Paper portfolio vs the S&P 500
USD, at each US market close. Both lines start from the same $10,000: the paper portfolio, and the same amount put into the S&P 500 (SPY) on day one.
Current holdings
Weights after the latest close. Cash earns a money-market rate.
Latest monthly picks
The 10 stocks chosen at the latest month end. RS rank is the stock’s relative strength against the whole US market over the past year (100 = strongest). Growth compares the latest quarter with a year earlier.
Recent trades
How it works
Earnings leaders: a US stock paper portfolio
This is a rules-based portfolio of US stocks run on paper, with no real money, since November 2026. Its job is to find out, on new data, whether an approach that looked promising in research also works going forward.
The idea
Stocks of companies whose profits are growing fast tend to keep rising for months after strong results, because investors and analysts adjust slowly and large funds build positions over weeks. Price strength alone is not enough: in our research, buying the strongest stocks without checking earnings lost heavily, because it bought hype. The portfolio therefore asks for both.
How it picks stocks
On the last trading day of each month, a program screens every liquid US stock and keeps those that:
- are in a strong, established uptrend and among the strongest 20% of the market over the past year, and
- reported fast, accelerating growth in their latest quarter (earnings per share and revenue well above a year earlier), using only reports already public on that day.
It holds the 10 strongest of these, in equal amounts, and makes the changes at the next morning’s open. Nothing is traded between month ends. Uninvested money earns a money-market rate.
What to expect
This is a concentrated, high-volatility approach. In research covering 2017 to 2026 it had very strong years and some losing ones, could trail the S&P 500 for long stretches, and had falls of more than a third from its peak. That research is a starting hypothesis, not a promise: it was done with free data that misses some failed companies, and the idea was chosen after studying the results, so the live paper record is the real test.
Live vs paper vs backtest
- Paper: the portfolio shown here, traded on real prices with estimated costs but no real money.
- Backtest: the same rules applied to past data. It is shown only as context.
Past results, backtested or paper, don’t predict future returns. For information only, not investment advice.