Does anything beat buy & hold on Southwest Airlines (LUV)?
Every setup we tested on Southwest Airlines (LUV) — ranked out-of-sample, corrected for multiple testing, and forward-tracked in public from the day this page published. The honest answer is the headline.
No setup beat simply holding once tested honestly. We say so plainly.
Its best setup only beat buy-and-hold in one window — a regime artifact, not a strategy. Buy-and-hold benchmark: +12.8% CAGR over 46.4 years (+12.6% CAGR in the out-of-sample window).
Educational research from historical backtests — not investment advice. Past performance does not predict future results.
LUV: we tested 757 setups and none beat simply holding Southwest Airlines
For Southwest Airlines (LUV), we ran 757 indicator configurations against a plain buy-and-hold benchmark, and none of them earned the right to replace it. Individual stocks carry idiosyncratic risk — earnings surprises, guidance changes, sector rotation — that indicators built on price history cannot see coming. The best-looking setup, SMC: Fair Value Gap on the daily timeframe, ranked at the top in-sample but delivered an out-of-sample Sharpe of 0.85, short of our hurdle of 0.98. Buy-and-hold returned +12.8% annualized over the test period; the top strategies mostly captured pieces of that same move while adding trading friction.
How to read this honestly: when you test 757 setups and keep the best one, something will always look impressive by chance alone. That is why we require the survivor to clear 0.98 out of sample. SMC: Fair Value Gap managed 0.85, with out-of-sample alpha of +6.0% across 13.9 years and 590 trades, and only 3.1% of everything we tested beat the benchmark on unseen data — roughly what luck would produce. None of this predicts anything: the regime that generated these numbers can shift, and single stocks shift faster than most. Treat this page as a record of what failed under honest testing, not a forecast.
Every figure above is computed from our own backtests — nothing is estimated or invented. Hypothetical results; not investment advice.
The least-bad setups — shown with their failure numbers
Nothing here earned a verdict — these are the best of a losing field, published so you can see exactly how "best" still failed.
SMC: Fair Value Gap
Mechanical rule (exactly as backtested): Long after a bullish 3-bar imbalance (fair value gap), flat after a bearish one. Signals are evaluated at daily-bar close, the position changes on the NEXT bar, 0.08% cost per side, long/flat only — no leverage, no shorting.
Out-of-sample (last ~30% of the window, never used to pick this setup): Sharpe 0.85 · alpha +6.0% · 157 trades over 13.9 yrs.
TEMA 30 Trend
Mechanical rule (exactly as backtested): VARIANT — price above a rising TEMA(30). Signals are evaluated at daily-bar close, the position changes on the NEXT bar, 0.08% cost per side, long/flat only — no leverage, no shorting.
Out-of-sample (last ~30% of the window, never used to pick this setup): Sharpe 0.83 · alpha +2.8% · 266 trades over 13.9 yrs.
Squeeze Momentum
Mechanical rule (exactly as backtested): LazyBear's linear-regression momentum — long while the histogram is positive and rising. Signals are evaluated at daily-bar close, the position changes on the NEXT bar, 0.08% cost per side, long/flat only — no leverage, no shorting.
Out-of-sample (last ~30% of the window, never used to pick this setup): Sharpe 0.83 · alpha -0.1% · 185 trades over 13.9 yrs.
Since publication — including if it loses
The forward record is just getting started — the gap between the two is the honest score. Marked to market nightly from real prices, rules frozen at publication, as of 2026-07-02. Currently LONG.
We tested 757 setups (indicator × parameters × timeframe) on Southwest Airlines (LUV). Only setups with ≥30 trades qualify (718 did). Setups are ranked by out-of-sample Sharpe — the last ~30% of history, which standard-parameter rules never saw during selection. Because picking the best of 757 tries mines even the holdout, the VALIDATED verdict additionally requires the top setup’s OOS Sharpe to clear a selection hurdle of 0.98 (√(2 ln N)/√T) AND positive alpha in both windows. Of the eligible setups, 3.1% had positive out-of-sample alpha (median OOS Sharpe 0.38) — the table below is truncated, but this summary covers all of them. Full recipe: methodology · the engine’s contract lives in the repo as STRATEGY_METHODOLOGY.md.
Top 20 of 718 eligible setups
Ranked by out-of-sample Sharpe. Full + out-of-sample columns, costs included. Hypothetical.
| # | Setup | TF | Total ret | Sharpe | Max DD | Win | Trades | α vs B&H | OOS Sharpe | OOS α | OOS trades |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SMC: Fair Value Gap | Daily | >+999% | 0.49 | -51.1% | 41.4% | 590 | -2.9% | 0.85 | +6.0% | 157 |
| 2 | TEMA 30 Trend | Daily | +551.3% | 0.29 | -94.0% | 42.6% | 980 | -8.6% | 0.83 | +2.8% | 266 |
| 3 | Squeeze Momentum | Daily | +160.0% | 0.2 | -84.8% | 45.7% | 645 | -10.7% | 0.83 | -0.1% | 185 |
| 4 | Zero-Lag LSMA | Weekly | +785.3% | 0.31 | -65.7% | 51.7% | 180 | -8.0% | 0.8 | +4.9% | 43 |
| 5 | Woodies CCI | Daily | +229.1% | 0.23 | -95.6% | 42.5% | 1,008 | -10.2% | 0.78 | +2.1% | 282 |
| 6 | Impulse MACD | Daily | +681.3% | 0.33 | -82.6% | 43.4% | 670 | -8.2% | 0.78 | -1.2% | 202 |
| 7 | Accumulation Swing Index | Weekly | >+999% | 0.38 | -76.8% | 47.8% | 525 | -6.1% | 0.77 | +3.4% | 151 |
| 8 | Swing Index | Weekly | >+999% | 0.38 | -76.8% | 47.8% | 525 | -6.1% | 0.77 | +3.4% | 151 |
| 9 | KDJ | Weekly | >+999% | 0.38 | -53.2% | 47.2% | 233 | -6.5% | 0.74 | +2.5% | 64 |
| 10 | Smoothed Heikin-Ashi | Daily | +468.8% | 0.27 | -92.2% | 40.7% | 852 | -8.9% | 0.73 | +2.4% | 242 |
| 11 | Instantaneous Trendline | Daily | >+999% | 0.47 | -58.6% | 40.2% | 482 | -3.4% | 0.72 | +2.5% | 133 |
| 12 | FRAMA 10/30 Cross | Daily | >+999% | 0.48 | -65.6% | 47.2% | 864 | -3.2% | 0.68 | +1.7% | 283 |
| 13 | SMC: Liquidity Sweep | Weekly | >+999% | 0.42 | -61.1% | 79.4% | 34 | -5.2% | 0.67 | +0.4% | 11 |
| 14 | Holt Double-Exp MA | Daily | -4.0% | 0.11 | -96.7% | 45.0% | 1,141 | -12.8% | 0.67 | -0.9% | 316 |
| 15 | Fisher Transform | Daily | +656.8% | 0.3 | -93.5% | 42.2% | 1,146 | -8.3% | 0.66 | +0.8% | 347 |
| 16 | Hull MA 15/60 Cross | Daily | +157.4% | 0.21 | -88.0% | 41.6% | 380 | -10.7% | 0.66 | +0.6% | 105 |
| 17 | Lorentzian Classification | Weekly | >+999% | 0.46 | -70.8% | 52.0% | 490 | -4.3% | 0.66 | +0.3% | 184 |
| 18 | Triangular Hull MA | Daily | +277.8% | 0.24 | -90.1% | 43.2% | 757 | -9.9% | 0.66 | -1.1% | 222 |
| 19 | Hull MA 30 Trend | Daily | +159.0% | 0.2 | -90.5% | 42.5% | 762 | -10.7% | 0.66 | -1.4% | 216 |
| 20 | Order-Flow Reversion | Weekly | +399.8% | 0.28 | -56.3% | 70.6% | 34 | -9.2% | 0.66 | -2.0% | 13 |
Hypothetical backtests with 0.08%/side costs. Not investment advice — see the full disclaimer.
These are historical backtests of mechanical rules. They are educational research, not investment advice, not a recommendation, and not tailored to you. Educational information only — not investment advice. Hypothetical backtested results; past performance does not guarantee future results. Trading involves risk of loss.