Does anything beat buy & hold on Merck & Co. (MRK)?
Every setup we tested on Merck & Co. (MRK) — 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: +12.4% CAGR over 64.3 years (+9.3% CAGR in the out-of-sample window).
Educational research from historical backtests — not investment advice. Past performance does not predict future results.
MRK: we tested 758 setups and none beat simply holding Merck & Co.
For Merck & Co. (MRK), we ran 758 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, Intraday Momentum Index on the daily timeframe, ranked at the top in-sample but delivered an out-of-sample Sharpe of 0.73, short of our hurdle of 0.83. Buy-and-hold returned +12.4% 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 758 setups and keep the best one, something will always look impressive by chance alone. That is why we require the survivor to clear 0.83 out of sample. Intraday Momentum Index managed 0.73, with out-of-sample alpha of +2.6% across 19.3 years and 188 trades, and only 0.3% 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.
Intraday Momentum Index
Mechanical rule (exactly as backtested): Open-to-close RSI — buy up through 30, exit above 70. 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 0.73 · alpha +2.6% · 61 trades over 19.3 yrs.
Connors RSI
Mechanical rule (exactly as backtested): Connors' composite RSI (price + streak) — buy below 20, exit above 70. Signals are evaluated at weekly-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 0.69 · alpha -0.1% · 50 trades over 19.4 yrs.
Net Volume
Mechanical rule (exactly as backtested): Signed volume summed over a window — long while net buying. Signals are evaluated at weekly-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 0.62 · alpha -0.4% · 48 trades over 19.4 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 758 setups (indicator × parameters × timeframe) on Merck & Co. (MRK). Only setups with ≥30 trades qualify (727 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 758 tries mines even the holdout, the VALIDATED verdict additionally requires the top setup’s OOS Sharpe to clear a selection hurdle of 0.83 (√(2 ln N)/√T) AND positive alpha in both windows. Of the eligible setups, 0.3% had positive out-of-sample alpha (median OOS Sharpe 0.13) — 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 727 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 | Intraday Momentum Index | Daily | >+999% | 0.47 | -48.8% | 71.8% | 188 | -5.8% | 0.73 | +2.6% | 61 |
| 2 | Connors RSI | Weekly | >+999% | 0.49 | -37.4% | 74.2% | 155 | -6.1% | 0.69 | -0.1% | 50 |
| 3 | Net Volume | Weekly | >+999% | 0.46 | -68.5% | 51.6% | 155 | -5.7% | 0.62 | -0.4% | 48 |
| 4 | Liquidity Flow Oscillator | Weekly | >+999% | 0.46 | -68.5% | 51.6% | 155 | -5.7% | 0.62 | -0.4% | 48 |
| 5 | Order-Flow Reversion | Daily | >+999% | 0.44 | -30.4% | 73.1% | 223 | -7.6% | 0.62 | -1.5% | 80 |
| 6 | Predictive Ranges | Weekly | >+999% | 0.4 | -78.2% | 45.5% | 165 | -6.5% | 0.61 | +0.2% | 30 |
| 7 | Stochastic | Daily | >+999% | 0.44 | -45.7% | 71.0% | 300 | -6.4% | 0.6 | -0.7% | 89 |
| 8 | T3 10/40 Cross | Weekly | >+999% | 0.61 | -46.2% | 63.9% | 36 | -2.7% | 0.59 | -0.1% | 12 |
| 9 | EMA 10/40 Cross | Weekly | >+999% | 0.62 | -62.3% | 53.8% | 39 | -1.9% | 0.58 | -0.2% | 10 |
| 10 | Detrended Price Osc. | Weekly | >+999% | 0.47 | -48.2% | 59.8% | 410 | -5.4% | 0.55 | -0.9% | 125 |
| 11 | Pivot Points (Standard) | Weekly | >+999% | 0.45 | -52.5% | 57.7% | 471 | -6.5% | 0.55 | -2.0% | 143 |
| 12 | SMC: Liquidity Sweep | Daily | >+999% | 0.43 | -61.0% | 74.8% | 214 | -6.3% | 0.54 | -0.8% | 69 |
| 13 | Bollinger Mean-Reversion | Daily | >+999% | 0.41 | -31.5% | 70.2% | 255 | -7.8% | 0.54 | -2.3% | 90 |
| 14 | Fibonacci Bands | Daily | >+999% | 0.41 | -31.5% | 70.2% | 255 | -7.8% | 0.54 | -2.3% | 90 |
| 15 | Connors RSI-2 | Weekly | >+999% | 0.39 | -37.5% | 73.9% | 134 | -7.9% | 0.54 | -2.9% | 44 |
| 16 | Volatility Regime (VIX-style) | Weekly | >+999% | 0.49 | -43.4% | 52.5% | 120 | -7.0% | 0.54 | -3.0% | 39 |
| 17 | CCI (200) | Daily | >+999% | 0.62 | -58.7% | 28.8% | 191 | -2.5% | 0.53 | -1.6% | 62 |
| 18 | Fibonacci Pivots | Weekly | >+999% | 0.41 | -57.4% | 57.9% | 508 | -7.2% | 0.53 | -2.1% | 157 |
| 19 | EMA 50/200 Cross | Daily | >+999% | 0.62 | -57.4% | 50.0% | 38 | -2.0% | 0.52 | -1.4% | 10 |
| 20 | ROC (20) | Weekly | >+999% | 0.52 | -57.5% | 48.4% | 153 | -4.2% | 0.52 | -1.6% | 56 |
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.