0% |
| momentum breakout | 52.1% | 155 | 9.7% | −9.8% | 0.95 | 1.6% |
| SMA 10/50 trend | 60.2% | 60 | 13.0% | −7.2% | 1.18 | 0.4% |
| 3-month momentum | 51.0% | 57 | 8.6% | −10.6% | 0.63 | −3.5% |
Time in market, hold lengths and costs
The trading table shows how differently the 12 templates used the same fund. Time in market ranged from 31.2% for the dip buyer to 95.2% for the monthly cycle. Average hold ranged from 5 days for the RSI(2) snapback to 476 days for trend plus trailing stop, and 464 for golden cross.
The dip buyer made four trades in the window and won all four, each at about 8%: 2021-03-09 to 2021-04-13, 2022-01-24 to 2023-07-17, 2024-08-06 to 2024-08-21 and 2025-03-11 to 2025-05-15. The 2022 trade is the odd one. It entered on 2022-01-24, and it was held for 539 days before reaching the +8% target on 2023-07-17, through a fall that took the whole template to a 25.05% drawdown. A 100% win rate and a 25.05% drawdown are both true of the same strategy. The profit factor shows as a dash because there were no losing trades.
Costs separate the templates more than the headline CAGR does. At 10 basis points of slippage per trade, the weekly target fell from 11.21% to 7.77%, with a maximum drawdown of 22.77%. At 5 basis points it was 9.66%. It made 245 fills. The RSI(2) snapback fell from 9.49% to 3.81% on 312 fills. It loses most of its return when each trade costs 10 basis points, and the weekly target keeps more of its own.
The slow rules barely react to cost. Golden cross went from 6.98% to 6.92%, trend plus trailing stop from 6.77% to 6.67%, and the dip buyer did not move. The fast trend rules are in between: EMA 12/26 fell from 1.87% to 0.98% and SMA 10/50 from 1.16% to 0.43%. The 3-month momentum switch went from -2.86% to -3.49%.
With 10 basis points on every trade, ranking by CAGR gives a different order. The weekly target at 7.77%, golden cross at 6.92%, trend plus trailing stop at 6.67%, RSI mean reversion at 6.64% and the dip buyer at 5.42% are the top five. The ranking at zero cost favours trading often. The ranking at 10 basis points favours trading rarely. QQQE has a median minute volume of 308 shares and an average daily dollar volume of $14,399,103, which is thin for an index fund. Real fills in a fund this thin can be worse than 10 basis points, and the test does not measure that.
How QQQE behaved
| Measure | QQQE |
|---|---|
| Data in this test | 2021-01-04 to 2026-10-02 (1444 sessions) |
| Total return, buy and hold | 76.6% |
| Annualized volatility | 20.2% |
| Deepest drawdown | −32.1% (2021-11-16 to 2022-10-14) |
| Up days | 52.0% |
| Average daily range | 1.35% |
| Average overnight gap | 0.53% |
| Correlation to SPY | 0.94 |
| Correlation to QQQ | 0.95 |
| Correlation to TLT | 0.12 |
| Sessions above the 200-day average | 74.5% |
| Crossings of the 200-day average | 30 |
| Falls of 10% or more from a 20-day high | 23 |
Calendar years
| Year | Return |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 19.7% |
| 2022 | −24.5% |
| 2023 | 33.8% |
| 2024 | 7.0% |
| 2025 | 14.6% |
| 2026 (part) | 19.1% |
Biggest single days
| Best day | Move |
|---|---|
| 2025-04-09 | 10.6% |
| 2022-11-10 | 7.0% |
| 2022-03-16 | 4.4% |
| 2022-05-13 | 4.0% |
| 2022-11-30 | 3.7% |
| Worst day | Move |
|---|---|
| 2025-04-04 | −6.2% |
| 2025-04-03 | −5.0% |
| 2022-09-13 | −5.0% |
| 2022-06-13 | −4.8% |
| 2022-05-18 | −4.6% |
Average return by calendar month
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.5% | 0.0% | −0.2% | −0.4% | 3.4% | 2.1% | 2.2% | −0.0% | −2.5% | 1.5% | 4.2% | −0.1% |
Most and least correlated funds
| Most correlated | Least correlated | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| QQQM | 0.95 | SQQQ | -0.95 |
| QQQ | 0.95 | QID | -0.95 |
| TQQQ | 0.95 | PSQ | -0.95 |
| QLD | 0.95 | SDS | -0.94 |
| VV | 0.94 | SH | -0.93 |
What QQQE did, year by year
The calendar-year returns are 19.69% in 2021, -24.49% in 2022, 33.77% in 2023, 6.98% in 2024, 14.62% in 2025 and 19.15% so far in 2026. The 2022 loss and the 2023 rebound together set the shape of every strategy result above. A template that held through both ended near the buy-and-hold figure. A template that sold in 2022 and missed some of 2023 ended below it.
The deepest drawdown ran from the peak on 2021-11-16 to the trough on 2022-10-14, a fall of 32.14% on the fund's own prices, and recovered on 2024-01-19. The longest drawdown lasted 544 sessions. The second-deepest, from 2025-02-18 to 2025-04-08, was 20.93%, and it recovered by 2025-06-30. The third, from 2024-07-16 to 2024-08-05, was 10.15%. The strategy engine's own figure for holding is 31.44%, which uses the equity curve of the backtest and is slightly different from the 32.14% computed on daily prices.
The five best days were 2025-04-09 at 10.63%, 2022-11-10 at 7.04%, 2022-03-16 at 4.42%, 2022-05-13 at 4.05% and 2022-11-30 at 3.73%. The five worst were 2025-04-04 at -6.23%, 2025-04-03 at -5.03%, 2022-09-13 at -4.98%, 2022-06-13 at -4.81% and 2022-05-18 at -4.58%. Four of the five best days and three of the five worst fall in 2022. The 2025-04-09 gain of 10.63% is the largest single day, and it came one session after the holding trough on 2025-04-08. A rule that was in cash on 2025-04-09 gave up that day. The weekly target opened and closed a trade on 2025-04-07 at 7.24%.
QQQE's average up day was 0.94% and its average down day was -0.93%, with 52.04% of sessions up. The average intraday range was 1.35% and the average overnight gap was 0.53%. Most of the fund's return arrived overnight. The overnight log return was 81.5%, and the intraday log return was -26.58%. That means a rule that bought at the open and sold at the close would have lost money on the fund over this window, while holding through the nights made all of the gain. Templates that enter at the open and exit within a day or two are exposed to this: they collect the overnight gap only on the nights they hold.
Seasonality, trend and RSI behaviour
By calendar month, the average return was strongest in November at 4.2%, May at 3.37%, July at 2.18% and June at 2.14%. September was the weakest at -2.45%, followed by April at -0.43%. Each month has only five or six observations, so these figures describe this window, and a different six years would produce a different table. The monthly cycle template, which holds from the first session to the last of every month, sits through all of them.
The fund was above its 200-day average on 74.54% of sessions and crossed it 30 times. Thirty crossings in under six years explains the poor results of the 200-day regime filter and the fast trend rules: many of the crossings were short-lived, and each one costs a late entry or a late exit.
The RSI statistics support the mean-reversion templates. RSI(14) dropped below 30 on 18 sessions. The median forward 5-day return after those sessions was 3.82%, against 0.41% for all sessions, and the median forward 20-day return was 3.53% against 1.22%. RSI(2) fell below 10 on 166 sessions, with a median forward 5-day return of 0.74% and a 20-day return of 2.23%. The RSI(14) sample is small, 18 sessions, and the RSI mean reversion template made 16 round trips with 13 wins and a profit factor of 3.09. The RSI(2) sample is larger and the edge is smaller, which fits a 9.49% CAGR from 156 trades at a 62% win rate.
Falls of 10% or more from a 20-day high happened in 23 separate episodes across 56 days. The dip buyer waits for that kind of fall, which is why it traded only four times.
Relation to the rest of the Nasdaq and broad index group
QQQE is highly correlated with the funds around it: 0.95 with QQQ, 0.94 with SPY, 0.95 with QQQM and 0.95 with TQQQ. Its beta to SPY was 1.15, to QQQ 0.86 and to TLT 0.16, with a correlation to TLT of 0.12. The inverse funds SQQQ, QID and PSQ sit at -0.95. A strategy that works on QQQ should therefore be expected to look similar on QQQE, and the results back that up for the weekly target: on QQQ the best template was also the weekly 7% target, at 16.52% against 16.7% for holding, and on QQQM it was 16.64% against 16.74%. On QQQE the weekly target was 11.21% against 9.83%, so the equal-weight version is the one where the template came out ahead.
The broad index peers show where the best rule varies. On SPY the weekly target led with 13.88% against 14.56% for holding. On VOO the RSI(2) snapback led with 14.08% against 14.42%. On IWM the RSI(2) snapback returned 11.38% against 7.5% for holding, and on EEM the weekly target returned 11.62% against 6.58%. VOOG returned 19.51% with the weekly target against 15.73% for holding.
QQQE's own holding return of 9.83% is lower than any of the cap-weighted Nasdaq funds in that table, and equal weighting gives the smaller Nasdaq-100 stocks more weight than the cap-weighted funds do. The data here does not split the gap between the two, so the weighting is a plausible reason that was not measured.
Limits of the test
All results are one window of 5.7 years, starting in January 2021. The headline run has no fees or slippage and uses $10,000 with no margin. The cost runs add 5 and 10 basis points per trade. Rules decide once per day and fills happen on minute bars, with prices adjusted for splits and dividends. QQQE trades thinly, so real fills could differ from the backtest. The one result that beat holding came from a single template on a single fund over a single window, and the table does not show that it would repeat.
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Frequently asked questions
What was the best strategy for QQQE?
Of the 12 templates tested on QQQE over 2021-01-04 to 2026-10-02, the strongest by CAGR was weekly 7% target at 11.2% (max drawdown 19.3%), versus 9.8% for buy-and-hold. The best result in hindsight is not a forecast. Check drawdowns and trade counts before drawing conclusions.
Did any strategy beat buying and holding QQQE?
1 of 12 templates beat QQQE buy-and-hold (9.8% CAGR) on this window; 12 of 12 had a shallower maximum drawdown than holding (31.4%).
Which strategy worked best on QQQE?
The weekly 7% target had the highest CAGR at 11.21%, against 9.83% for buy-and-hold, with a maximum drawdown of 19.33% against 31.44%. It was the only one of the 12 templates to beat holding on return. It made 122 round trips with a 26% win rate, and its return fell to 7.77% with 10 basis points of slippage per trade.
Did QQQE beat QQQ in this backtest?
No. QQQE returned 9.83% a year buy-and-hold, against 16.7% for QQQ over the same window. The weekly 7% target did better on QQQE relative to holding, 11.21% against 9.83%, than on QQQ, where it returned 16.52% against 16.7%.
How much did QQQE fall in 2022?
QQQE lost 24.49% in calendar 2022. Its deepest drawdown ran from 2021-11-16 to 2022-10-14 and reached 32.14%, and it took until 2024-01-19 to recover. The weekly 7% target lost 16.5% in 2022, and the 200-day regime filter lost 11.6%.
Why did the trend strategies do badly on QQQE?
The fund crossed its 200-day average 30 times in the window, and its day-to-day autocorrelation was -0.03. The 12/26 EMA and 10/50 SMA rules returned 1.87% and 1.16%, because they entered and exited after moves had started. The slower golden cross made two closed trades and returned 6.98%.
Does RSI work on QQQE?
After RSI(14) fell below 30, the median forward 5-day return was 3.82% against a baseline of 0.41%, from 18 sessions. The RSI mean reversion template won 13 of 16 trades but returned 7.22%, because it was invested only 32.8% of the time. The RSI(2) snapback returned 9.49% with a 62% win rate.
What happens to the QQQE results with trading costs?
Adding 10 basis points per trade took the weekly 7% target from 11.21% to 7.77% and the RSI(2) snapback from 9.49% to 3.81%. Slow rules barely moved: golden cross went from 6.98% to 6.92%. QQQE averages $14,399,103 of daily dollar volume, so real costs could be higher than the test.
Other broad index etfs
Backtests are hypothetical, computed by DeployQuant's engine on minute-resolution consolidated US market data (2021-01-04 to 2026-10-02, $10,000 starting capital, no margin, no fees or slippage in the headline run; buy-and-hold puts 98% of the account in at the first open, as the templates do) and do not guarantee future results. Nothing on this page is investment advice. Live trading involves risk of loss.