Subject: Re: Have Bear Catchers worked post-discovery?
isn't testing those 2 strategies only the first step before coming to hard conclusions?

The two strategies I tested are the same two that Robbie Geary himself described at this post:

http://www.datahelper.com/mi/s...

Note that Robbie tested from 1926 through Aug. 2019, whereas I tested the post-discovery period from 1/1/2009 to see if the results still hold up.

BCC > 0 means hold SPY as long as any one of the BCC indicators is bullish. This is the MT1 strategy I tested. Post-discovery, this strategy has not worked. It has exposed investors to the same massive declines during bear markets as the S&P 500 itself.

BCC = 7 means hold SPY only if all 3 BCCs are bullish. This is the MT2 strategy I tested. During the 6 severe corrections or bear markets in the post-discovery period, this strategy did limit declines to 10% or less during 3 of those periods. But it exposed investors to declines ranging from 12% to 16% during the other 3 periods. And, after 15 years, you wound up with less than half the amount of money compared to just buying and holding the index (CAGR = 7.9% compared to 14.4% for buy and hold). And you got whipsawed a lot (look at how many times NH-NL flipped just this year). And your Safe Withdrawal Rate declined to 6.8% compared to 12% for the index.

You're certainly welcome to test other values and conditions using the gtr1 link I gave at the top of this thread. Each BCC is represented by a binary digit where 0 is bearish and 1 is bullish. So the BCC state is 3 bits, and the range of values is 0 (all bearish) through 7 (all bullish). With gtr1, you can test BCC using the operators <, >, = and | (or). For example BCC = 1|3|5 means 1 or 3 or 5.

It's important to do periodic post-discovery testing to make sure the conclusions you arrived at 15 years ago are still valid today. Good luck to all.