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·12 min read·BestFolio Research Team

Updated

Five Ways to Survive Everything: The May 2026 Strategy Release

Once a month we ship a small batch of new strategies. May is diversification month. The five strategies below cover the four classic ways a portfolio can fall apart: stocks crash and stay down, bonds underperform inflation, both happen at the same time, and the trend reverses just as you finally lean in. Each strategy hedges a different combination of those failure modes. Run side by side, they cover the corners that any single strategy misses.

Three are community classics, one is a tactical canary model adapted from Ilya Kipnis's KDA, and one is a BestFolio Original built on capital-efficient ETFs that did not exist five years ago. We backtest all five with our standard fallback chain (real data when available, careful synthetic proxies before that). The combined record is on prod now and listed below.

Note, 5 October 2026: this is our May 2026 release post, and its figures are as of May 2026. The strategy cards have been rerun since then with longer histories and corrected data, so for current numbers see the live cards: Quartet, Dragon, Cockroach, Diversified Dual Momentum and KDA. We also corrected one line: the Cockroach's 10.38% CAGR was the lowest of the three fixed allocations, not of the whole batch, since DDM and KDA came in lower, and it trailed the S&P 500 over the same window rather than beating it.

Correction, 8 October 2026: the strategy figures in this post are now restated from each strategy's current card (runs of 5 October 2026), replacing the May 2026 figures the note above refers to. The biggest change is the 4-3-2-1 Dragon Standard: its card now starts in 1986 rather than 1994 and shows a 9.29% CAGR, a 1.18 Sharpe and a -19.8% maximum drawdown (was 10.71%, 1.20 and -19.6%). The Quartet is now 11.50% (was 13.79%), the Cockroach 9.08% (was 10.38%), Diversified Dual Momentum 7.79% (was 7.52%) and KDA Top 4 and Top 6 8.11% and 6.77% (were 8.44% and 7.09%). The Dragon still has the highest Sharpe in the batch and the Cockroach is still the lowest-returning of the three fixed allocations.

Correction, 12 October 2026: several strategy descriptions were wrong. BestFolio's Cockroach is Tony Dong's (20% each of XLP, XLU, XLV, GOVT and GLD), not a stocks, bonds, gold, managed futures and cash mix. KDA scores 8 risk assets, uses SHY and IEF as its canary and defends with 50% SHY and 50% IEF; the line saying its canary halved GEM's 2008 drawdown was false and was removed. Diversified Dual Momentum runs four 25% pods with a cash fallback. The Dragon's Capital Efficient and Leveraged versions run about 1.3x and 1.8x, and the Quartet about 1.55x. The worked blend table was recomputed from the cards.

Correction, 13 October 2026: the strategy this post called KDA (Kipnis Defensive Adaptive) is not Ilya Kipnis's model. It is BestFolio's adaptation, now named KDA-Style Canary Momentum: it takes its canary and its 13612W momentum from Keller and Keuning's Defensive Asset Allocation and applies them with its own rules. Kipnis's published KDA ranks ten different assets, keeps only those with positive momentum, weights them for minimum variance, uses emerging stocks and the aggregate bond market (VWO and BND) as a canary that sets the risky share at 0%, 50% or 100%, and puts the rest in IEF or cash. Its rules, holdings and figures here are unchanged.

Correction, 13 October 2026: Diversified Dual Momentum was credited to Gary Antonacci as if he had published it. It is our adaptation of his Composite Dual Momentum: the four 25% pods and the gold or long Treasuries pod are his, the other three asset pairs are ours.

Correction, 13 October 2026: the synthetic history of GDE before its March 2022 launch now matches the fund's 90/90 exposure (90% S&P 500 and 90% gold futures), so the two strategies here that hold it were rerun. The 4-3-2-1 Capital Efficient now shows a 10.09% CAGR, a 0.99 Sharpe and a -23.4% maximum drawdown (was 10.32%, 0.96 and -25.7%). The Quartet now shows 11.40%, a 0.96 Sharpe, a 1.64 Sortino, a -27.9% maximum drawdown and 12.9% volatility (was 11.50%, 0.95, 1.62, -28.9% and 13.2%). The other strategies' figures are unchanged.

Correction, 15 October 2026: the managed-futures history before KMLM now uses the BTOP 50 index (and DBMF from 2019), and volatility is now measured on observed prices (months rebuilt from monthly data count at their month-end returns), so the four strategies here that hold managed futures were rerun. The 4-3-2-1 Standard now shows a 9.66% CAGR, a 1.23 Sharpe and a -18.4% maximum drawdown (was 9.29%, 1.18 and -19.8%), the Capital Efficient 10.43%, 1.03 and -23.3% (was 10.09%, 0.99 and -23.4%), and the Leveraged 12.19%, 0.92 and -33.7% (was 11.67%, 0.88 and -35.2%). The Quartet now shows 11.74%, a 0.98 Sharpe, a 1.69 Sortino, a -26.0% maximum drawdown and 12.6% volatility (was 11.40%, 0.96, 1.64, -27.9% and 12.9%). The Dragon Standard still has the highest Sharpe in the batch.

Correction, 16 October 2026: early-1990s international and emerging-market history now uses index data instead of two actively managed funds, so Diversified Dual Momentum and both KDA-Style versions were rerun. Diversified Dual Momentum now shows a 7.83% CAGR (was 7.79%) with the same 1.00 Sharpe and -21.8% maximum drawdown, KDA Top 4 8.26% and a 1.00 Sharpe (was 8.11% and 0.98) and KDA Top 6 6.85% and a 0.95 Sharpe (was 6.77% and 0.94). The other strategies' figures are unchanged.

Correction, 18 October 2026: figures updated to the current cards. Sharpe and UPI are now measured above cash, see the changelog, so every Sharpe in this post is lower; returns and drawdowns did not change, and the 4-3-2-1 Standard still has the highest Sharpe in the batch. The Quartet's Sortino and volatility and Diversified Dual Momentum's return and history length now match their 17 October cards.

Correction, 22 October 2026: Sortino is now measured above cash, see the changelog.

The thesis: five different bets on what could go wrong

"Diversification" is a worn word, but it has a precise meaning when you stop thinking of it as "own a lot of stuff" and start thinking of it as own things that fail in different scenarios. The five strategies in this release each carry a different worldview about what goes wrong:

  • Return Stacked Quartet assumes you can layer four uncorrelated return streams on top of each other and compound them, accepting one lump of equity beta as the baseline.
  • 4-3-2-1 Dragon assumes a multi-decade regime where each economic state (growth, deflation, inflation, fiat debasement) gets a dedicated sleeve, and rebalancing harvests the volatility between them.
  • Cockroach Portfolio assumes the future will look like one of the 100-year bad scenarios, and that an equal-weight mix of defensive stock sectors, Treasuries and gold is the version that has historically survived all of them.
  • Diversified Dual Momentum assumes the past 12 months tell you something about the next one, and rotates within four pairs (US or international stocks, US or international bonds, REITs or commodities, gold or long Treasuries) based on relative and absolute trend.
  • KDA-Style Canary Momentum (our adaptation of KDA) assumes momentum works but only when a small canary basket is also rising; otherwise pile into bonds, no questions asked.

None of those five worldviews is right all the time. The point of running them together is that the spots where each is wrong are not the same spots. We will get to the regime table in the back half. First, the strategies themselves.

1. Return Stacked Quartet

Author: BestFolio Research. Type: fixed allocation. Rebalance: annual. Backtest: 1985 to 2026 (41 years).

This one is ours. The thesis behind Return Stacked Quartet is simple: since late 2023, three ETFs have made it possible to hold roughly 1.55x notional exposure to four uncorrelated assets in a passive, no-margin, taxable-account-friendly wrapper.

The allocation:

  • 20% NTSX (90% S&P 500 + 60% Treasury futures)
  • 20% GDE (90% S&P 500 + 90% gold futures)
  • 30% RSST (100% S&P 500 + 100% managed futures)
  • 30% ZROZ (long zero-coupon Treasuries)

Three of the four wrappers are capital-efficient ETFs: each one packs two return streams into the space of one. The 60% in NTSX, the 90% in GDE, and the 100% in RSST are all delivered via futures sitting on top of a cash equity sleeve. ZROZ is the unleveraged anchor: long-duration zero-coupon Treasuries that explode in value when rates collapse.

Why these weights specifically? We ran a 286-config sweep at 10% increments across the four legs and picked the maximum-Sharpe combination. The 25/25/25/25 equal-weight version is close behind in the sweep, but the optimum tilts slightly toward managed futures and long bonds (the two legs that contribute the most negative correlation to equity).

Backtest restated 17 October 2026 (1985-01 to 2026-10, ~41.8 years, annual rebalance):

  • CAGR: 13.00%
  • Sharpe: 0.77
  • Sortino: 1.28
  • Max drawdown: -27.9%
  • Annualized volatility: 13.2%

What is honest to say about these numbers. RSST has been live since late 2023. GDE since 2022. NTSX since 2018. The 41.8-year history is reconstructed by composing the underlying assets (90% SPY + 60% IEF for NTSX, etc.) using BestFolio's standard fallback chain. Since 23 September 2026 the reconstructed years before each fund launched also pay Fed funds plus 0.5% on the exposure beyond 100%, which lowered this strategy's backtest. The figures above include that charge. The strategy should work in the future for the same reason it works in the synthetic past: stacking uncorrelated streams compounds capital faster than holding any one alone. But anyone telling you they have 41 years of live data on RSST is selling something.

Who this fits. Investors who want growth-oriented diversification but do not want to manage margin or futures accounts. The 1.55x effective exposure means it is not the lowest-volatility option here. Among the options that avoid daily-reset leveraged ETFs, it has the highest backtest return; only the 4-3-2-1 Leveraged, built on UPRO, TMF and UGL, returned more (13.46% vs 13.00% CAGR).

2. The 4-3-2-1 Dragon

Author: Community research, inspired by Artemis Capital's "100 Year Portfolio". Type: fixed allocation. Rebalance: quarterly. Backtest: 1985 to 2026 (41 years).

Chris Cole's original Dragon Portfolio took the idea of regime-balanced allocation seriously. Each asset class is assigned to one of four economic regimes (growth, deflation, inflation, fiat debasement), and the dollar weights are set so each regime contributes roughly equal risk. Here is the published 2020 paper allocation next to what BestFolio actually runs as the 4-3-2-1:

Sleeve Cole 2020 paper 4-3-2-1 on BestFolio
Domestic equity24%40% (30% SPY + 10% AVUV)
Fixed income (long bonds)18%20% (ZROZ)
Gold19%10% (GLD)
Commodity trend / managed futures18%30% (KMLM)
Active long volatility21%0% (no retail ETF analog)

The community version drops Active Long Volatility entirely. Long-dated options and tail-risk overlays are not available in a clean retail ETF wrapper, so the community absorbed the missing crisis alpha by raising managed futures from 18% to 30%. Equity went from 24% to 40% with a small-cap value tilt for long-horizon factor exposure. Different bet, but in the same regime-diversification spirit. Treat 4-3-2-1 as the workable retail approximation, not as Cole's allocation.

The 4-3-2-1 Dragon on BestFolio is available in three flavors (figures restated 17 October 2026):

  • 4-3-2-1 Standard: 30% SPY, 10% AVUV (US small cap value), 30% KMLM (managed futures), 20% ZROZ, 10% GLD. CAGR 10.48%, Sharpe 0.90, MaxDD -18.4%.
  • 4-3-2-1 Capital Efficient: a roughly 1.3x version, 40% GDE (S&P 500 plus gold futures), 10% AVUV, 30% KMLM and 20% ZROZ. CAGR 11.51%, Sharpe 0.80, MaxDD -23.3%.
  • 4-3-2-1 Leveraged: a roughly 1.8x version using UPRO, TMF, UGL. CAGR 13.46%, Sharpe 0.75, MaxDD -33.9%.

The Standard version is the one most people run. Quarterly rebalancing harvests volatility between the legs without overtrading. The 0.90 Sharpe is the highest of any strategy in this batch, and the -18.4% max drawdown is one of the calmest 41-year records on the platform.

What makes the Dragon distinctive is the 30% allocation to managed futures. Most balanced portfolios cap MF at 5% to 10%. The Dragon's 30% is unusual, and it is the line item most likely to drift far from US equities in a stress regime. In 2022, when stocks and bonds both fell hard, KMLM made roughly +30%. That is the leg that turned the Dragon from "another all-weather" into something that genuinely paid for itself in the year it mattered.

Who this fits. Investors who like the all-weather thesis but want more crisis alpha than Dalio's classic mix delivers. Pick Standard for the cleanest record. Pick Capital Efficient or Leveraged only if you understand what 1.3x or 1.8x notional means for sequence-of-returns risk.

3. Cockroach Portfolio

Author: Tony Dong. Type: fixed allocation. Rebalance: quarterly. Backtest: 1985 to 2026 (41 years).

The Cockroach Portfolio takes the idea of "survives anything" to its logical conclusion: equal weights, five holdings, no opinion about what is going to happen.

  • 20% consumer staples (XLP)
  • 20% utilities (XLU)
  • 20% health care (XLV)
  • 20% US Treasuries (GOVT)
  • 20% gold (GLD)

Three defensive stock sectors, the things people keep buying in a recession, next to Treasuries and gold: ugly, slow, but hard to kill. The 0.81 Sharpe and -21.8% max drawdown over 41 years are the empirical version of "ugly but unkillable". The record before each fund launched (the sector funds in 1998, GLD in 2004, GOVT in 2012) is rebuilt from older index and fund histories.

What the Cockroach gives up is the upside. The 10.19% CAGR is the lowest of the three fixed allocations in this batch (the two tactical strategies, DDM and KDA, come in lower), and a little below the S&P 500's roughly 12% over the same window. But its worst drawdown, -21.8%, is well under half the index's -55.3%. In sequence-of-returns terms (which matter most for retirees), the Cockroach's long stretches of low single-digit losses translate to a much higher safe withdrawal rate than its CAGR suggests.

Who this fits. Capital preservation, retirees, anyone for whom a bad year matters more than a great year. Also: anyone who explicitly believes the next 30 years will not look like the last 30 (CAPE-justified pessimism, demographic transitions, geopolitical regime change). The Cockroach is the closest thing in the BestFolio catalog to a "this works in any future I can imagine" allocation.

4. Diversified Dual Momentum

Author: adapted from Gary Antonacci's Composite Dual Momentum. Type: tactical. Rebalance: monthly. Backtest: 1987 to 2026 (39 years).

Antonacci's Dual Momentum Investing (2014) is one of the most cited books in the modern TAA canon. The single-strategy version, called GEM and already on BestFolio, rotates monthly between US equities, international equities, and bonds based on which has the best 12-month return.

Diversified Dual Momentum is our multi-asset adaptation of Antonacci's Composite Dual Momentum, from his 2012 paper. Instead of a single binary equity-or-bonds bet, it runs four separate dual-momentum pods at 25% each: US or international stocks (SPY or VEU), US or international bonds (AGG or BWX), real estate or commodities (VNQ or DBC), and gold or long Treasuries (GLD or TLT). Each pod holds the stronger of its pair when that one has beaten T-bills over 12 months, and otherwise moves to cash. The four-pod structure and the gold or long Treasuries pod are Antonacci's; the other three pairs are ours (his use EFA for international stocks, pit investment-grade against high-yield credit, and equity against mortgage REITs). Corey Hoffstein's strategy of the same name is a different design: GEM run over seven lookbacks.

Backtest restated 17 October 2026 (1987-10 to 2026-10, 39 years):

  • CAGR: 7.72%
  • Sharpe: 0.62
  • Max drawdown: -21.8%

Two things about these numbers. First, 7.72% looks low compared to other tactical peers. The reason is structural: by holding bonds, real assets and gold in the universe, DDM captures returns that are typically less explosive than US equities. The flip side is the -22% max drawdown, which is materially better than most single-asset momentum strategies.

Second, this is one of the few strategies in the catalog where the diversification penalty is visible in the long-run CAGR. You give up some return in exchange for smoother behavior across regimes. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on how you intend to use the strategy. As a 100% allocation, it is unimpressive. As a 20% sleeve in a blended portfolio, it is pulling its weight by being on a different schedule than the equity-heavy peers.

Who this fits. Investors who already run trend-following strategies and want a less-correlated, more diversified version of dual momentum. Also: a useful "second momentum vote" if you already run GEM or HAA, because DDM signals will sometimes disagree with theirs in interesting ways.

5. KDA-Style Canary Momentum

Author: BestFolio, adapted from Keller and Keuning's Defensive Asset Allocation and named after Ilya Kipnis's KDA. Type: tactical. Rebalance: monthly. Backtest: 1985 to 2026 (41 years).

KDA-Style Canary Momentum is our adaptation of a well-known tactical idea. Ilya Kipnis's KDA (2019) is popular in the TAA community, but the version we run is not his: it keeps the canary trigger and the 13612W momentum of Keller and Keuning's Defensive Asset Allocation and applies them with its own rules, listed below. Kipnis's published KDA ranks ten different assets (SPY, VGK, EWJ, EEM, VNQ, RWX, IEF, TLT, DBC, GLD), keeps the top 5 only if their momentum is positive, weights them for minimum variance, uses VWO and BND as a canary that sets the risky share at 0%, 50% or 100%, and puts the rest in IEF or cash.

Mechanics:

  1. Each month, score the 8 risk assets (SPY, VEA, VWO, BND, LQD, TIP, DBC, GLD) on 13612W momentum (a weighted blend of 1-, 3-, 6-, and 12-month returns).
  2. Check the canary: if the 13612W momentum of SHY or IEF is negative, switch fully to defense, 50% SHY and 50% IEF.
  3. Otherwise, hold the top N risk assets equal-weighted (Top 4 or Top 6 variants on BestFolio).

Backtest restated 17 October 2026 (1985-01 to 2026-10, 41.8 years):

  • KDA Top 4: CAGR 8.50%, Sharpe 0.64, MaxDD -27.7%
  • KDA Top 6: CAGR 7.34%, Sharpe 0.57, MaxDD -26.2%

The Top 4 variant is the higher-octane one (more concentration, more volatility). The Top 6 is the smoother default. Their Sharpes are a little apart in our backtest (0.64 and 0.57): Top 4 has earned a bit more for its extra volatility, so the choice is not just cosmetic.

What makes this model distinctive in the broader TAA family is the canary mechanism. Most momentum strategies rotate continuously based on signal strength; they get whipsawed in fast 2018-style corrections that recover before the strategy notices. Its binary canary check means that when the bond market signals stress (SHY or IEF momentum turning negative), the whole portfolio moves to short and intermediate Treasuries at the next monthly rebalance. In 2022 it lost 9.6% (Top 6), against 16.1% for a classic 60/40.

Who this fits. Tactical investors who want momentum exposure but have been burned by whipsaws. Its canary is the most aggressive defensive trigger in the BestFolio catalog short of explicit regime detection.

How they complement each other

Five strategies that work in different regimes are valuable only if their misses are uncorrelated. Here is the regime fit of each release, classified by the type of failure they best survive:

StrategyBest regimeWorst regimeCrisis behavior
Return Stacked QuartetSteady growth + falling ratesSustained inflation with rising real ratesCushioned (4 streams, 30% bonds)
4-3-2-1 DragonAny single-axis regimeCoordinated stocks + bonds + gold sell-offStrong (30% MF carries the load)
CockroachTail-risk eventsLong secular bull marketStrong (lowest correlation to anything)
Diversified DMPersistent trends across multiple asset classesChoppy whipsaw years (2015, 2018)Strong if trend is clear, weak otherwise
KDASustained equity bull with canary intactV-shaped recoveries (false canary triggers)Strong (canary forces all-in defense)

Two of the five (Return Stacked Quartet and Dragon) bet on diversification across asset classes. Two more (DDM and KDA) bet on diversification across time: trend-following moves capital out of risk assets in falling markets, then back in when the trend reverses. Cockroach is the static, opinion-free baseline. The five together cover most of the decision space.

A worked blend: how five strategies turn into one portfolio

If you ran all five at equal weight (20% each), the capital allocation for May 2026 (each card's signal at the end of April 2026, KDA Top 6) would look like this:

AssetWeight (% of capital)Contributing strategies
Treasuries (ZROZ, GOVT, TIP)~17%Quartet, Dragon, Cockroach, KDA
Gold~14%Dragon, Cockroach, DDM, KDA
Stacked funds (NTSX, GDE, RSST)~14%Quartet
Defensive US sectors (staples, utilities, health care)~12%Cockroach
International equities~12%DDM, KDA
US equities (SPY, AVUV)~11%Dragon, KDA
Commodities~8%DDM, KDA
Managed futures~6%Dragon
US aggregate bonds~5%DDM

About 23% of the capital sits in US stocks and defensive sectors, and the three stacked funds add roughly 13 points of S&P 500 exposure on top of their bond, gold and managed-futures legs, with the rest distributed across Treasuries, gold, international stocks and commodities. This is the kind of allocation that institutional risk-parity desks have been running for years; the 5-strategy blend approximates it via products you can buy in any retail brokerage.

The Pro version of BestFolio's Blend tool will run the full backtest of any combination you build. We will not put a fabricated headline number here. Open the tool, pick your weights, see what you get.

What we left out

Three caveats so the picture is honest:

Synthetic data risk. Every strategy in this batch has at least some synthetic backtest history. RSST has 2.5 years live; KMLM has 5; ZROZ has 16. Long backtests are reconstructed from underlying components with cost assumptions that are reasonable but not perfect. The synthetic period should bracket the live period; the live period is too short to verify that.

Costs are real but not fully modeled. Capital-efficient ETFs have an implicit financing cost (you are effectively borrowing at the broker's repo rate to fund the futures overlay). Leveraged ETFs (TMF, UPRO, UGL) have decay from daily reset. Tactical strategies have transaction costs and slippage. Our backtests do model most of this. Daily-reset decay is built in, because leveraged series compound each day's leveraged return. Trades pay 10 basis points each way, more when markets are volatile. The simulated years of leveraged funds pay Fed funds plus 0.5% on the borrowed exposure, and since 23 September 2026 the simulated years of stacked funds pay the same on the exposure beyond 100%. Once a fund trades, its own price carries its real costs. That 0.5% is close for futures-based funds and for big leveraged ETFs like UPRO. Some newer swap-based funds (WLDU, WX, CTAP) pay their bank a spread on the full notional instead, about 2% to 4% of the fund a year in the filings we read, so since 5 October 2026 their simulated years pay that filed spread on the full notional. That spread costs 4.23% of the fund a year for WLDU, about 3.0% for WX and 1.91% for CTAP, on top of each fund's expense ratio. Adjust your expectations downward accordingly.

Update, 5 October 2026: this paragraph said a fix for swap-based funds was planned. It shipped on 5 October 2026, and the paragraph now says what our backtests do. No figure in this post changed.

Past behavior is not the same as future behavior. The past 40 years included one of the longest disinflation-and-falling-rate cycles in recorded history. Long Treasuries (ZROZ, TLT) were the best-performing single asset over much of that window. If we are in a new regime where rates stay higher for longer, the Quartet and Dragon lean meaningfully on a long-duration sleeve that may not work the same way, and Cockroach holds Treasuries too. The trend-following sleeves (RSST, KMLM, DDM, KDA) are partial protection against this; the 100% buy-and-hold mixes are not.

How to actually use these

Three practical paths, depending on how active you want to be:

  1. Pick one. If you can only run a single strategy, pick the one whose worldview you actually believe. Cockroach for "I want to survive anything", Dragon Standard for "I want all-weather but smoother", Quartet for "I want growth-oriented diversification", KDA or DDM if you are willing to commit to monthly tactical decisions.
  2. Pick two. Pair one fixed allocation (Quartet, Dragon, or Cockroach) with one tactical (KDA or DDM). The tactical does the regime detection; the fixed provides the steady carry.
  3. Run all five. Use the BestFolio Blend tool to define a 5-way portfolio and let the platform aggregate the monthly signals into a single rebalance recommendation.

All five strategies are visible to free users on the strategies page. Backtest details, current allocations, and signal alerts require a Pro subscription. The Blend tool and full multi-strategy backtests are Pro features.

What's next

June will continue the diversification theme with two more BestFolio Originals plus a third community classic. We will write up the empirical case for "five over one" with full multi-strategy walk-forward results, including how the blends would have rebalanced across the 2008 and 2020 crises.

Until then, the five May releases are live now. The Sharpe-optimization sweep that produced the Return Stacked Quartet's 20/20/30/30 weights is a good place to start if you want to see how we pick the parameters we ship.

Strategy backtest figures restated on 8 October 2026 from each strategy's current run, on 13 October 2026 for the Quartet and the 4-3-2-1 Capital Efficient, on 15 October 2026 for the Quartet and the three 4-3-2-1 versions, and on 16 October 2026 for Diversified Dual Momentum and both KDA versions; the worked blend allocation was recomputed on 12 October 2026 from each card's signal for May 2026. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Not investment advice; for educational purposes only.

Corrections

  • : 22 October 2026: Sortino is now measured above cash, see bestfolio.app/changelog
  • : 18 October 2026: the KDA Top 4 and Top 6 Sharpe ratios (0.64 and 0.57) are now a little apart, so the text no longer calls them close or the difference cosmetic.
  • : Sharpe ratios updated to the current cards, which since 18 October 2026 measure Sharpe above cash: Quartet 0.77, 4-3-2-1 Standard 0.90, Capital Efficient 0.80, Leveraged 0.75, Cockroach 0.81, Diversified Dual Momentum 0.62, KDA Top 4 0.64 and Top 6 0.57. Also carried from the 17 October restatement: Quartet Sortino 1.79 and volatility 13.2%, Diversified Dual Momentum 7.72% over 39 years.
  • : The 17 October 2026 restatement opened all five cards in January 1985 and raised their CAGRs; the per-strategy figures, the history lengths and the Cockroach comparison now match the cards.
  • : Card figures restated on 16 October 2026: early-1990s international and emerging-market history now uses index data instead of two actively managed funds. Diversified Dual Momentum now shows 7.83% a year (was 7.79%), KDA Top 4 8.26% with a 1.00 Sharpe (was 8.11% and 0.98) and KDA Top 6 6.85% with a 0.95 Sharpe (was 6.77% and 0.94).
  • : Card figures restated on 15 October 2026: the managed-futures history before KMLM now uses the BTOP 50 index, and volatility is now measured on observed prices. The Quartet and the three 4-3-2-1 versions were rerun: the Quartet is now 11.74% a year with 12.6% volatility, the 4-3-2-1 Standard 9.66% with a 1.23 Sharpe. The Dragon Standard keeps the batch's highest Sharpe.
  • : Wording corrected 13 October 2026: the Quartet is not the highest-return option in this post. The 4-3-2-1 Leveraged card is higher (11.67% vs 11.40% CAGR); the Quartet is the highest among the options without daily-reset leveraged ETFs.
  • : Figures restated 13 October 2026: the synthetic GDE history before March 2022 now matches the issuer's 90/90 exposure; card figures updated.
  • : Credit corrected: the strategy called KDA (Kipnis Defensive Adaptive) is BestFolio's adaptation, renamed KDA-Style Canary Momentum. Its canary and 13612W momentum come from Keller and Keuning's DAA; Kipnis's published KDA uses different assets, weights, canary and defence. Rules and figures unchanged.
  • : Credit corrected: Diversified Dual Momentum is our adaptation of Antonacci's Composite Dual Momentum, not a strategy he published. The four 25% pods and the gold or long Treasuries pod are his; the other three asset pairs are ours.
  • : Strategy descriptions corrected: Cockroach holds XLP, XLU, XLV, GOVT and GLD; KDA scores 8 risk assets with a SHY and IEF canary and a 50/50 SHY and IEF defense, and the claim that it halved GEM's 2008 drawdown was removed; Diversified Dual Momentum runs four 25% pods with a cash fallback; Dragon Capital Efficient and Leveraged run about 1.3x and 1.8x, the Quartet about 1.55x. The worked blend was recomputed.
  • : Strategy figures restated from each card's current backtest, replacing the May 2026 figures: 4-3-2-1 Dragon Standard now 9.29% CAGR, Sharpe 1.18, max drawdown -19.8% (was 10.71%, 1.20, -19.6%), with longer histories for the Dragon, Quartet, Diversified Dual Momentum and KDA. The Dragon still has the batch's highest Sharpe.
  • : Financing statement updated: the post said a fix was planned for swap-based funds. Since 5 October 2026 the backtests charge WLDU, WX and CTAP their filed spread on the full swap notional for their simulated years (4.23%, about 3.0% and 1.91% a year). No figure in the post changed.
  • : Figures labelled as of May 2026, with a note pointing to the live strategy cards for current numbers. Corrected the line calling the Cockroach's 10.38% CAGR the lowest in the batch: it was the lowest of the three fixed allocations, while Diversified Dual Momentum (7.52%) and KDA (8.44% and 7.09%) were lower, and it was a little below the S&P 500 over the same window, not above it.

Revision history

  1. What our backtests model, updated

    The post said nothing beyond expense ratios was modeled. Our backtests charge trading costs, financing on leveraged funds' simulated years and, since 23 September 2026, on stacked funds' simulated years at Fed funds plus 0.5%. That rate is too low for some swap-based funds; a fix is planned.

Figure sources

The strategy figures in this post were read from these published backtest runs. Each strategy page shows its latest run, which may differ.

  • diversified-dm (diversified-dm-standard), backtest run of 1987-10-30 to 2026-10-21. Engine drift-until-flip-v1, data version d903befb, published 2026-10-17.

Past performance does not guarantee future results. Backtested results are hypothetical and do not represent actual trading.

Written with the help of AI tools and reviewed before publication.

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Data and method

Study dates and assumptions are documented in the article and its revisions. Our current methodology explains the platform's data sources, proxy histories, trade timing and inflation treatment.

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