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: +12.7% CAGR over 46.8 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 751 setups and none beat simply holding Southwest Airlines
For Southwest Airlines (LUV), we ran 751 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, TEMA 30 Trend on the daily timeframe, ranked at the top in-sample but delivered an out-of-sample Sharpe of 0.9, short of our hurdle of 0.97. Buy-and-hold returned +12.7% 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 751 setups and keep the best one, something will always look impressive by chance alone. That is why we require the survivor to clear 0.97 out of sample. TEMA 30 Trend managed 0.9, with out-of-sample alpha of +4.4% across 14.0 years and 984 trades, and only 6.3% 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.
TEMA 30 Trend
What it is: A trend-following rule: it holds while a smoothed trend reference is pointing up and goes flat when it turns. Long/flat only — no leverage, no shorting. The parameters we tested are not published.
How it was tested: signals evaluated at daily-bar close, the position changes on the NEXT bar, 0.08% cost per side. Same engine, same cost model, same out-of-sample split as every other number on this site.
Out-of-sample (last ~30% of the window, never used to pick this setup): Sharpe 0.9 · alpha +4.4% · 264 trades over 14.0 yrs.
SMC: Fair Value Gap
What it is: An order-flow / liquidity model: it reads signed volume to judge whether buyers or sellers are actually being absorbed. Long/flat only — no leverage, no shorting. The parameters we tested are not published.
How it was tested: signals evaluated at daily-bar close, the position changes on the NEXT bar, 0.08% cost per side. Same engine, same cost model, same out-of-sample split as every other number on this site.
Out-of-sample (last ~30% of the window, never used to pick this setup): Sharpe 0.87 · alpha +6.7% · 160 trades over 14.0 yrs.
Impulse MACD
What it is: A momentum rule: it holds while rate-of-change stays positive and steps aside when it rolls over. Long/flat only — no leverage, no shorting. The parameters we tested are not published.
How it was tested: signals evaluated at daily-bar close, the position changes on the NEXT bar, 0.08% cost per side. Same engine, same cost model, same out-of-sample split as every other number on this site.
Out-of-sample (last ~30% of the window, never used to pick this setup): Sharpe 0.86 · alpha +0.1% · 198 trades over 14.0 yrs.
Since publication — including if it loses
The setup is ahead so far — over a window this short that is mostly noise. Marked to market nightly from real prices, rules frozen at publication, as of 2026-10-26. Currently FLAT.
We tested 751 setups (indicator × parameters × timeframe) on Southwest Airlines (LUV). Only setups with ≥30 trades qualify (711 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 751 tries mines even the holdout, the VALIDATED verdict additionally requires the top setup’s OOS Sharpe to clear a selection hurdle of 0.97 (√(2 ln N)/√T) AND positive alpha in both windows. Of the eligible setups, 6.3% had positive out-of-sample alpha (median OOS Sharpe 0.39) — the table below is truncated, but this summary covers all of them. How we test: methodology. The scoring contract is published in full; the parameters of each individual setup are not.
Top 20 of 711 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 | TEMA 30 Trend | Daily | +663.1% | 0.3 | -94.0% | 42.7% | 984 | -8.3% | 0.9 | +4.4% | 264 |
| 2 | SMC: Fair Value Gap | Daily | >+999% | 0.47 | -61.5% | 40.8% | 590 | -3.4% | 0.87 | +6.7% | 160 |
| 3 | Impulse MACD | Daily | +749.4% | 0.34 | -82.6% | 43.5% | 673 | -8.0% | 0.86 | +0.1% | 198 |
| 4 | Woodies CCI | Daily | +280.3% | 0.24 | -95.5% | 42.5% | 1,012 | -9.8% | 0.85 | +3.7% | 280 |
| 5 | Squeeze Momentum | Daily | +175.5% | 0.21 | -84.8% | 46.1% | 649 | -10.5% | 0.84 | +0.1% | 184 |
| 6 | Smoothed Heikin-Ashi | Daily | +563.1% | 0.29 | -92.2% | 40.8% | 857 | -8.6% | 0.83 | +4.8% | 240 |
| 7 | Zero-Lag LSMA | Weekly | +907.2% | 0.32 | -65.8% | 52.0% | 179 | -7.6% | 0.81 | +5.0% | 42 |
| 8 | Accumulation Swing Index | Weekly | >+999% | 0.38 | -77.2% | 47.7% | 526 | -6.0% | 0.81 | +4.3% | 149 |
| 9 | Swing Index | Weekly | >+999% | 0.38 | -77.3% | 47.7% | 526 | -6.0% | 0.81 | +4.3% | 149 |
| 10 | Instantaneous Trendline | Daily | >+999% | 0.48 | -58.6% | 40.3% | 484 | -3.2% | 0.8 | +4.6% | 130 |
| 11 | KDJ | Weekly | >+999% | 0.39 | -53.2% | 47.2% | 233 | -6.1% | 0.78 | +3.5% | 63 |
| 12 | Hull MA 15/60 Cross | Daily | +192.0% | 0.22 | -88.0% | 42.3% | 383 | -10.4% | 0.74 | +2.4% | 104 |
| 13 | Gann HiLo Activator | Weekly | >+999% | 0.41 | -68.5% | 43.3% | 171 | -5.2% | 0.73 | +3.3% | 46 |
| 14 | FRAMA 10/30 Cross | Daily | >+999% | 0.49 | -65.6% | 47.7% | 873 | -3.0% | 0.72 | +2.7% | 288 |
| 15 | Woodie Pivots | Weekly | >+999% | 0.34 | -76.8% | 48.5% | 513 | -7.0% | 0.72 | +2.2% | 141 |
| 16 | Holt Double-Exp MA | Daily | +5.2% | 0.12 | -96.7% | 45.0% | 1,146 | -12.6% | 0.72 | +0.2% | 313 |
| 17 | Parabolic SAR | Daily | +615.1% | 0.29 | -92.2% | 44.2% | 514 | -8.4% | 0.71 | +2.0% | 148 |
| 18 | DeMarker (7) | Daily | +466.0% | 0.27 | -88.1% | 43.6% | 851 | -8.9% | 0.71 | +1.9% | 240 |
| 19 | Rate of Change | Daily | >+999% | 0.38 | -69.8% | 39.4% | 761 | -6.0% | 0.71 | +1.7% | 202 |
| 20 | Hull MA 30 Trend | Daily | +184.5% | 0.21 | -90.5% | 42.7% | 766 | -10.4% | 0.71 | -0.3% | 213 |
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.