VOOG trading strategies, backtested

Vanguard S&P 500 Growth ETF: the growth half of the S&P 500. Every DeployQuant template run on VOOG over 5.7 years of minute data, same engine, same window, sorted by return.

VOOG is the Vanguard S&P 500 Growth ETF, the growth half of the S&P 500. Each of the 12 DeployQuant templates started with $10,000 on 2021-01-04 and ran to 2026-10-02, 1,444 sessions. Holding VOOG for the whole window returned 15.73% a year with a 32.13% max drawdown and a 0.83 Sharpe, and the $10,000 became $23,131. Each template trades one sleeve, takes no margin, and has no fees or slippage in the headline run. Two cost runs add 5 and 10 basis points.

Two of the 12 templates beat buy-and-hold on CAGR, 11 had a shallower max drawdown, and 12 had a positive CAGR. The two winners are the weekly 7% target at 19.51% and the RSI(2) snapback at 15.89%. The snapback beat holding by a narrow margin, and its edge disappears once costs are added. The weekly target held up under costs and drew down far less than the fund.

VOOG is a large-cap growth fund that rose in five of the six calendar years in the window and fell 29.46% in 2022. That shape matters for every template. A rule that earns its keep by sitting out declines gains most in 2022, and it pays for that in the three or four years when the fund climbed 22% to 36%.

All results are one backtest on one window with daily-decision rules. They describe how each template behaved on VOOG between those dates. They do not predict later periods.

Why most templates trailed holding VOOG

Ten of the 12 templates returned less than buy-and-hold. The gap is widest for the slower rules. The golden cross made 8.99% a year with only 3 round trips, the SMA 10/50 trend made 8.95%, and the EMA 12/26 trend made 8.87%. Their drawdowns were 21.84%, 18.02% and 16.81%, all shallower than the fund's 32.13%. The 3-month momentum rule made 8.8% with a 20.82% drawdown.

The yearly gaps show where the shortfall came from. All four trend and momentum rules beat holding in 2022 and trailed it in 2021 and 2023, and three of them trailed in 2024. The golden cross fell 15.6% in 2022 against 29% for the fund, then returned 7.6% in 2021 against 33.1%. The 2021 shortfall appears for the trend rules because they start the window flat and wait for a crossover signal before buying. The window opens on 2021-01-04, so the first year is partly spent waiting.

The 200-day regime filter is the best of the slow rules at 11.06% a year with a 21.71% drawdown. It made 16 round trips and won only 19% of them, but its average win was 25.16% and its average loss was 1.73%. Its profit factor of 3.14 shows how a trend rule can be right on return with a low hit rate. The trend plus trailing stop rule made 10.59% with 4 round trips and a 28.83% drawdown. The stop did not help in 2022, when the rule lost 24.2%, because the stop sits below a 200-day trend entry and gives back a lot before it triggers.

The momentum breakout rule made 6.13% with a 28.68% drawdown across 6 round trips. Its longest drawdown ran from 2021-12-27 to 2023-12-06 and recovered on 2025-07-10, so it spent more than two years under water. The RSI mean reversion template made 7.09% and was invested 30.1% of the time. It won 75% of its 16 trades, but average win and average loss were close at 5.36% and 5.29%, so the win rate did not turn into return.

The dip buyer is last at 4.11%. It made 3 round trips, won all three, and was invested 38.8% of the time. It entered during 2022 and held for an average of 271 days, so its 2022 return was negative 21% and its max drawdown was 26.78%. A 100% win rate on 3 trades is a very small sample.

The pattern across the table is that VOOG rewarded being invested. The one window in which sitting out paid was 2022, and every template that sat out in 2022 beat holding that year. Each of them then gave the gain back, and more, in the years when VOOG rose between 22% and 36%. The monthly cycle rule, which is invested 95.2% of the time, returned 13.91% with a 33.85% drawdown. It shows the same exposure as holding and nearly the same drawdown, and it earned less.

What the two winners did differently

The weekly 7% target buys at the first open of each week, rests a limit order 7% above the entry price, and sells on Thursday at 2:00pm if the trade is losing. On VOOG it made 98 round trips with a 32% win rate. The low win rate is part of the design. The average win was 7.2% and the average loss was 1.72%, which gives a profit factor of 1.91. The best trade was 8.75% and the worst was negative 5.94%. The longest loss streak was 8 trades.

A 7% target in one week is large for a fund with 20.83% annualized volatility and an average intraday range of 1.41%. The data shows the target was reached often enough to pay for the losers, with 31 winning round trips out of 98. Average hold was 16.4 days, longer than a week, because a trade that is not losing on Thursday carries over. The rule was invested 85.1% of the time, so it behaved much like holding the fund with a tighter loss rule. Its max drawdown was 17.22% against 32.13%, and its 2022 return was negative 5.8% against negative 29%.

The weekly target beat holding in 2022, 2024 and 2025. In 2022 the yearly gap was 23.2 points, in 2024 it was 10.2, and in 2025 it was 0.4. It lost in 2021 by 14.7 points and in 2026 by 6, so the lead over holding depends on a few years. The rule's longest drawdown began on 2022-03-29 and recovered on 2023-05-18. Its most recent drawdown, from 2026-06-01, had not recovered by the end of the window.

The RSI(2) snapback buys when the 2-day RSI is very low and sells on the bounce. It made 161 round trips, won 70%, and was invested 36.1% of the time, with a 16.59% drawdown and the highest Sharpe in the table at 1.11. It beat holding by a narrow margin on CAGR, and the only year it beat holding was 2022, by 20.9 points. In 2023 it trailed by 15.2 points and in 2026 by 11.4. The average win was 1.56% and the average loss was 1.77%, so the 70% hit rate does the work. The rule makes many small trades, and each one is exposed to execution cost.

How each strategy traded VOOG

Trade statistics and what costs did

The per-strategy trading table shows how differently the templates use time. The golden cross held its average trade for 391 days, the trend and trailing-stop rule for 242.8 days, and the dip buyer for 271 days. The RSI(2) snapback held for 4.8 days and the weekly target for 16.4. Long holds mean few decisions and little exposure to costs. Short holds mean the opposite.

The cost runs show that difference clearly. At 10 basis points of slippage per trade, the RSI(2) snapback falls from 15.89% to 9.71% a year, and at 5 basis points it already falls to 12.75%. Its end equity drops from $23,320 to $17,020 in the 10 basis point run. The headline run beat buy-and-hold by a narrow margin. At 5 basis points it does not. Its drawdown also deepens, from 16.59% to 20.45%.

The weekly 7% target is less sensitive despite 98 round trips. It goes from 19.51% to 19.1% at 5 basis points and 17.13% at 10, with end equity of $24,785 in the worst case. That still exceeds the fund's $23,131. The reason is a higher return per trade, with a 7.2% average win against a small cost per fill. The RSI(2) rule earns an average of 1.56% on its wins, so the same cost takes a larger share of it.

The slow rules barely move. The golden cross goes from 8.99% to 8.85% at 10 basis points. The momentum breakout goes from 6.13% to 5.94%. The dip buyer is flat at around 4.1%. Costs matter most for templates that trade often, and the headline numbers include no fees of any kind.

Slippage in a real account depends on order type and size. VOOG's average daily dollar volume in the window is $56,190,432 and the median minute volume is 2,202 shares. A small account trades in that volume without moving the price. A larger account would see more slippage than the 10 basis point run assumes.

How VOOG behaved

Calendar years

Biggest single days

Average return by calendar month

Most and least correlated funds

How VOOG behaved over the window

VOOG returned 138.41% in total over the window, which is 16.34% a year on the fund's own price series. Its annualized volatility was 20.83% and its max drawdown was 32.66%, from the peak on 2021-12-27 to the trough on 2022-10-14. It did not recover that peak until 2024-03-01. The longest stretch under a prior high was 546 sessions. The 2022 decline is the reason most of the templates look better against holding in one year and worse in the other five.

The calendar years were 33.83% in 2021, negative 29.46% in 2022, 29.94% in 2023, 35.92% in 2024, 22.06% in 2025 and 17.15% in 2026 to date. Four of six years were above 22%. Any rule that is flat for part of an up year has to make that up elsewhere, and the data shows only the weekly target and the snapback managed it.

The largest single days were all large moves in either direction. The best was 11.05% on 2025-04-09, followed by 7.37% on 2022-11-10 and 4.34% on 2022-11-30. The worst was negative 6.02% on 2025-04-04, then negative 5.53% on 2025-04-03 and negative 5.26% on 2022-09-13. The April 2025 days sit on both sides of the same week. A rule that sold on the way down in early April and bought after the rebound missed the 11.05% day, and a rule that held through lost 21.82% from peak to trough. That is the drawdown from 2025-02-19 to 2025-04-08 in the buy-and-hold record.

VOOG closed up on 54.75% of sessions. The average up day was 0.93% and the average down day was negative 0.99%. First-order autocorrelation was negative 0.02, which is effectively zero, so yesterday's return carried no signal about today's. That fits the modest results of the short-term rules. Mean reversion needs negative autocorrelation to pay, and VOOG showed almost none at the daily level.

Most of the return came overnight. The fund's overnight share of log return was 91.1% and the intraday share was 8.9%, with an average overnight gap of 0.55% and an average intraday range of 1.41%. A strategy that buys at the open and sells at the close earns only the smaller part. Rules that hold across nights, as all the templates here do except where they exit intraday, take the larger part.

Why the RSI rules behaved as they did on VOOG

The 14-day RSI closed under 30 on only 19 sessions in the window and over 70 on 139. That explains the low exposure of the RSI mean reversion template at 30.1% and its 16 round trips. The oversold signal was rare, and the median 5-day forward return after it was 4.28%, against a baseline median of 0.49% for any 5-day period. The median 20-day return after it was 2.2%, against a baseline of 1.91%. The bounce was real in the first week and faded into the baseline by the fourth. Only 19 observations stand behind those figures.

The 2-day RSI under 10 occurred on 139 sessions. The median 5-day forward return after it was 0.89%, and the median 20-day return was 2.18%, against baselines of 0.49% and 1.91%. The edge is small. The snapback template earned its return from taking 161 trades off these signals with short holds and a high win rate, and the cost runs show how thin the edge per trade is.

The fund closed above its 200-day average on 73.57% of sessions and crossed it 32 times. The 200-day regime filter was therefore invested 63.4% of the time. The crossing count is also the reason trend rules had false starts: each crossing is a possible entry or exit, and the golden cross and trailing-stop rules made only 3 and 4 round trips because they react to slower signals.

VOOG had 18 drawdown events of 10% or more within 20 days, spread over 69 sessions. These are the sharp declines that a rule with a stop or a time exit would meet. The weekly target's Thursday exit and the snapback's short hold both cut exposure to those events, which fits their lower drawdowns of 17.22% and 16.59%.

Calendar months, correlations and other funds

The average return by calendar month was highest in May at 4.05%, November at 4.03% and July at 3.33%. It was lowest in September at negative 1.77% and February at negative 0.95%. Each month has only 5 or 6 observations, so these averages show how this window went and are not a seasonal rule. The 2022 declines fall in May and September, which pulls those months around.

VOOG's correlation to QQQ over the window was 0.98 and to SPY 0.96, with a beta to SPY of 1.22 and to QQQ of 0.91. The correlation to TLT was 0.08. The most correlated funds in the data are QLD, QQQ, TQQQ and QQQM at 0.98, and VV at 0.97. The least correlated are the inverse funds SQQQ, QID and PSQ at negative 0.98. A reader comparing templates across the broad funds will find similar shapes, and the peer pages for SPY, QQQ and VOO show it. Buy-and-hold on those funds returned 14.56%, 16.7% and 14.42%.

The best template on each peer is not always the same. The weekly 7% target led on SPY at 13.88%, QQQ at 16.52% and QQQM at 16.64%. The RSI(2) snapback led on VOO at 14.08% and on IWM at 11.38%, while the monthly cycle led on VTV at 12.08% and IOO at 15.8%. On VOOG, the weekly target led at 19.51% and beat the fund by a clear margin. On most peers the best template came close to the fund and did not clearly pass it, with VV at 14.94% against 14.26% and QQQE at 11.21% against 9.83% as the exceptions.

The test stops at one window and one fund. It does not cover other growth funds, other regimes or live fills. Orders fill on minute bars, and the weekly target keeps a resting limit order that a live account would also hold at the broker.

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.