alphy.live: an automated leveraged-tech trading strategy, live

Match 3x tech. Keep a third of the drawdown.

A bot runs leveraged Nasdaq with a hard crash brake. Over the last 15 years it matched TQQQ's return at a third of its worst drawdown, and beat the plain S&P and Nasdaq outright. Every trade and position posted here daily, red days included.

Account

since ·

Return

Pending

since inception

Today

last close

Exposure

28%

in risk assets

Equity

The dial

0.27

exposure dial

defensive · 0.15normal1.00 · full

Reset every morning from volatility, crash risk, valuation, and drawdown. It decides how much leverage to carry that day. Whatever it holds back rotates into gold or long Treasuries when those are trending, otherwise T-bills. The exact rules are below.

Current position

TQQQ27.8%

T-bills72.2%

risk 28% T-bills / cash 72%

Versus buy-and-hold

The benchmarks are the three plain ways to own tech: the S&P (SPY), the Nasdaq (QQQ), or the Nasdaq levered 3x and held (TQQQ). Real total returns, 2011 to 2026, all reproducible from public data. The last column is the honest test: across every 4-year window, stepped monthly, how often did alphy finish ahead.

Hold 2011-2026	CAGR	Max DD	alphy beats it (rolling 4yr)
SPY S&P 500	+14%	-34%	100%
QQQ Nasdaq-100	+19%	-35%	95%
TQQQ 3x, buy & hold	+40%	-82%	51%
alphy	+40%	-55%	—

Independent replay on Yahoo + FRED, 12 bps trading cost. alphy: TQQQ + SOXL, crash brake, gold when defensive. The engine was designed on data through 2018; 2019-2026 is a true out-of-sample window.

Against the plain indexes it is not close: alphy beats the S&P in every 4-year window and the Nasdaq in 95% of them, at far higher return. Against 3x TQQQ the honest read is different. It does not out-return raw leverage in a straight bull, nothing without margin does. What it does is match TQQQ's return at a third of the drawdown (−55% vs −82%), and beat it outright whenever a crash lands in the window. The proof is the out-of-sample stretch: on 2019-2026, data the rules were never fit to, alphy returned 63% a year at −49% against TQQQ's 45% at −82%, and finished ahead in every 4-year window. A backtest is not a promise. The live curve above is the real test, and the full method is below so you can rebuild it yourself.

Why leverage decays

TQQQ resets every single day. It multiplies each day's move by three, not the year's. In a choppy market that quietly bleeds you out, even when the index ends flat.

The index, round trip

Down 10%1.000 → 0.900

Up 11.1%0.900 → 1.000

Netflat

The 3x fund, same two days

Down 30%1.000 → 0.700

Up 33.3%0.700 → 0.933

Net-6.7%

The index went nowhere and the 3x fund still lost money. Run that through a sideways year and leverage grinds you down for free. That is where the "never hold overnight" rule comes from, and for most people it is good advice.

But the bleed is not random. It lives in high volatility and downtrends. The mirror image is just as true: in a calm, steady climb, 3x compounds to more than three times the index. And the Nasdaq has climbed for decades, software and chips keep eating a bigger share of the economy. So the edge is not holding forever, and it is not day-trading. It is holding the leverage only while the trend is intact and volatility is low, and stepping aside when it is not. The drawdowns are real: a 40% dip is a normal bad stretch, and the worst on record was 55%. The point is not to dodge every one. It is to skip the worst of the decay and survive to compound on the other side. That switch is the dial at the top of this page, reset every morning, frozen before it was ever tested.

How the dial is set

Four checks set the day's exposure. Each returns a number between 0.15 and 1; multiply them, cap at 1, and that is how much of the leveraged sleeve to hold, exactly the value shown up top. A fifth rule splits that sleeve between TQQQ and SOXL.

01 Volatility target

E_vol = min(1, 0.85 / recent vol)

Hold a steady amount of risk, not a steady number of shares. When the sleeve's trailing 20-day volatility runs hot, carry less of it; when markets are calm, carry a full position. The target is 85% annualized, so in normal conditions the brake, not this dial, does the risk work.

02 Crash brake

E_regime = 0.15 in a crisis, else 1

A fast, binary switch. When the tape tips into a high-volatility crisis, the setup that tends to precede the worst days, cut leverage to a token 15% until it clears.

03 Valuation cap

E_val = 0.5 if QQQ > 1.35 × 3-yr avg

When the Nasdaq is stretched more than 35% above its own three-year average, the 1999 setup, halve the position. Expensive markets fall harder and further.

04 Drawdown stop

E_cb = 0.15 after a -35% drawdown

Down 35% from its own high, the strategy slams leverage to 15% and holds it there, re-engaging only after the Nasdaq spends 40 straight sessions back above its 200-day average. This is the rule that survives a long, grinding bear.

05 The split

50 / 50 TQQQ / SOXL, ±10% tilt

The leveraged sleeve is half 3x Nasdaq, half 3x semiconductors. Tilt 10% toward semis when they lead and hold their trend, 10% away when the trend breaks or credit stresses. Semis are the return engine; the split is why it can match raw TQQQ.

Dial = vol × crash × valuation × drawdown, capped at 1.0. Whatever falls out, roughly 0.15 fully defensive to 1.00 all-in, is how much of the leveraged sleeve (TQQQ + SOXL) the bot holds that day. The rest rotates into gold or long Treasuries when those are trending, otherwise T-bills.

These are the live rules, reset every morning.

Trade log

Timestamp (ET)	Side	Sym	Qty	Fill	Signal
No trades yet. Deploys when the account funds.