Backtest: Buy HAL at the close when it closes above its prior 10-day high while Brent c...
A services name breaking out while crude is soft is supposed to be the good kind of strength — backlog and pricing power rather than oil beta. That is the premise behind buying HAL on a close above its prior 10-day high, but only while Brent trades under its 50-day average, then stepping out on a break of the 5-day or after eight sessions.
The backtest made money: +16.92% on $100,000 across six closed trades and a 50% win rate. It also finished 59.42 points behind SPY over the same window, which is the more interesting number of the two — a small sample, a modest edge, and a benchmark that simply outran it.
Whether the crude filter genuinely isolates the non-oil bid, and where those six trades actually earned their returns, is broken out below.
Buy HAL at the close when it closes above its prior 10-day high while Brent crude closes below its 50-day simple moving average; exit when HAL closes below its 5-day simple moving average or after 8 trading days, whichever comes first. A services name breaking out while crude is soft signals backlog and pricing power rather than oil beta, so that non-crude bid tends to persist as investors re-rate the offshore/equipment cycle.
How this was measured
This is a simulated backtest generated from the plain-English strategy below, executed bar-by-bar on historical market data using the price + news data mode with $100,000 starting capital. Strategy: Buy HAL at the close when it closes above its prior 10-day high while Brent crude closes below its 50-day simple moving average; exit when HAL closes below its 5-day simple moving average or after 8 trading days, whichever comes first. A services name breaking out while crude is soft signals backlog and pricing power rather than oil beta, so that non-crude bid tends to persist as investors re-rate the offshore/equipment cycle.
The key numbers
The charts
The takeaway
The strategy returned +16.92% on $100,000 starting capital across 6 closed trades with a 50% win rate. Over the same window SPY buy-and-hold returned +76.34%, so the strategy finished trailing the benchmark by 59.42 points. Best single trade +12.42%, worst -2.33%.
The fine print
- Simulated results on historical data — fills, slippage and costs are idealized.
- Past performance does not predict future results.
- Only 6 closed trades in the window — a small sample.