Backtest: Buy LNG at the close when its 20-day total return beats SPY by at least 5 per...
The pitch sounds reasonable: buy LNG when it's beating SPY by five points over 20 days while Brent is falling, then hold until relative momentum slips. A gas exporter that decouples from crude is being repriced on contracted volumes, not oil beta.
The backtest made money — +14.61% on $100,000 across 33 closed trades, with 57.6% of them winners. The problem is everything around it. Over the same window, simply owning SPY returned +76.34%, leaving the strategy 61.73 points behind. A positive win rate and a positive return can still describe a losing idea once you account for what the money could have done instead.
The full trade-by-tape evidence, including a +11.82% best and -15.87% worst, is below.
Buy LNG at the close when its 20-day total return beats SPY by at least 5 percentage points while Brent crude's 20-day return is negative; exit when LNG's 5-day total return trails SPY by at least 2 percentage points or after 10 trading days, whichever comes first. A gas-exporting name outrunning broad equities while crude slides is being priced on contracted LNG cash flows rather than oil beta, and that leadership tends to persist until relative momentum stalls.
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 LNG at the close when its 20-day total return beats SPY by at least 5 percentage points while Brent crude's 20-day return is negative; exit when LNG's 5-day total return trails SPY by at least 2 percentage points or after 10 trading days, whichever comes first. A gas-exporting name outrunning broad equities while crude slides is being priced on contracted LNG cash flows rather than oil beta, and that leadership tends to persist until relative momentum stalls.
The key numbers
The charts
The takeaway
The strategy returned +14.61% on $100,000 starting capital across 33 closed trades with a 58% win rate. Over the same window SPY buy-and-hold returned +76.34%, so the strategy finished trailing the benchmark by 61.73 points. Best single trade +11.82%, worst -15.87%.
The fine print
- Simulated results on historical data — fills, slippage and costs are idealized.
- Past performance does not predict future results.