Does anything beat buy & hold on Shell?
Every setup we tested on Shell — 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: +13.4% CAGR over 42.4 years (+6.4% CAGR in the out-of-sample window).
Educational research from historical backtests — not investment advice. Past performance does not predict future results.
SHEL: we tested 745 setups and none beat simply holding Shell
For Shell (SHEL), we ran 745 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, VIDYA on the weekly timeframe, ranked at the top in-sample but delivered an out-of-sample Sharpe of 0.55, short of our hurdle of 1.02. Buy-and-hold returned +13.4% 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 745 setups and keep the best one, something will always look impressive by chance alone. That is why we require the survivor to clear 1.02 out of sample. VIDYA managed 0.55, with out-of-sample alpha of +2.5% across 12.8 years and 72 trades, and only 4.5% 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.
VIDYA
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 weekly-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 0.55 · alpha +2.5% · 24 trades over 12.8 yrs.
T3 200 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 0.54 · alpha +1.1% · 18 trades over 12.7 yrs.
MAMA / FAMA
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 weekly-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 0.53 · alpha +2.0% · 10 trades over 12.8 yrs.
Since publication — including if it loses
Buy-and-hold is ahead so far — we publish that too. That is the point. Marked to market nightly from real prices, rules frozen at publication, as of 2026-09-07. Currently LONG.
We tested 745 setups (indicator × parameters × timeframe) on Shell. Only setups with ≥30 trades qualify (689 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 745 tries mines even the holdout, the VALIDATED verdict additionally requires the top setup’s OOS Sharpe to clear a selection hurdle of 1.02 (√(2 ln N)/√T) AND positive alpha in both windows. Of the eligible setups, 4.5% had positive out-of-sample alpha (median OOS Sharpe 0.16) — 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 689 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 | VIDYA | Weekly | >+999% | 0.4 | -56.5% | 43.1% | 72 | -4.4% | 0.55 | +2.5% | 24 |
| 2 | T3 200 Trend | Daily | -63.8% | 0.05 | -96.2% | 32.0% | 147 | -15.8% | 0.54 | +1.1% | 18 |
| 3 | MAMA / FAMA | Weekly | >+999% | 0.37 | -51.6% | 60.8% | 51 | -5.7% | 0.53 | +2.0% | 10 |
| 4 | Standard Error Bands | Daily | -99.1% | -0.69 | -99.6% | 36.8% | 125 | -23.9% | 0.52 | -3.3% | 28 |
| 5 | T3 30 Trend | Weekly | -80.3% | -0.04 | -93.5% | 44.6% | 92 | -17.1% | 0.51 | +0.8% | 14 |
| 6 | Balance of Power | Weekly | +115.8% | 0.2 | -78.5% | 56.0% | 134 | -11.6% | 0.51 | +0.6% | 38 |
| 7 | EMA 30 Trend | Weekly | -94.8% | -0.05 | -98.6% | 48.3% | 143 | -20.1% | 0.49 | +1.1% | 26 |
| 8 | CCI (30) | Weekly | -84.6% | 0.03 | -95.6% | 47.9% | 121 | -17.7% | 0.49 | +1.1% | 22 |
| 9 | KAMA 200 Trend | Daily | -99.9% | -0.21 | -100.0% | 30.7% | 300 | -28.1% | 0.49 | +1.0% | 57 |
| 10 | WMA 10/30 Cross | Weekly | >+999% | 0.36 | -54.9% | 45.8% | 48 | -5.9% | 0.49 | +1.0% | 11 |
| 11 | Cutler's RSI | Weekly | -97.2% | -0.14 | -99.2% | 57.5% | 207 | -21.5% | 0.49 | +0.9% | 41 |
| 12 | ROC (14) | Weekly | -97.3% | -0.15 | -99.2% | 57.8% | 206 | -21.5% | 0.49 | +0.9% | 41 |
| 13 | CMO (14) | Weekly | -97.3% | -0.15 | -99.2% | 57.8% | 206 | -21.5% | 0.49 | +0.9% | 41 |
| 14 | SMA 10/30 Cross | Weekly | >+999% | 0.38 | -41.9% | 56.1% | 41 | -5.3% | 0.48 | +1.0% | 10 |
| 15 | ROC (30) | Weekly | +92.6% | 0.21 | -73.9% | 49.1% | 114 | -11.8% | 0.48 | +1.0% | 22 |
| 16 | CMO (30) | Weekly | +92.6% | 0.21 | -73.9% | 49.1% | 114 | -11.8% | 0.48 | +1.0% | 22 |
| 17 | Momentum (30) | Weekly | +92.6% | 0.21 | -73.9% | 49.1% | 114 | -11.8% | 0.48 | +1.0% | 22 |
| 18 | CCI (200) | Daily | -99.4% | -0.1 | -99.9% | 31.8% | 214 | -24.8% | 0.48 | +0.8% | 33 |
| 19 | RSI Trend (>50) | Weekly | -96.6% | -0.08 | -99.0% | 48.7% | 152 | -21.1% | 0.47 | +0.7% | 27 |
| 20 | KAMA 30 Trend | Weekly | >+999% | 0.33 | -63.5% | 42.0% | 81 | -7.1% | 0.47 | +0.7% | 25 |
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.