Golden Cross (SMA 50/200) on QQQ
Invesco QQQ Trust — tracks the Nasdaq-100 — the classic tech-heavy growth index. Backtest 2021-01-04 → 2026-07-17, $10,000 starting capital, computed by the same engine that runs live DeployQuant strategies.
Year by year
| Year | golden cross | buy & hold |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 6.4% | 28.4% |
| 2022 | −11.8% | −31.7% |
| 2023 | 41.8% | 53.1% |
| 2024 | 25.9% | 26.1% |
| 2025 | 2.8% | 20.4% |
| 2026 | 12.1% | 12.3% |
The rules
Hold while the 50-day average is above the 200-day; step aside when it crosses below (the death cross).
- WHEN the market opens · IF not invested AND SMA(50) > SMA(200) · THEN buy with 98% of the sleeve
- WHEN the market opens · IF invested AND SMA(50) < SMA(200) · THEN sell the whole position
The most famous trend filter in markets. When the 50-day simple moving average sits above the 200-day, the asset is in a long-term uptrend and the strategy holds; when it crosses below, the strategy moves to cash. It trades rarely — a handful of signals per decade on an index — and its value is skipping the deepest bear markets, not beating every rally.
Good for: long-horizon investors who want to hold trends but sidestep multi-year bear markets.
Watch out: crosses lag badly at turning points — the strategy always gives back the first leg of a crash and misses the first leg of a recovery; choppy sideways markets whipsaw it.
Build it from blocks (or type it in English), backtest it on 5.5 years of minute data in seconds, tweak any parameter, then paper trade it on live data. No card, no broker needed to start.
Frequently asked questions
Did golden cross beat buy-and-hold on QQQ?
Over 2021-01-04–2026-07-17, golden cross on QQQ returned 12.6% annualized vs 15.8% for buy-and-hold — it trailed buy-and-hold by 3.2% per year, with a maximum drawdown 12.0 points shallower than holding (22.3% vs 34.3%).
How many trades did it make?
2 completed round trips over 5.5 years (5 fills), with 50% of round trips closing profitably.
How often does a golden cross happen?
On a broad index, roughly every couple of years. The backtest pages show the exact trade count for each ETF over the 2021–2026 window.
Golden cross vs buy and hold — which wins?
It depends on the asset and the window; every backtest page here shows the same-window buy-and-hold comparison so you can see rather than guess.
Related
Backtests are hypothetical, computed by DeployQuant's engine on minute-resolution consolidated US market data (2021-01-04 to 2026-07-17, $10,000 starting capital, no margin, fees and slippage not modeled) and do not guarantee future results. Nothing on this page is investment advice. Live trading involves risk of loss.