Meta Platforms (META): three strategies, 2019–2024.

Holding Meta Platforms over these years returned 333%, a Sharpe ratio of 0.65. At their default settings one of the three rules beat that Sharpe. Tuned on the first 70% of the period and scored on the rest, two of the three held up.

Against holding it

Each rule at the workspace's default parameters, with 10 basis points of cost on every change of position, over 1,510 trading days.

	Total return	Sharpe	Worst fall
Buy and hold	333%	0.65	−77%
Momentum	−24%	−0.12	−67%
MACD	−82%	−0.59	−93%
Bollinger	58%	0.71	−16%

On years it never saw

For each rule, every combination in its grid was run on the period up to 2023-03-15, the best was picked, and only that one was scored on what came after. How walk-forward works.

	Picked	Sharpe, tuned	Sharpe, after	Verdict
Momentum	lookback 20 · MA 100	0.14	0.91	held up
MACD	16 / 34 / 9	−0.27	−0.38	failed
Bollinger	10 days · 2.5σ	1.10	0.78	held up

Skill or luck

Three more readings of the same runs. A permutation p-value under 0.05 means the timing beat random timing; a probability of overfitting near 0.5 or above means picking by backtest did no better than picking at random; the rolling column slides the split through the period. What each one asks.

	Permutation p	Probability of overfitting	Across rolling windows
Momentum	0.235	0.10	depends on the window
MACD	0.649	0.23	depends on the window
Bollinger	0.004	0.16	positive in every window

Hypothetical results on past data (2019-01-02 to 2024-12-31), from a script in the repository that re-runs every figure. Not a recommendation to buy, sell or trade Meta Platforms or any other security.

Run it yourself

Each opens in the workspace on Meta Platforms over the same dates, straight after sign-up if you are new. Change the ticker or the dates and the numbers change with them, which is the point.

Momentum on Meta Platforms MACD on Meta Platforms Bollinger on Meta Platforms

Other US stocks: Apple · Microsoft · Nvidia · Amazon · Alphabet · Tesla · JPMorgan Chase · S&P 500 ETF (SPY) · Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ) · AMD · Netflix · Berkshire Hathaway · Visa · Bank of America · Walmart · Coca-Cola · Johnson & Johnson · ExxonMobil · Disney · Dow Jones ETF (DIA) · Russell 2000 ETF (IWM). All of them.