Strategy Recalibration Breakout

This report evaluates the Breakout strategy through signal diagnostics, parameter selection, robustness testing, and portfolio integration. It examines whether historical performance holds up under recent conditions and whether the strategy adds value to the portfolio. Despite strong results over the full sample, weaker recent performance and substantial overlap with existing strategies support the decision to retire Breakout.



The fig­ures below are the inter­ac­tive ver­sions of the fig­ures in the arti­cle, in the arti­cle’s order and under the arti­cle’s num­bers. Hov­er a series for its val­ues, drag across a chart to zoom and dou­ble-click to reset, and click a leg­end entry to hide or iso­late a series.


Fig­ure 1. The trad­able uni­verse has grown rough­ly five­fold since 1980.

Note: Dai­ly counts, 1975–2026, smoothed for read­abil­i­ty.

Fig­ure 2. Sig­nal behav­ior across look­backs and asset class­es. The lines show the mean (A and B) or medi­an ©, the dark band the 5th–95th per­centile, and the light band the min­i­mum-to-max­i­mum range.

Note: Mea­sured across the full uni­verse, 1975–2026; look­backs 5–600.

Fig­ure 3. Three instru­ments, three look­backs, a two-year win­dow drawn at ran­dom.

Note: Short­er look­backs are more volatile because they rely on less data.

Fig­ure 4. One robust para­me­ter region across mar­ket regimes: 160–480 days.

Note: Full uni­verse, 1975–2026; the regime-aver­aged line is the mean over the three mar­ket regimes in Table 1.

Fig­ure 5. The equi­ty curves of the select­ed look­backs, 1975–2026.

Note: Each look­back is sim­u­lat­ed inde­pen­dent­ly.

Fig­ure 6. Cor­re­la­tions decline as look­backs diverge, indi­cat­ing greater diver­si­fi­ca­tion across dis­tant look­backs.

Note: Each cell com­pares two look­backs over the full sam­ple.

Fig­ure 7. Select­ed ensem­ble (200, 280, 370) and its asset-class com­po­nents, 1975–2026.

Note: The gray band below the axis is the draw­down.

Fig­ure 8. The first and last decades are only par­tial­ly cov­ered by the sam­ple.

Note: Each decade eval­u­at­ed in iso­la­tion.

Fig­ure 9. Cor­re­la­tions decline as two look­backs move far­ther apart, from 95% between neigh­bors to 84% at the extremes.

Note: Dark­er cells indi­cate stronger co-move­ment; the diag­o­nal is self-com­par­i­son.

Fig­ure 10. The strongest and weak­est instru­ments owe their results to short data his­to­ries rather than to a sig­nal defect.

Note: Three best and three worst by Sharpe ratio, 1975–2026.

Fig­ure 11. Full uni­verse split into liq­uid­i­ty quin­tiles by 20-day aver­age risk vol­ume, 1975–2026.

Note: Quin­tile 1 holds the most liq­uid instru­ments.

Fig­ure 12. The Sharpe ratios do not fol­low the liq­uid­i­ty order­ing of the equi­ty curves.

Note: Full uni­verse, 1975–2026, in quin­tiles by 20-day risk vol­ume; Quin­tile 1 is the most liq­uid.

Fig­ure 13. A one-day exe­cu­tion delay has lit­tle impact; per­for­mance dete­ri­o­rates grad­u­al­ly as the lag increas­es.

Note: Select­ed ensem­ble, 1975–2026; orders held back one to five trad­ing days.

Fig­ure 14. Rolling refits reveal no cal­i­bra­tion prob­lem rel­a­tive to the full-sam­ple fit.

Note: Year­ly refit against the full-sam­ple para­me­ters, 1985–2025.

Fig­ure 15. The rolling Sharpe ratio varies mate­ri­al­ly over time, with weak­er read­ings in recent years.

Note: Trail­ing one-year Sharpe ratio, smoothed expo­nen­tial­ly.

Fig­ure 16. High over­lap with three oth­er trend strate­gies.

Note: This strat­e­gy against each exist­ing strat­e­gy, 1975–2026.

Fig­ure 17. Equi­ty curves of the port­fo­lio with and with­out the strat­e­gy, 1975–2026.

Note: Cal­cu­lat­ed using pro­duc­tion para­me­ters before dynam­ic opti­miza­tion.

Fig­ure 18. Change in annu­al­ized return by decade after includ­ing the strat­e­gy.

Note: Each decade eval­u­at­ed in iso­la­tion; the first and last are only par­tial­ly cov­ered by the sam­ple.

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