Buy & Hold

Buy once on the first bar and never touch it. The benchmark every other strategy on this site is measured against.

Market	Return	Buy & hold	vs B&H	Beat it	Max DD	Underwater	Grid beat
BTC/USDT	530%	—	—	—	81%	1045d	—
ETH/USDT	276%	—	—	—	94%	1382d	—
Gold (PAXG)	119%	—	—	—	28%	634d	—

All figures on this page are from daily candles unless a row says otherwise.

Evidence

Everything below is the same rules run over real price history. Pick a market to see the fills, the equity path and the parameter grid for it.

Daily candlesBTC/USDT · 3188 bars · 2018-01-01 → 2026-09-23

Total return

529.9%

10,000 → 62,990

Max drawdown

81.2%

10,000 → 2,338

Longest underwater

1045

1045 days · 97% of the period

Win rate

—

n=0

A 0% risk of ruin here is a property of the test, not a safety rating. These runs are long-only spot with no borrowed money, so there is no margin call and nothing can force the position closed. The account cannot be wiped out — it gets stuck holding the asset instead. Capital deployed (1×) and max drawdown (81.2%) are the numbers that carry the risk on this page. The same rules run on margin would be a different measurement, and this figure would not stay at zero.

Daily candles

account equitydashed = starting capital

1 fills. Signals are taken on the close and filled at the next open.

Timeframe

Everything above uses the daily row. These are the same rules and the same parameters on a different candle size.

Timeframe	Return	Buy & hold	vs B&H	Beat it
4H	524%	524%	+0%	no
1D ←	530%	530%	+0%	no
1W	524%	524%	+0%	no

Outcome distribution

A single return is one chosen start date. These are 95 runs of the same rules with the start shifted forward 30 days at a time.

Worst	p10	p25	Median	p75	p90	Best	Losing starts
-73.0%	-47.9%	-29.5%	39.7%	125.9%	246.0%	835.0%	37%

Year by year

Year	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026
Return	-73%	94%	301%	60%	-64%	155%	121%	-6%	-1%
Max DD	81%	49%	54%	53%	67%	20%	26%	32%	40%
Trades	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

Assumptions

Period	2018-01-01 → 2026-09-23
Parameters	{}
Rolling test	365 bars × 95 start dates
Input hash	e40f294501b63d50

Daily candlesETH/USDT · 3188 bars · 2018-01-01 → 2026-09-23

Total return

275.8%

10,000 → 37,576

Max drawdown

94.0%

10,000 → 1,141

Longest underwater

1382

1382 days · 98% of the period

Win rate

—

n=0

A 0% risk of ruin here is a property of the test, not a safety rating. These runs are long-only spot with no borrowed money, so there is no margin call and nothing can force the position closed. The account cannot be wiped out — it gets stuck holding the asset instead. Capital deployed (1×) and max drawdown (94.0%) are the numbers that carry the risk on this page. The same rules run on margin would be a different measurement, and this figure would not stay at zero.

Daily candles

account equitydashed = starting capital

1 fills. Signals are taken on the close and filled at the next open.

Timeframe

Everything above uses the daily row. These are the same rules and the same parameters on a different candle size.

Timeframe	Return	Buy & hold	vs B&H	Beat it
4H	271%	271%	+0%	no
1D ←	276%	276%	+0%	no
1W	271%	271%	+0%	no

Outcome distribution

A single return is one chosen start date. These are 95 runs of the same rules with the start shifted forward 30 days at a time.

Worst	p10	p25	Median	p75	p90	Best	Losing starts
-90.0%	-54.9%	-40.5%	19.0%	74.7%	597.9%	1251.0%	43%

Year by year

Year	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026
Return	-82%	-2%	469%	398%	-68%	90%	46%	-11%	-7%
Max DD	94%	64%	62%	57%	74%	27%	45%	60%	53%
Trades	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

Assumptions

Period	2018-01-01 → 2026-09-23
Parameters	{}
Rolling test	365 bars × 95 start dates
Input hash	39ff628bd4510631

Daily candlesGold (PAXG) · 2214 bars · 2020-09-01 → 2026-09-23

Total return

118.6%

10,000 → 21,856

Max drawdown

28.1%

10,000 → 8,200

Longest underwater

634

634 days · 95% of the period

Win rate

—

n=0

A 0% risk of ruin here is a property of the test, not a safety rating. These runs are long-only spot with no borrowed money, so there is no margin call and nothing can force the position closed. The account cannot be wiped out — it gets stuck holding the asset instead. Capital deployed (1×) and max drawdown (28.1%) are the numbers that carry the risk on this page. The same rules run on margin would be a different measurement, and this figure would not stay at zero.

Daily candles

account equitydashed = starting capital

1 fills. Signals are taken on the close and filled at the next open.

Timeframe

Everything above uses the daily row. These are the same rules and the same parameters on a different candle size.

Timeframe	Return	Buy & hold	vs B&H	Beat it
4H	119%	119%	+0%	no
1D ←	119%	119%	+0%	no
1W	123%	123%	+0%	no

Outcome distribution

A single return is one chosen start date. These are 62 runs of the same rules with the start shifted forward 30 days at a time.

Worst	p10	p25	Median	p75	p90	Best	Losing starts
-9.3%	-5.1%	1.9%	15.7%	37.5%	45.8%	72.9%	23%

Year by year

Year	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026
Return	-5%	-1%	11%	30%	64%	-1%
Max DD	16%	21%	11%	8%	11%	28%
Trades	0	0	0	0	0	0

Assumptions

Period	2020-09-01 → 2026-09-23
Parameters	{}
Rolling test	365 bars × 62 start dates
Input hash	40909febb6ac4319

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