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Strategy lab / 151 Trading Strategies

Strategy lab

Every strategy from 151 Trading Strategies and all 101 Formulaic Alphas as formulas you can edit and backtest on ten years of daily stocks, ETFs, futures, forex and crypto data. Free, in your browser.

Free · runs in your browser · daily data to …

9.3CommoditiesBacktest

Portfolio diversification with commodities

Commodities have low correlation with stocks and bonds. Adding a fixed slice to a stock–bond portfolio and rebalancing can improve its risk-adjusted return.

In the paper

Edit anything; the result updates as you type. Lines like window = 20 become sliders.

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Hypothetical backtests on daily closes with no slippage unless you add costs. Survivorship bias applies: the stock list is today’s large caps. For learning, not investment advice. Data: Yahoo Finance via yfinance.

Section
9.3 · Commodities
Asset class
Commodities
In the lab
Full backtest

Portfolio diversification with commodities (9.3)

Commodities have low correlation with stocks and bonds. Adding a fixed slice to a stock–bond portfolio and rebalancing can improve its risk-adjusted return.

Key equation

Lab formula

stocks = 0.6
bonds = 0.3
commodities = 0.1
stocks * is("SPY") + bonds * is("IEF") + commodities * is("DBC")

How the backtest works

The formula is evaluated for every asset on every day. Its values become positions at that day’s close, using the portfolio rule you pick, and earn the next day’s close-to-close return. Costs are charged in basis points on the amount traded. Everything runs in your browser on daily data from Yahoo Finance, adjusted for splits and dividends.

More in Commodities

Source: Kakushadze, Z. and Serur, J. A. (2018). 151 Trading Strategies. Palgrave Macmillan. SSRN 3247865. Summaries are our own.