Hi Friend! 👋

I’m deeply grateful for all the new investors across the world who join The MarketFighter Strategy every day. Welcome to all of you.

While I live in Europe (Denmark) myself, a large part of you subscribers live in countries using currencies other than EUR and different benchmarks than the MSCI World Index.

Roughly a third of you are based in the US. This article is mostly dedicated to readers trading in USD, but others will probably find it interesting as well. I will measure my strategy in USD and compare everything against the S&P 500.

I hope you will enjoy all the charts as much as I did!

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Re-evaluating from Euros to Dollars

When I built my systematic strategy, it was only intended for myself and my family, and I didn’t plan to share it. That’s why all data in the system is in EUR to match my local currency.

From time to time I get messages from readers in the US who compare their numbers to mine, wondering why the returns don’t match. The main problem here is the currency.

In this post, I will explore how the MarketFighter Strategy has performed from the perspective of a US-based investor:

• Measuring returns in USD

• Comparing to the S&P 500

• Comparing to the MSCI World in USD

Finally, I will mention a few other factors that may affect the outcome.

Full history in USD

Let’s kick this off with the most obvious question: How did the strategy perform over the full period (backtest and live trading), if we measure everything in US Dollars?

I compare with the S&P 500 and the MSCI World Index in USD (starting in index 100, all index price returns, not accounting for taxes or trading fees). I’ve traded the strategy since March 2021. All data before this point is backtested.

If the chart makes you skeptical, I’m fully with you. But this is what long term compounding does when a persistent edge is allowed to compound over many years. I have triple-checked the numbers, and everything looks correct.

So, how do you read this chart? What you can immediately tell, is that the strategy has delivered a massive excess return, regardless of whether you compare to MSCI World or the S&P 500.

What you can’t easily tell is the distribution of the excess return. For most people, a 26-year compound effect is hard to grasp or relate to. So, to give a better visual idea of what following the strategy in USD would have looked like, I decided to split the full history up in 5-year intervals.

Historical performance in 5-year intervals

The following charts are all constructed the same way and based on the same data as the one you saw above. The only difference is each covers its own 5-year period, and I reset each of them to index 100 in the beginning. The interval goes from January 1st to January 1st in the respective years.

To me, these charts are easier to grasp for the eye. If you combine them, you would get the initial 2000-2026 chart (except for the last period since January 1st, 2025).

Key learnings from evaluating these charts

Scrolling down through these charts, there are a few points worth noting:

• The strategy significantly outperformed both USD-benchmarks in all of the 5-year periods.

• The excess returns were the strongest during the crisis years of the first two intervals (particularly 2000-2002 and 2008-2009)

• Outperformance was stronger during “the lost decade” for US stocks in the 2000s than while US stocks thrived in the 2010s.

• The strategy reaped the benefits of the US market when it was strong, and moved to European factor ETFs when it was weak.

These visualizations are as new to me as they are to you, and I must admit it is extremely satisfying for me to see that my strategy has performed so well, regardless of currency (USD vs. EUR) or benchmark (S&P 500 vs. MSCI World).

Still outperforming in 25 of 26 years?

A lot of you have already read the post where I displayed performance in EUR:

➡️ My Investment Approach that Outperformed the Stock Market in 25 of 26 Years

The obvious question is: Does the claim of the title still hold? Changing all data to USD-based numbers and switching the benchmark to S&P 500 does change the numbers, but not as much as one could have thought.

To sum it up, the USD-version of the strategy only beat the S&P 500 in 22 of 26 years. The four losing years were 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2016. But here’s an important detail: The worst relative underperformance measured (in 2012) was just -2.4%.

And to complete the picture, the USD-version of the strategy beat the USD-version of the MSCI World Index in 24 of 26 years. Very close to the 25 of 26 years achieved by the EUR-version.

The currency effect

Getting back to my point in the beginning of this article: The main reason for the varying performance numbers seen from a USD-based investor vs. a EUR-based one, is the currency movements.

People tend to underestimate this. I think it’s a common belief that the EUR/USD relation is somewhat steady. But take a look at the chart below to get an idea of how much it actually swings:

Over the past 26 years it has moved up and down in an interval between 0.82 and 1.60. This has a massive effect on the experienced market returns each year.

Personally, I find currency fluctuations annoying, as they add noise to the actual equity returns. But I try to simply ignore them, as the effect tends to smooth out over time.

Don’t get fooled by the numbers

We have established currency as the most important difference between the returns I display, and what you may find yourself. Here’s a quick list of other factors that can alter the returns and explain why two people trading the same strategy will never see the exact same returns:

• Reading indices vs. ETFs

• Reading specific ETF implementations

• Measuring Net Totals vs. Price Returns

• Trading fees

• The actual buy and sell prices achieved

• Tax regimes

All of this unfortunately makes comparing return metrics inherently difficult.

A note on account types

Speaking of taxes: To be honest, the topic of foreign account types and taxes is far out of my comfort zone. I have very little knowledge on rules and tax regimes of countries other than Denmark.

So, while I don’t give advice, I need to mention one thing here, since this is a US-focused post: if I had the option to trade my strategy in a tax-deferred account, I would jump at it immediately to avoid the ongoing capital gains tax.

In Denmark this is not an option. We have no such thing as a non-taxable account. Still the returns of the strategy have been far superior to buying an index fund and just letting it compound.

In the US you have both IRAs (Roth and Traditional) and 401(k)s (Roth and Traditional as well) which all allow you to trade without ongoing capital gains tax.

This is of course relevant for readers in all countries where tax-deferred accounts exist. If you don’t have this option, don’t worry. Despite the heavy Danish tax system, the returns of the strategy have still been very good to me.

Backtesting vs. real trading

Now, let’s take a look at realities. I love backtesting strategies. Only when you have a completely rules-based strategy, you can create a backtest to see how it would have performed. And only when you backtest a strategy, you will know if it has (or rather had) an edge.

But I’m also aware of the many pitfalls to backtesting. Results achieved after the backtest are the only true measure of success, and the ones that mean the most to me.

The final performance chart below covers the period where I personally traded the strategy with my own money. This was initiated on March 1st, 2021 after finalizing the backtest:

This chart reflects the raw performance of the indices the strategy trades, measured in USD (like all the charts above). It does not reflect my trading account, which is measured in Danish Kroner and is affected by my personal trading fees and taxes. These are very individual parameters.

Regardless of whether we measure in USD or EUR (or Danish Kroner) I’m more than satisfied with the results so far. During these 5 years and 5 months of real trading it has:

• More than doubled the S&P 500 returns

• More than tripled the MSCI World returns

• More than tripled my money

These are the results that allowed me to quit my job as a software engineer earlier this year, and I’m beyond grateful for my findings.

Will this continue in the future? I often get this question, and to be quite frank, nobody knows. That’s how markets are. You can never guarantee anything for the future.

What I do know is that the strategy relies on market anomalies that have existed for decades, if not centuries. These are caused by human psychology and instincts that Homo Sapiens developed thousands of years ago.

That’s why I’m confident enough to trust most of our family funds with this system, but you can never guarantee anything in financial markets.

Ready to join?

If you found this article interesting, and you’re not part of the journey yet, don’t forget to subscribe. I provide a number of free articles like this one every month.

If you want to receive the monthly trading signals and get full access to the strategy, simply upgrade to the paid subscription to join us. (Psst: You get the best price by doing this through a web browser and not inside the Substack mobile app!)

Thanks for reading!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.

This is the monthly performance update for The MarketFighter Strategy. It’s the systematic strategy I have followed for the past 5 years and share with subscribers of this newsletter.

As always, I will give you a fully transparent look into the monthly performance as well as an update on the full year until now.

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Extended outperformance in July

Back in June, we registered the first negative month for the strategy in 2026, underperforming the market, which was in positive territory.

July marked a great comeback for the strategy with a total return of 3.59% while the MSCI World Index was flat, registering a minor loss of -0.17%. The S&P 500 followed the world index with a small -0.13% decline.

The chart below shows the performance of the strategy (orange) compared to the MSCI World Index (gray) month by month:

As usual, all numbers I present in these reports are measured in EUR and based on the underlying indices (not accounting for individual fees or taxes).

A month-by-month review is not necessarily the best way to evaluate a long-term strategy, but I like the overview and I know a lot of readers find value in it as well.

Personally, the performance of any individual month does not affect me in any way. Of course, it’s a pleasure to register a new month of market-beating returns, but it doesn’t change anything for me. I simply keep sticking to the same formula as I have done for the past 65 months.

Below is an accumulated chart of the returns generated so far in 2026. By popular demand, I have included the S&P 500 as well (but be aware that it is not currency-adjusted).

ETF allocations in July

The system held the same two ETFs in July as it had done in June. But while US Value outperformed and Energy underperformed in June, their roles reversed in July.

The Energy Sector ETF outperformed the market significantly by more than 12%, primarily due to a major increase in oil prices.

Meanwhile, the US Value ETF underperformed by around 5%, mainly because of a sudden decline in semiconductors and AI-related stocks, some of which currently happen to be classified as value stocks.

We often see this pattern: when one of the ETFs underperforms, the other outperforms. It doesn’t always work like that, but in recent months this pattern has dampened the volatility of the strategy significantly compared to the broader market.

The diversification benefit of this strategy comes not only from picking ETFs over individual stocks, but also from allocating across two ETFs that in most cases don’t have a big overlap.

The monthly breakdown

In the table below, I have provided the exact performance of the strategy on a monthly basis compared to the market (the MSCI World Index), as well as the alpha (the difference between our return and the market return):

You may also notice that the allocations of the strategy have been remarkably steady so far in 2026. Energy has been the favored sector in 6 of the 7 months, while the same can be said about US Value on the factor side.

The most important number for me is the 15.64%, representing our excess return compared to the world index.

This is already above the average annual outperformance of the strategy. However, as I mentioned in the previous performance report: The current performance numbers (or allocations, for that matter) do not help us in any way in predicting what will happen in the remainder of the year.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an article revealing all the monthly returns of the strategy during the past 10 years. If you find it interesting, it can be found here:

➡️ Monthly return history for the MarketFighter Strategy

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Why two people will never experience the same returns

I love the feedback I receive from all of you. It helps me improve this service and figure out which topics deserve a deeper dive.

One thing I’ve seen a few times (especially from readers trading US-listed ETFs) is that their returns differ from the numbers I present. It’s important to note that two people will never experience the exact same returns when trading this strategy.

Here’s why:

1. Indices vs. ETFs
   First of all, the numbers I present in these reports are based on the underlying indices and not on a particular set of ETFs. I do this because there are tons of ETF implementations available across different regions of the world, and I can’t cater to all of them. Their values may fluctuate, but they will all be close to the value of the underlying index.

2. Currency fluctuations
   The second factor is currency. While I present numbers in EUR, many subscribers trade in USD, GBP, or another currency. This means your return numbers will be affected by your currency’s movement against the EUR every month.

3. Trading and implementation

   Finally, the implementation of the strategy matters. The exact price you get when you execute a trade is unique to you and will affect your total return numbers. On top of that comes trading fees, which are again highly individual.

But while all these factors can give slightly different numbers month by month, I believe they will tend to even out in the long run (unless a major and permanent currency shift occurs).

In some months, you will see a better return than what I present, and in some months it will be worse. While it can cause a bit of frustration, it tends to smooth out over time, as it’s primarily driven by currency fluctuations.

I have plans to look further into this soon, as I want to find a better way to accommodate more of the different ways this strategy can be implemented.

Next steps

If you found this post interesting, and you’re not part of the journey yet, don’t forget to subscribe. I provide a number of free articles every month.

If you want to receive the monthly trading signals and get full access to the strategy, simply upgrade to the paid subscription to join us. (Psst: You get the best price by doing this through a web browser and not inside the Substack mobile app!)

Thanks for reading!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.

Welcome to the monthly trading signal of The MarketFighter Strategy. With the closing prices for July in hand, the ETF allocations for August are now ready.

The strategy is experiencing strong growth at all levels at the moment. In July, it outperformed all the major stock indices, and a significant number of new faces are joining us on this journey every day now.

Welcome to all the new subscribers who joined since last month, and to everyone who upgraded to follow the strategy. I’m incredibly grateful for the overwhelming trust and support!

At the start of each month, I send out the new monthly trading signal to all the MarketFighters (paid subscribers). If you’re still on the free tier, I would love to have you join us and get full access to the trading signals.

If you’re just here for the trading signal, feel free to scroll down to find it! 👇

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This project is growing fast!

Before we dig into the actual trading signal, I just want to briefly share some good news with you. Thanks to all the subscribers who upgraded to the paid tier in July, this little publication is now officially a Substack Bestseller.

This is a result of your trust in the project, and it means it will now be easy for new subscribers to see that the MarketFighter Strategy is trusted by a significant number of investors. I can’t thank you all enough!

July was a great month

On the financial side, the good news continued. Our allocation for July was the US Value Factor and the Energy Sector. We outperformed the MSCI World Index as well as the S&P 500. This extended our year-to-date lead over both market benchmarks.

The roles of our value and energy allocations reversed from June, where we had the same allocation. This time the Energy Sector significantly outperformed the market, while US Value lagged, with a steep decline in Micron being one of the main causes.

The stock market in general experienced unusual volatility and a heavy rotation out of semiconductors and AI-related stocks. We managed to avoid a lot of this volatility due to allocating money based on price momentum rather than narrative. The Energy Sector did particularly well in hedging against this.

As always, I will publish the full monthly performance report a few days after the signal, when I have updated all the numbers. This will show exactly how much the strategy gained in July and how far we are now ahead of the markets in 2026. Stay tuned!

Now let’s dig in to the new trading signal and the ETF allocation for August. The following content is only accessible to MarketFighters. Upgrade below to join the club, if you’re not a paid subscriber yet.

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Hi Friends 👋

I hope you’re all enjoying the summer! I’m currently on vacation in Italy with my wife and our two boys. I prepared most of this post before we took off, but I didn’t want to keep you waiting until we’re back home.

This post is about returns, psychology, and transparency. Unfortunately, in finance, it’s common to only display the wins and the good parts. I strongly believe that trust is built by communicating transparently about wins as well as losses.

That’s why I’m now presenting the full return breakdown of my strategy for every single month during the past 10 years. I will compare these to the market and you will see exactly when it did well and when it did not.

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Open track record

Actually, you don’t see this a lot in finance: A long-term open track record, revealing the performance of all trades going 10+ years back.

Many of you subscribers have told me that the transparency of my data and the open performance reporting are among the core reasons you decided to follow along.

I am very grateful for that. And I can promise you, I’m never going to hide bad results. These are as much a part of the process as the good ones.

Most of my writing so far has been focused on comparing returns by calendar year. I like this interval because it tends to give time for temporary dips and spikes to fall into place.

But annual returns don’t show the journey and the psychological struggles that may have been present along the way. That’s why I’m doing a fine-grained rundown of monthly returns in this post.

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I start every month by sending out a performance update for subscribers to The MarketFighter Strategy: the investment approach I have followed for the past five years, which I’m sharing in this newsletter. It’s a strategy that beat the market in most years since 2000.

In this post, I will give you a transparent look into how the strategy performed in June and how far we are ahead of the market in 2026 so far.

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First negative month in 2026

The strategy has had a great run in 2026, holding out until June before registering its first negative month. While the loss itself was small, it was a loss in both absolute terms and relative to market benchmarks.

The chart below shows the performance of the strategy (blue) compared to the MSCI World Index (gray) month by month:

For a long-term investment strategy, one month is an extremely short time frame. Historically, this strategy underperforms the market in 30% to 40% of the months. On a yearly basis, the numbers are closer to 5% to 25% depending on the timeframe and the benchmark.

Does this negative month impact me in any way? Absolutely not. I have experienced it over and over again. Outperformance tends to show up as a reward for patience and long-term thinking.

ETF allocations in June

The allocations of the system in June were identical to May, and so was the overall story of the month: while US Value outperformed the market (driven by Micron, among other names), the Energy Sector did the opposite.

But while the balance between them resulted in outperformance in May, their combined effect led to underperformance in June. One good takeaway from this is that I once again experienced a diversification benefit from following a two-legged strategy.

The monthly breakdown

In the table below, I have provided the exact performance of the strategy on a monthly basis compared to the market (the MSCI World Index), as well as the alpha (the difference between our return and the market return):

The table also shows the allocation in each month. These are the two ETFs the system decided to hold based on the relative price momentum rules that form the strategy.

Despite lagging the MSCI World in June, the strategy is still 11.04% ahead of the index year-to-date. Compared to the S&P 500, that number is 12.94% (not accounting for currency fluctuations).

It can be tempting to try to predict the relative performance of the coming months based on the recent data. But I must say, I have found no predictive value in how the strategy performs relative to the market. This means:

1. This month’s underperformance neither increases nor decreases the probability of underperformance in the coming month.

2. This first half-year’s outperformance neither increases nor decreases the probability of outperformance for the rest of the year.

Personally, this makes me calm, and it means I won’t spend my time worrying about what will and will not happen.

This is one of the benefits of a systematic approach. I don’t need to know what will happen next month, but I have a well-grounded expectation for the long term. I simply stick to my strategy, as I have done consistently since early 2021.

➡️ See this article for the full return overview of each year

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The international challenge

I’m increasingly proud of, and excited about, the growing community of international investors following my newsletter. Your trust and support mean the world to me.

I’m also quietly learning that a global audience is difficult to fit into one box, and I’m still working on ways to improve the diversification of my output, while maintaining its simplicity. The biggest challenges are:

• Currency
  A person who tracks this strategy in US dollars, British pounds, or Australian dollars, will experience different returns than what I’m presenting in Euros.
  

• Indices
  A lot of people, particularly in the US, are used to benchmarking all stock market performance against the S&P 500, while in Europe we tend to use the MSCI World Index.
  

• ETF implementations
  Due to local regulation, particularly in the European Union, retail investors across the globe don’t have access to trade the same ETFs.
  

• Taxing
  Every country has its own tax rules. Tax is an important topic, also for me, but I am not an expert in tax in other countries than Denmark where I live.

Consequently, I cannot display numbers that will fit everyone perfectly in these reports. What you see are the raw underlying index returns, measured in Euro and not accounting for potential taxes or other fees.

To illustrate one example of movements that affect the returns in good or bad direction, here’s the effect of currency changes between USD and EUR by month:

The takeaway is: if you were investing from a EUR-based account, you would have achieved a return 2.06% higher than someone trading the same ETFs from a USD-based account in June.

I am, however, starting to think about a potential solution to this challenge of displaying multiple variations of results. Hopefully I can give you some good news within a few months. Stay tuned.

If you found this post interesting, and you’re not part of the journey yet, don’t forget to subscribe. I provide a number of free articles every month along with the trading signals for a growing community of MarketFighters.

Thanks for reading!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.

It’s time for the monthly trading signal of The MarketFighter Strategy. With the closing prices for June in hand, everything is now ready for July’s ETF allocation.

For me, this past month has been special. I opened up the paid tier of my newsletter and more than eighty of you have already upgraded to become MarketFighters. I never expected this, and I am deeply grateful. Thank you!

It also means this is the first trading signal I’m delivering only to an exclusive club of like-minded and motivated investors. If you’re still on the free tier, I would love to have you join us and get full access to the trading signals.

If you’re just here for the trading signal, feel free to scroll down to find it! 👇

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June was less dramatic

After three months of heavy swings and high volatility, the financial markets cooled off a little bit in June. Iran, inflation, and AI enthusiasm again took focus. As I’m writing this, it seems our strategy registered a small decline for the month, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Followers of the strategy will know that our position in the Energy Sector underperformed the market. This was a result of the declining oil prices as the US and Iran came closer to a peace agreement.

On the positive side, our allocation to the US Value Factor performed strongly and beat the market. This was partly fueled by Micron’s positive earnings surprise.

Again, we experienced the benefit of a two-legged strategy, where one of them often performs when the other one doesn’t.

I will publish the full monthly performance report within the next few days when I have updated all the numbers. Stay tuned for this to see exactly how the strategy performed in June and how far we are now ahead of the market benchmarks in 2026 (last month it was 13.59%).

And now, let’s go straight to the actual trading signal and the ETF allocation for July. The following content is only accessible to MarketFighters. Upgrade below to join the club, if you’re not a paid subscriber yet.

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Hi Friends 👋

Two weeks ago, I opened up the paid tier of The MarketFighter Strategy, and more than 80 subscribers have already upgraded to get full access to the system.

You are the first generation of new MarketFighters outside my family, and this means a lot to me. I’m extremely grateful for your trust and engagement. The comments and questions I’ve already received show your genuine excitement.

Drop your questions below

I thought it could be valuable to set up a dedicated Q&A space exclusively for you. That’s the intention with this post.

You can ask me anything in the comments section below, and I will do my best to answer everything within the next few days.

Also, feel free to write comments and questions to the other MarketFighters, or simply say hello and tell us why you’re here.

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Most people treat investing as a game of intelligence. In reality, it’s a game of self-control. Accepting this was a major step for me towards higher returns. Leaving the I’m-smarter-than-others attitude was in the same category.

I was still a teenager when I bought my first stocks. Now I’m in my 40s, having recently left my 9-to-5 job thanks to investing with a certain mindset. But the road between those two moments was far from linear.

In this post, I will explain the lessons and the change of mindset that paved the way for this transition. These are the lessons I will teach my kids about investing once they’re ready to hear them.

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The biggest misconception

There will be people who disagree with my points in this article. But in my experience, the biggest misconception among retail investors is the way we’re taught to perceive investing:

Find stocks you believe in. Go for quality. Understand their business, their financial metrics, and their valuation. Buy when they’re cheap and sell when they’re expensive.

It sounds so simple. And most of us believe it because it’s the common narrative of finance, and it’s what we’ve always been told. If we’re just smart enough, we can simply pick the right stocks and beat the market. Right?

Numbers reveal a different story.

These calculations are from another article I wrote, based on data from 2002-2021. They show just how significantly the average investor underperforms the market as a result of overconfidence and regular human behavior.

I fully acknowledge that a few select people have managed to outperform the market for multiple years, but very few are able to do it consistently over a full investment career.

There are a good number of reasons why it’s almost impossible to consistently outperform a market-wide index through classic stock picking.

The median stock is a loser

This comes as a surprise to most people the first time they hear it:

While market-cap-weighted indices like the S&P 500 have seen strong and steady growth over centuries, the median stock had negative returns.

In other words: more than half of all stocks have lost money since they were listed, according to research. Headlines, media attention, and survivorship bias all make us believe something else.

Stock returns are said to be heavily positively skewed. This means a few select winners provide astronomical returns, while most of the remaining stocks are mediocre.

That’s why randomly picking a number of stocks just doesn’t work. You have to know which stocks will be the future winners.

David vs. Goliath

Say hello to overconfidence. When we start to play the game of analyzing businesses in order to predict the future winners, we’re up against the corporate Wall Street analyst teams dedicating their lives and 90 hours a week to find the next winners.

How are we supposed to have a chance in this game? And why do we think it’s possible to beat them?

I’ve always been fascinated by The Dunning-Kruger Effect: The cognitive bias where people with limited knowledge or competence in a specific domain greatly overestimate their own skills.

For many years, I was a victim of this myself. To some extent I probably still am. The ironic truth is that most people believe they’re smarter than most people.

This goes for timing the market as well. Looking at a chart in hindsight and spotting where you should have bought or sold seems so obvious. Of course we can do that. Overconfidence again (otherwise we would all be rich by now).

Humble realizations that formed me

On top of all this, we are all just human beings with human instincts and human psychology. While fear and greed were useful for us in our earlier history, they were not designed for navigating financial markets. Actually, they often have a negative effect and tend to drag us in the wrong direction.

Over more than two decades in the markets, these are the realizations that formed my humble investing mindset:

The mindset goes against a lot of common understanding of how an investor should think. Nevertheless, it works, and I will explain just how in a minute.

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Why I switched to ETFs

After many years of trial and error in my attempts to pick the right stocks and crack the code, I read Burton G. Malkiel’s famous bestseller A Random Walk Down Wall Street.

This is a highly recommended read, and it kickstarted the development of the mindset I’m describing. Ultimately, around 2019, I realized I was playing a loser’s game, like most other active stock pickers.

That’s when I switched to indexing and ETFs. Since the Great Financial Crisis in 2008, the indexing trend has become stronger and stronger, largely driven by the so-called Bogleheads community.

Buy-and-hold index investing makes so much sense. Instead of playing the stock picking game, where the odds are stacked against you, you simply buy the market and ride whatever trends and successes it brings. It’s a simple way to outperform the vast majority of investors in the long run — even professional Wall Street traders.

But there’s an important part that 90% of index investors miss: Buying the index is easy. Holding it across a full cycle and a market crash is not. But the only way to ensure you get the market returns is to never sell, no matter what! There’s no jumping in and out of the market. No trying to time the crashes.

Suppressing external influences

Settling on the humble mindset is not as easy as it sounds. First, you have to acknowledge that regardless how intelligent you are and how highly you rate your ability to read the market, you should not even try.

If you win this battle, the next one awaits: The external factors.

Imagine we’re in the middle of a market crash. Your friends are laughing at you for not selling. Your colleagues are shorting the market. And your neighbor now feels quite sure that we are entering an economic depression. All the headlines in the news are negative, and it feels like it’s the end of the world.

Do you have the patience and the discipline it takes to stay in the market through the darkest days? The truth is, we don’t know until we’ve tried it.

Sticking to a strategy

For a while I resolved to plain index investing for a simple reason: The expected average long-term outcome of buy-and-hold index investing is around 7-10% annually. For stock picking it’s around 3-5% according to research.

I’m a software engineer with a rational and mathematical mindset. Why did it take me so long to reach the conclusion above? Because I was suffering from overconfidence bias. I thought I was smarter than the rest.

People who make serious money in the stock market all have one thing in common: They have a well-defined strategy and they stick to it.

When people ask for my number one stock tip, it’s very simple: Stick to your strategy. If you don’t have a well-defined strategy, you’re playing with fire. Having a real strategy you trust and can stick to, that fits your personality, is often more important than what the actual strategy is.

It’s all about expected outcome

The more I thought about it, and the more I researched, the more it dawned on me: This idea of evaluating an investment strategy based on its expected returns was the best possible way for me to gain enough confidence to be able to actually stick to it.

Over time, I gradually moved my mindset from this perspective:

…to this:

Whenever I feel the doubt creeping in on whether I should deviate from my strategy, I think about the data. I think about the long-term expected outcome.

If I make an exception from the strategy (like simply buying and holding an index), I lose out on the expected returns of that strategy. My expected return falls down to the level of the average discretionary investor at 3-5%.

Optimizing further

Once I had established this mindset, a lot of things became more clear to me. The classic index investing became a necessary stepping stone towards something even better. I started investigating ETF-based strategies with higher expected returns than the standard market-wide index ETFs.

This led to a lot of research on factor investing. Factors like value, size, quality and momentum have been historical predictors of higher returns.

Certain countries and certain sectors have delivered higher historical returns as well. I was able to achieve a theoretical 2-3% higher expected average return with this information.

At some point I realized the only way to significantly improve my expected returns would be to develop an entirely mechanical system, that would allow for trading (to optimize for the best returns) but at the same time eliminate my emotions and biases.

Ultimately, I started trading this system back in March 2021 and haven’t looked back since. It has now beaten the MSCI World Index in 25 of the last 26 years, returning an average of 10% higher than the index every year.

It doesn’t do this by predicting the next winner, but by systematically tracking the sectors and factors with the highest expected returns.

In April 2026, it ultimately allowed me to quit my 9-to-5 job.

After trading it for five years, where the results kept materializing, I decided to publish the strategy and share it through this newsletter.

If you liked this post and want to receive more strategic insights, you can subscribe for free.

If you’re ready to leave traditional stock picking behind, join the other MarketFighters who follow my systematic strategy and execution every month. Simply upgrade to the paid tier to enjoy full access.

Thanks for reading!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.

Dear friends 👋

The MarketFighter Strategy has officially transitioned into a premium service for serious long-term investors.

To ensure full transparency for those considering a paid subscription, I wanted to tackle the ultimate question: How does this system hold up against the S&P 500?

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How does it compare to the S&P 500?

As a global investor living in Europe, I’m used to comparing everything against the MSCI World Index. It’s the closest match to the universe of stocks my strategy is exposed to across Europe and the US.

But I acknowledge that for investors living in the US, the common benchmark for all stock investing is the S&P 500, even though it only covers US-listed stocks.

It’s also worth noting that since 2010, the S&P 500 has significantly outperformed the MSCI World Index, mainly because of the Magnificent Seven stocks.

In this post, I have prepared a fully transparent comparison between my strategy and the S&P 500.

Comparing 1-year intervals

First, let’s take a look at the total return percentage generated by the strategy vs. the S&P 500 down to each individual calendar year:

The numbers in the chart do not account for taxes or trading fees, and they’re measured in local currencies. This means you will see different returns depending on your own currency.

As the chart shows, the strategy beats the S&P 500 in most years, but not in all years. In years where the S&P 500 is negative, the strategy tends to be significantly stronger (2000-2002, 2008, 2018, and 2022).

But I realized a bar chart with 54 bars may not be the best way to get an overview, and I did not develop this strategy to trade it for a single year anyway.

Comparing 3-year intervals

In the chart below, I have clustered the same data into 3-year intervals across the full period of my backtest (2000-2020) and the years I have actively traded it (2021-2026):

Now the long-term consistency shows. The strategy has outperformed the S&P 500 in all of the 3-year intervals of this century except one. Only in the 2012-2014 interval, where the momentum effect struggled, did the strategy slightly lag the index.

I had never done this comparison until I did the research for this article. In all of my backtesting and data checking, I had always been comparing to MSCI World, because it makes more sense to me as an investor living in Europe and trading both US and European stocks.

Seeing how well the system has actually performed for long-term investing against “the hardest benchmark to beat” is incredibly reassuring.

I’m also pleased to notice that the level of outperformance I found in the backtests has not decreased since I started trading it in 2021. Rather the opposite, but that probably comes down to randomness.

Developing backtests for trading strategies is a minefield of pitfalls and risks like overfitting, forward-looking bias, and survivorship bias.

Awareness of these helps a lot, but the only true measure of success is the performance measured after the backtest was executed and the strategy went live (known as out-of-sample data).

Read more about my backtest and how I developed the strategy in this post.

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Coming up on MarketFighter

I’m receiving a lot of questions and ideas from both new and existing subscribers, and it’s amazing to feel the engagement of this growing community!

This is a great source of inspiration for future articles I will be writing over the coming months, including themes like:

• How to stay disciplined and stick to a strategy

• Crashes and how to protect against the deepest declines

• Full historical monthly return breakdown of the strategy

• The strategy from a US and Dollar perspective

• What research says about market returns

• How to handle the emotional and psychological side of investing

• Life after quitting the 9-to-5 job

These educational articles and insights will remain open for everyone, while only paid subscribers will get access to the monthly trading signals.

The paid tier is waiting for you

Dozens of serious investors have already upgraded to the paid subscription and are now tracking the strategy.

If you want to continue having full access to the strategy and the monthly trading signals, don’t forget to upgrade.

▶️ Monthly Subscription: $45/month
⏩ Annual Subscription: $375/year

Thanks for reading!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.

The trading signals are going premium

Many of you have asked why I didn’t charge money for this service. I simply wanted to prove my worth and the value of the system before I asked anyone for payment. That’s why I have provided everything for free until now.

But with the continued outperformance and the time and effort I’m putting into this, now is the time to upgrade this to a sustainable service for the long run.

By funding this work, you can help ensure that I will continue delivering these trading signals and strategy updates for decades to come.

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What you get as a paid subscriber

With the paid subscription you will continue to receive the monthly trading signals of the MarketFighter Strategy for as long as you wish. The next one will be sent out on July 1st (for paid subscribers only).

This is the same system that recently allowed me to leave my 9-to-5 job, even though I’m still in my early 40s.

It has given me back my time, removed financial stress, and allowed me to design my life on my own terms. I’m hoping I can pass this experience on to others over the coming decades.

For those of you who have already been following the strategy for a while, these are the returns you have experienced so far:

Comparing to the market benchmarks, this is what 2026 has delivered:

🔴 S&P 500: 8.19%

🟡 MSCI World: 9.24%

🟢 The MarketFighter Strategy: 26.18%

And here’s the best part: 2026 is not just a single lucky year. The system has outperformed the MSCI World Index in 25 of the past 26 years. Scroll down to see how they compare year by year. 👇

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Pricing going forward

These will be the prices for the paid subscriptions going forward, including full access to all the monthly trading signals and portfolio updates:

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The free version

Free subscribers will continue to receive all the insights, articles, and the content I deliver in the newsletters.

However, you will no longer receive the monthly trading signals. If you want to know which two ETFs the strategy holds each month and continue tracking the strategy, you need to upgrade to the paid version.

A personal note

Beating the market is notoriously difficult. I’ve spent more than half of my life fighting the financial markets.

To be honest, I didn't build this system for anyone else. I built it for myself and my family. I wanted a way to outperform the market with high consistency and low effort, because I wanted to achieve early financial freedom.

I’m not a financial advisor, and I have no financial education. I’m just a computer scientist who found a way to get better returns on the stock market. These are the returns delivered by the strategy so far:

Personally, I will continue investing for my family using this system for decades to come. I can say without a doubt that following this strategy with my own money has been the best financial decision of my life.

Who knows if it will have a similar impact on some of you in the years to come?

I genuinely hope so.

Click here to upgrade to secure your access to the strategy and the trading signals.

Thank you for being a part of this!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.

Every month I send out a performance update for The MarketFighter Strategy: The investment approach I have followed for the past five years, which I’m sharing in this newsletter. It’s a strategy that beat the market in 25 of the past 26 years.

In this post, I will give you a transparent look into how the strategy performed in May and how far we are ahead of the market in 2026 so far.

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In May we extended the gap

The last two months have been a joy for most investors. Especially for those invested in broad market indices or in AI/semiconductor-related stocks… or in the MarketFighter Strategy.

After slightly lagging the MSCI World Index in April, we were back to outperforming in May, having done this in 4 of the 5 months of 2026 so far. This chart compares the returns of the strategy with the world index (market) month by month:

To be fair, the performance of a long-term strategy like this should be measured in years and decades, not in months. Still it’s great to see that it continues the historical consistency and outperformance in 2026 so far.

The strategy stands on two legs:

• Relative factor momentum

• Relative sector momentum

In May, the sector pick (Energy) underperformed significantly. But because we combine two simple strategies into one, we didn’t experience a loss:

The outperformance of the factor pick (US Value) was even more significant. So much that by combining the two investments, we outperformed our market benchmark. This robustness comes from combining two strategies that don’t follow the same patterns.

Some of you have asked me why I didn’t combine with even more separate strategies. The truth is, I like to keep things simple, trying to get as big and stable returns as possible from as little effort as possible.

You could definitely add more legs or substrategies to the system, but it could very well lower the returns and it would in any case involve more trades and more effort.

The monthly breakdown

In the table below I have provided the exact performance of our strategy on a monthly basis compared to the market (the MSCI World Index), as well as the alpha (the difference between our return and the market return):

The table also shows the allocation in each month. These are the two ETFs the system decided to allocate money into based on the relative price momentum rules that are the foundation of the strategy.

Unlike the general market, we have yet to see our first negative month in 2026, and we extended our excess return to 13.59% above the world index. These numbers are all before taxes and trading fees and measured in EUR. They will not differ much in USD as the fluctuations between the two have been small in 2026 so far.

We can of course not expect a full year of only positive months. No strategy is guaranteed to do well in any time frame, and every year has had good and bad periods. But personally, I have a lot of confidence based on the historical track record of this strategy. From what we know so far, it seems we are heading for another strong year of outperformance.

➡️ See this article for the full return overview of each year

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You can read more about the full investment universe and the 15 indices and corresponding ETFs the strategy uses here:

➡️ Indices and ETFs in our investment universe

If you’re looking for the June trading signal and curious about which ETFs the strategy is currently allocated to, I wrote a separate article here:

➡️ The June 2026 Trading Signal

A personal note

When I developed this strategy and started trading it in early 2021, I had a feeling it would either turn out to be a beautiful illusion or it would be life-changing. Today, I can look back and confirm it was the latter.

As a result of my returns from the strategy, I was able to leave my 9-to-5 job one month ago to work with my passions for investing and building on my own, and to share my strategy with all of you in this newsletter.

New people are joining every day, and I’m grateful to experience the engagement and the interest with which my approach is being received. Hard work, consistency and discipline pays off — in life and in investing.

Thank you all!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.

The financial markets are now closed for May. This means our system has all the data needed to deliver the trading signal and the two ETF selections for June.

First of all, welcome to the 692 new subscribers who joined since I delivered the last signal 30 days ago. It’s a big pleasure for me to see the growth of this newsletter follow the growth of the investment strategy!

Before the first market opening of each month, I send out the trading signal provided by the systematic ETF strategy. The signal tells us which two ETFs the system will invest in for the coming month. This simple approach has outperformed the market in 25 of the past 26 years.

If you’re just here for the trading signal, feel free to scroll down to find it! 👇

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We had strong outperformance in May

The stock market in general continued the strong performance from April, and the past two months combined have generated double digit returns for both the MSCI World and the S&P 500 indices. This was mainly driven by a surge in AI and semiconductor-related stocks.

Our strategy did even better, outperforming both of the indices thanks to very strong development in the US Value position.

Interestingly, the value segmentation currently holds a significant amount of AI-related tech stocks like Micron and Intel. I don’t have an opinion on any specific companies, but it’s fascinating to see how the system picked up the early momentum in this field and allocated money into it.

As usual, I will publish the monthly performance report within the next few days when I have updated all the numbers. Stay tuned for this to see exactly how the MarketFighter Strategy performed compared to the market in May and how far we are ahead of the market benchmarks in 2026 so far.

The June 2026 Trading Signal 🔄️

For the coming month of June 2026, the MarketFighter Strategy will continue with an unchanged allocation compared to May. This means for the third consecutive month, it will be holding these two positions, equally weighted:

Despite the recent decline in the energy sector, its relative momentum still indicates a high probability of near-term outperformance. US Value looks exceptionally strong at the moment, particularly carried by semiconductors.

Be aware that the European listed ticker names vary from one exchange to another. I have listed the Xetra (German) tickers, but they have different names on the London exchange, for instance. In general, going by the ISIN code is safer than the ticker codes for ETFs in Europe.

➡️ See the full list of relevant ETFs for the strategy here.

Why no changes is a good thing

You may be wondering why the allocation is now the same for the third straight month. If this is a trading strategy, aren’t we supposed to trade?

Actually, it’s just a good sign. When the system sticks to the same allocation for several months, it’s usually a result of the same ETFs continuing to perform well. In most cases (like this) it means we’re making money.

My aim with this strategy was to keep the effort as low as possible, attempting to beat the market with as few annual trades as needed. I never wanted to be a day trader, but rather to build a system that would allow me to spend time on other things while it builds wealth.

Historically, the system has required an average of 9 allocation changes (selling one ETF for another). Roughly 4 for the sector and 5 for the factor. Months with no changes are very common with this setup, and I enjoy it every time it happens.

My opinion on the picks

I really try not to have an opinion on the selections the system gives me. But with the media, headlines, and recent market development in mind, it’s almost impossible.

It can be a real struggle to convince yourself to execute a trade that doesn’t match your current take on the market. And even though I have done this so many times over the years, it’s still not always easy.

Typically, when the system points to an ETF that has recently done well (like US Value at the moment), it feels good to continue with this. When it picks an ETF that has recently dipped (like Energy at the moment), it feels bad.

But as I’m sure you know, we can’t predict the future. And the truth is, we should try our best not to have an opinion on the outcome of the system or the direction of the markets. That’s what worked for me.

Don’t forget to subscribe for future trading signals, strategic investment insights, and occasional updates about my journey after I left the corporate world to follow my passions for investing, writing and building.

Thanks for reading!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.

Hi, and welcome to my newsletter! 👋

I’m an independent investor and software engineer in my 40s, who was recently able to quit the 9-to-5 thanks to my investment strategy. I write about my journey, my strategy, and my trades for anyone who wants to follow my path.

In today’s post, I will reveal the scary numbers that show just how badly the average retail investor performs. I will uncover the traps that most people fall into, and give you the secrets that significantly improved my own returns.

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What are the returns of an average investor?

Over long time horizons, the stock market grows at an average of 7-10% annually, depending on whether or not you adjust for inflation.

Intuitively, you would think this number would be the expected average return for investors. But it’s not even close…

Numerous studies have shown that even professionals and fund managers have a hard time competing with wide market indices like the S&P 500 or the MSCI World in the long run. For instance, only 6% of active fund managers beat the S&P 500 over a 20-year period.

The chart below is from the widely cited Dalbar Studies, which measure the average performance of investors like you and me, and compare it to popular asset classes:

The numbers that are interesting from our perspective are these two annual returns, averaged over a 20-year period:

That’s a gap of 5.9% of “lost” returns every year for the average investor. While this is uncomfortable already, the comparison gets much worse in the long run when compounding effects kick in.

Below are the profits of an initial investment of $10,000 over a 20-year period based on these numbers (not accounting for fees and taxes):

Think about this: Over a 20-year investment period, the average investor will only see one-fifth of the market returns, leaving more than $41,000 or 80% of the average market returns on the table!

Why is investing so difficult?

Maybe you wonder how the math adds up. How can the average investor not make the same returns as the market average delivers?

Briefly explained, it’s because market returns are heavily skewed: A small number of high-performing super stocks account for the vast majority of the market returns. Meanwhile, the average return of the remaining stocks is much lower.

In other words: If you don’t happen to pick one of the super stocks of the coming decade(s), it’s extremely difficult to beat the market, or even keep up with it. This was famously revealed by Hendrik Bessembinder in his studies of market returns.

This means stock picking becomes a loser’s game, unless you possess a real edge: Some sort of knowledge, skill or information that gives you an advantage compared to other market participants. But the choice of stocks is not the only problem…

Programmed like animals

Even if we outsource the choice of stocks and simply buy market-wide ETFs, we’re faced with another challenge.

Not so long ago (from an evolutionary perspective) our ancestors still roamed the savanna as hunter-gatherers, focusing on survival and hardwired to stay constantly alert for predators.

Human beings are programmed like animals: To be controlled by fear and greed. From an evolutionary perspective on the savanna, this made a lot of sense. There’s just one problem: Evolution did not prepare us for financial markets.

On the stock market, fear and greed drag us in the wrong directions. When the news is bad and the market is low, our natural fear tells us to sell — often at the worst time. And when everything looks bright and the market is thriving, our greedy nature wants us to buy — at times that often seem unlucky in hindsight.

This becomes a constant fight between our brains and our natural instincts. And our brains are more often affected by instincts than most people are aware of. The result is that we try to time the market. And humans are inherently and biologically bad at market timing.

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The Dunning-Kruger Effect

The odds are stacking against us. On top of the skewness of returns, the low probability of identifying tomorrow’s winners, and our natural instincts working against us, we have another headwind coming, known as overconfidence bias.

There’s something magnetically enticing about trying to predict the future. Everyone seems to have an opinion on what will happen. Without any deep knowledge on a subject, it’s common to hear people make predictions about:

• When the stock market is going to crash

• What’s about to happen with housing prices

• Where the Nvidia stock will be in a year

• Who will be the winners of the AI race

• How the USD will fare relative to the EUR

And it’s not a phenomenon specific to financial markets. It’s a common human trait that we overestimate our own knowledge on a subject and our ability to predict future events based on this knowledge.

This is known as The Dunning-Kruger Effect: The cognitive bias where people with limited knowledge or competence in a specific domain overestimate their own abilities, while experts in that domain tend to underestimate theirs.

Or in my own simplified phrasing: The more you know, the more you know that you don’t know.

This leads us to think we are much more capable of thriving in the markets, timing the ups and downs and predicting the future winners, than we are.

I believe most people are affected by this way of thinking. I’m no exception from the rule, but being aware of its implications, I try my best to stay away from making investment decisions that will be affected by psychology of any kind.

The easy way to beat the average

In the beginning of this article, I promised to give you the secrets to get significantly higher returns than average investors. It’s time for the most important one:

The trick is to eliminate fear, greed, and overconfidence bias from your trading decisions.

How do you do this? It’s not as easy as it may sound. Manually picking a stock and timing the buying and selling are heavily affected by emotion, instincts and biases.

The easiest way to avoid them (and I’m sure you’ve heard this one before) is to simply buy an index (ETF) and hold it. This recommendation has gained a lot of traction over the past decade. The so-called Bogleheads community has a simple recipe for this:

1. Buy a low-cost index fund

2. Dollar-cost average into it

3. Stay the course

Buying that index ETF is the easiest part. The harder part can be to stick to it no matter what the market does. Our human psychology will still try to affect our desire to sell it all when the market is in panic mode.

If you can manage this (only buying and never selling until you need the money) you will end up with long-term returns that are close to the market returns, and significantly better than the average investor!

How I took it one step further

While index investing is considered highly recommended for most people, some will find it boring, and some people just can’t seem to settle with something that is pretty good but not amazing.

Personally, I belong to the latter group. I’ve been active on the stock market since 2004 and tried all the common strategies with limited success. I’ve kept learning and studying, and today I know why I didn’t succeed back then.

If you have followed my newsletter or read some of my other articles, you will know that I developed my own systematic strategy back in 2021, which I have followed strictly since then.

This strategy takes the knowledge of human instincts and biases into account, and instead of falling into the traps, it reverses them, utilizing the human behavior in markets to its own benefit via a set of simple mathematical rules.

My strategy has more than doubled the market returns since I started following it in 2021, beating the MSCI World index every year so far.

I only spend 15 minutes every month, executing an average of 9 portfolio changes (swapping one ETF for another) a year. By popular demand, I have put together an introduction to my strategy here:

➡️ The Beginner’s Guide to the MarketFighter Strategy

I hope you enjoyed this article. Subscribe for more insights like this and to follow my investment strategy and its monthly trading signals.

Thanks for reading!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.

Hi!

Welcome to my newsletter, where I share my investment strategy that outperformed index investing with high consistency over the past quarter of a century. An extra warm welcome to the hundreds of new subscribers who joined since last week!

If you’re new to my strategy, and you don’t consider yourself a seasoned trader, this article is for you. I will explain in plain English what the strategy is all about, how it works, and the simple steps I take to follow this every month.

I’m starting to receive a lot of attention and questions from traders and professionals who want to know the details of my algorithm, which has returned an average around 20% annually over the past 10 years.

But the point in sharing my strategy was also to make it available to regular people, who are not trading experts or professionals, but just want to improve their investment returns without a lot of extra work. That’s why I’m writing this article.

The strategy in a nutshell

It’s a systematic strategy based on ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) that can be traded via any stock broker account. The selected ETFs only contain stocks. No bonds, gold or crypto. No shorting and no leverage. Most of the time I own two ETFs:

• The strongest sector-focused ETF (e.g. Energy Sector)

• The strongest factor-focused ETF (e.g. European Value)

On rare occasions, one or both of them are sold and not immediately replaced. That happens as a defensive mechanism during extended market declines. This means I always own between 0 and 2 ETFs, but most of the time it’s 2.

The ONLY time I execute a trade is on the first trading day of each month. This takes 15 minutes or less. The rest of the time, I’m free to do other things and not follow the market. This means each ETF is held for at least one month, regardless of what happens in the world.

The choice of which two ETFs to own is handled by a system I created. It has a few mathematical rules based on price momentum. These rules dictate what I buy and sell.

I follow them blindly with no questions asked, and I leave my emotions and gut feelings about the market behind. Experience has taught me that I can’t compete with the system.

Most people either do index investing or individual stock picking. This approach is a third way called systematic trading, which is less common among retail investors. My strategy is a simple but efficient take on systematic trading.

Earlier this year I decided to let others follow my journey and my strategy. That’s why I’m now publishing every trade the system suggests (the exact ETFs I’m buying) every month to subscribers of my newsletter.

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Why should I care about this strategy?

Before I explain the strategy itself, let me show you some numbers. The table below shows the returns by calendar year compared to the MSCI World Index. The last column shows the difference (alpha) between the two:

Did I trade this system since 2000? No. So, how can I know the performance 26 years back? I did what’s called a back-test. This means you download historical market data and apply the same systematic trading rules as you would do today.

If anyone had executed the trading rules of my strategy every month, these are the returns they would have achieved (in EUR, not accounting for taxes and trading fees). But how can you know if this outperformance will continue in the future?

Short answer: You can’t. There are no guarantees in investing.

The interesting part: I originally did the back-test in early 2021. Since then, I have traded the strategy with my own money. As you can see from the table, the numbers have continued to look good in real trading.

Don’t worry if you haven’t heard of the MSCI World Index. It’s just a way to measure the returns of the full global stock market (similar to S&P 500 used for measuring the US stock market).

How does it work?

To most people, a trading system sounds complicated. That’s not what this is. My strategy is not a full-time day trading job. I prefer to see it as an alternative to index investing.

A trading system simply implies that buying and selling is decided based on a set of fixed mathematical rules - as opposed to anyone’s opinion or gut feeling.

Trading systems eliminate all the human bias and feelings that tend to make us fail at investing. Instead it focuses on probability and data evidence.

My strategy is a monthly setup. This means, I only have to look at this once every month on the first trading day. The remaining time, I don’t worry about it at all. What happens is the following:

• After the last trading day of a month, I download market price data and feed it to the system.

• Based on the systematic rules I have entered into the system, it tells me which two ETFs have the highest probability of outperforming in the coming month.

• If the two selected ETFs are different from the two from last month, I execute the trades needed on the following day.

• Before the market opens on the first trading day of the new month, I send out an email with the new trading signal (provided by the system) to all paid subscribers.

What are these trading rules?

Trading rules are just simple mathematical checks applied to market data. In my case, I built a system that exploits so-called momentum effects in the market. Most of these are well documented in academic literature but not widely used among retail investors.

Simply put, groups of stocks that have done well in the recent past have a higher probability of continuing to do well than other groups.

The system compares certain current and historical price levels among a predefined list of ETFs (or rather indices).

Based on the probability of near-term outperformance (calculated from historical data evidence), it picks the most promising factor and sector ETF. The monthly selection process is illustrated here:

The main concept of my newsletter is to document my strategy, and anyone who’s interested can follow along by simply subscribing to receive the trading signals.

Very often, I receive questions about the details of my algorithm from people who want to copy my strategy and construct the signals themselves. But while my algorithm is proprietary, I publish its output to anyone who’s interested.

If you want to know more about the technical concepts behind the trading rules, I reveal everything except the core details in this article:

➡️ My Investment Approach that Outperformed the Stock Market in 25 of 26 Years

How did I come up with this?

I’ve been active on the stock market for more than 20 years. I’ve been down all the wrong lanes, been a victim of my own fear, greed, and intellectual overconfidence. Made all the classical mistakes.

But my stubborn obsession with outperforming the market has kept me going and I’ve learned from every mistake. Back in early 2021 I finally found a systematic way to achieve higher returns than the indexes through a set of rules.

Since then, I have invested most of our family money using this approach. It has continued to work really well, and recently this gave me the financial flexibility to quit my job as a software engineer. This means I can now focus on my passions for investing, writing and building on my own terms.

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Is this too good to be true?

Over the past 26 years, my strategy has delivered an average of roughly 10% above market returns annually. Theoretically, this is considered almost impossible by investment researchers. Most professional funds lag market returns in the long run.

But what I enjoy most about it is the consistency of the returns. It has performed exceptionally well during market crashes historically. The chart below shows how an investment of $100 has evolved with the strategy (yellow) compared to popular market benchmarks:

Some people have said my results almost look too good to be true. And honestly, that was also my thought when I initially put together the pieces for the puzzle in early 2021.

That’s why I spent five years quietly trading this strategy without telling anyone, except my nearest family. I was worried that it would stop working after I put money into it. But it has continued, and now, after 5 years it’s running most of my family investments.

What are my expectations for future returns?

The big question is of course whether this can continue. And nothing can ever be guaranteed in investing. No one can predict the future.

My personal guess is that it will continue to outperform, because it’s based on momentum effects which are the results of human psychology that hasn’t changed for centuries.

But my guess is also, that the level of outperformance may not be as high going forward. You should never underestimate the effects of luck and randomness in back-tests, and as more people utilize similar strategies it may affect the level of excess returns. Time will tell.

What’s my recommendation?

It’s important for me to state that I’m not a financial advisor, I have no financial education, and I’m not here to recommend anything.

I’m just a computer scientist who used my skills and was lucky to find my own way to succeed in the markets. Now I’m sharing my journey with anyone who’s curious about my approach.

The strategy I’m following is not a fit for everyone. It requires a lot of discipline to stick to a systematic strategy that sometimes tells you to execute a trade that goes against what you feel in the moment.

In the beginning it was hard for me to do this, but now after more than 5 years, I’ve learned that it pays off to stay disciplined when you’ve found something that works for you. I try to have as little opinion about the market as possible.

For further exploration, check out these other articles:

➡️ Explore the list of ETFs I use for the system
➡️ Find an investment strategy that matches your personality
➡️ Learn what factor investing is and how to use it
➡️ Read the technical deep-dive about the strategy

Now what?

If you’re not part of the journey yet, don’t forget to subscribe. I provide a number of free articles like this one every month.

If you want to receive the monthly trading signals and get full access to the strategy, simply upgrade to the paid subscription to join us. (Psst: You get the best price by doing this through a web browser and not inside the Substack mobile app!)

Thank you for reading!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.

Every month I send out a performance update for the MarketFighter Strategy: The investment approach I have followed for the past five years, which I’m now sharing with all subscribers to this newsletter.

In this post, I will give you a transparent look into how the strategy performed in April and how far we are ahead of the market in 2026 so far.

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April was a wild ride

Following a deep decline in March, the global stock markets rebounded sharply in April in what became the strongest month for stocks since November 2020. Here is our monthly performance so far in 2026 compared to our global market benchmark, the MSCI World Index:

After three consecutive months of solid outperformance, we lagged the benchmark in April, despite a high return for the month of 5.85% for the strategy. The relative underperformance was caused by the Energy ETF, which came down from recent highs due to volatility in oil prices.

We still haven’t experienced a negative month this year, and we are still comfortably ahead of market returns year-to-date (see the table further down in this article). Any strategy should of course be measured in years and decades, not in months. I’m just sharing these numbers for people interested in the latest development.

Detailed monthly breakdown

In the table below I have provided the exact performance of our strategy on a monthly basis compared to the MSCI World Index, as well as the alpha (the difference between our return and the market return):

Despite the first negative month relative to the benchmark, the strategy is up more than 16% so far in 2026, and more importantly almost 11% ahead of the MSCI World Index. This means we are in a good position to achieve a 14th straight year of outperforming the benchmark.

➡️ See this article for the full return overview of each year

The table above also lists the allocation in each month. These are the two ETFs the system decided to allocate money into based on the relative price momentum rules that are the foundation behind the strategy.

You can read more about the investment universe and the 15 indices and corresponding ETFs the strategy uses here:

➡️ Indices and ETFs in our investment universe

If you’re looking for the May trading signal and curious about which ETFs the strategy is currently allocated to, I wrote a separate article here:

➡️ The May 2026 Trading Signal

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The hardest part: Doing nothing

Finding a good strategy for trading and investing is only half the job towards success. The other half is all about having the discipline to stick to it. This is a theme I will be digging deeper into in future posts.

When I mention this now, it’s because I know that followers of the strategy may have a hard time sticking to an investment with high volatility that started to move down after a big surge.

I’m talking about the Energy ETF. In April, it went through a heavy decline, while the market surged. This is never a good feeling.

Eventually, it regained some of the losses at the end of the month, but I suspect the urge to sell it prematurely was present for many. It was for me. However, I have learned from experience that when it comes to trading, I’m better off trusting the system I have developed than my own instincts.

Coming up next

Hundreds of new subscribers have joined in recent weeks, and some of the feedback I have received was a request for an easy beginner’s introduction guide to the MarketFighter Strategy. I’m looking forward to providing this as my next post.

Stay tuned, and thank you for reading!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.

It’s time for the monthly allocation update of our strategy. The system has now calculated the relative momentum data, and the two selections for May are ready.

A huge welcome to the 286 new subscribers who joined since last month. Great to have you all here!

Before the first market opening of each month, I send out the trading signal provided by my systematic monthly rotation strategy. The signal tells us which two ETFs the system will invest in for the coming month. This system has outperformed the market in 25 of the past 26 years.

If you’re just here for the signal, feel free to scroll down to find it! 👇

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April was a phenomenal month for stocks

The global stock markets rebounded sharply in April, following a tough decline in March as a result of the Iran conflict and the spiking oil prices.

I will publish a full performance report early next week with the details of how the MarketFighter Strategy performed in April compared to the market.

I can already see from the numbers, though, that we are still comfortably ahead of market returns year-to-date. However, we lagged the surging market benchmarks in April due to the energy sector position, which retreated a bit after staggering returns in March.

The May 2026 Signal

For the coming month of May 2026, the MarketFighter Strategy will continue with an unchanged allocation compared to April. This means it will still be holding these two positions, equally weighted:

The price data shows that despite the heavy movements in April, the long-term momentum trend still indicates a high probability of excess returns in US Value and Energy going into the next 30 days.

Be aware that the European listed ticker names vary from one exchange to another. I have listed the Xetra (German) tickers, but they have different names on the London exchange, for instance. Let me know in the comments if this causes any confusion.

➡️ See the full list of relevant ETF ticker names for the strategy here.

Rebalancing the positions

For new investors who joined since last month, it’s easy if you want to follow the strategy: Simply buy 50% of each of the ETFs listed above.

For existing investors, it’s even easier this month, as you don’t have to change anything! This happens when the two allocations from last month are still the strongest sectors and factors now, based on the relative momentum calculations we run at the end of every month.

There is, however, an option to rebalance if your two ETFs have grown far away from the 50/50 allocation. The strategy was developed and back-tested using a strict 50/50 allocation each month, but if your trading fees are high, don’t worry. Personally, I don’t rebalance unless the distribution drifts beyond 55/45 in either direction.

How many trades can be expected?

One thing I haven’t addressed is the number of trades this system can be expected to require. As with everything in investing, it’s impossible to predict the future. The best we can do is look at the history. Here’s what it says:

The average number of annual trades for the factor allocation over the past 26 years was 5.0 (changes from one factor to another). For the sector allocation, the corresponding number was 4.1. This amounts to a total average of 9.1 changes of allocations annually.

Why am I telling you these numbers? To let you know that a month with no changes to the allocations is not uncommon for this system. I intentionally designed it to keep transaction costs as low as possible, not trading more than needed.

Don’t forget to subscribe for more information on the MarketFighter Strategy and for future trading signals.

Thanks for reading!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.

Have you ever wondered if there were certain common traits or DNA in stocks that are bound to outperform the market? If they shared some characteristics that increase their probability of achieving high returns in the near future? Look no further.

Researchers already mapped out the factors that drive excess returns decades ago. Together, these factors explain more than 70% of above-market returns in stocks (more than 90% according to some research). They’re widely used in institutional finance, but most retail investors don’t know how to benefit from them.

This post is my introduction to factor investing. I will explain what it is, how it works, and how you can easily use it in a strategy for outperformance.

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What is factor investing?

You have most likely heard about small-cap stocks, value, or momentum investing. Maybe even quality stocks without fully understanding what that quality specifically meant. These are all called factors, and I will explain them individually in a minute.

Investing is mostly perceived through the lens of active stock-picking: You research and analyze a large amount of stocks based on a set of criteria you believe have positive effect on the future returns.

Here’s the interesting part: That set of criteria is not nearly as secret or vague as most investors tend to think. Our brains are wired to believe we are good at identifying complex patterns ourselves, and that we can somehow use these to predict the future. Unfortunately, we can’t.

Most of the excess returns achieved by successful investors like Warren Buffett can be attributed to the factor exposure of their selected stocks. They may have picked these stocks directly or indirectly because of their high factor exposure. Or they may simply have been lucky to pick stocks that had these characteristics.

Academic research has done most of the work for us. Since the early 1990s, researchers have mapped out the traits or factors that have a high probability of predicting near-term outperformance. Based on these findings, MSCI created specific indexes to track the factors, starting in the late 90s. This is how they have performed:

Notice how all four factors have significantly outperformed the general World index. Also, notice how they have done this AFTER they were published and revealed to every curious mind on the globe with an internet connection!

More than 200 investment factors have been documented, but the vast majority of them are either overlapping or simply other factors in disguise. The four factors I’m covering in this post are the ones behind most of the excess returns in stocks.

Each of the factor indices were created using a filter applied to the World index. The filters are different for each factor. Let’s dig into them.

The Value Factor

The most intuitive of the four factors is the value factor. It simply filters companies based on their valuation, and only buys the cheapest ones. The definition of cheap varies. Typically, it involves looking at one or more of the following metrics:

• Price to earnings (P/E)

• Price to book value (P/B)

• Price to free cash flow (P/FCF)

The lower the values the better, and the more the company is said to be exposed to the value factor. This can seem intuitive: The lower the valuation, the more potential for price increases in the stock. Unfortunately it’s not always that simple, but historically it has generated excess returns over long time horizons, if you bought the 20-30% cheapest stocks and rebalanced consistently.

You can say that you are being paid a premium to take on the risk of owning businesses that other investors don’t want to own (hence, the low price).

🟢 Annual outperformance: 2.92% (*)

The Size Factor

The size factor is equally easy to understand. You will often see it labelled as Small-Cap. It’s all about market capitalization size (the total market value of the company). Historical research shows a reverse linear connection between size and returns. In other words: The smaller the company, the higher the average future returns.

Again, it’s not always as simple as that. Small stocks tend to be more volatile with a few big winners and a lot of losers. But if you bought a wide small-cap index at the turn of the millennium, you would have made a ton of money by now.

The size factor (or small-cap) indices and ETFs simply filter the wider market index by size, buying all the 20-30% smallest companies and rebalancing consistently (typically monthly, or quarterly). In this case you are being paid a premium for owning smaller companies with a higher risk related to their business.

🟢 Annual outperformance: 1.87% (*)

The Momentum Factor

Counterintuitive, yet undeniable, is the momentum factor. Research shows that the stocks with the biggest gains in the past 6-12 months have the highest probability of near-future outperformance. In other words: The 20-30% of stocks in the index that had already seen the largest gains in the recent past were bound to continue the outperformance.

Although the momentum factor is probably the least intuitive factor, it’s also the one that has delivered the highest returns historically. But it comes with a caveat of sudden reversals and steep declines when the market direction changes from time to time. As a long-term investor in momentum stocks, you will need to have the discipline to stick to it, even during these sharp reversals.

If you have the stomach to hold on to it, you may receive a significant risk premium.

🟢 Annual outperformance: 6.38% (*)

The Quality Factor

What is quality? It can refer to almost anything, but when we talk about the quality factor in investing, it relates to the quality of earnings and profits. Business stability, predictability and business moats are all part of it as well.

You can look up the exact definitions used by MSCI for their index methodology, but in general you can expect a business to have a high exposure to the quality factor, if it is consistently and increasingly profitable.

It may seem strange that investors should receive a premium for investing in stable quality companies that consistently make a lot of money. And it is. But for a lot of people, these are perceived as boring investments. Quality companies are typically not rocket stocks with potential to go to the moon. They are the sleep-well-at-night stocks that just quietly grow their business year after year.

🟢 Annual outperformance: 3.20% (*)

(* The performance metrics cover the period from 1963 to 2024 and is based on long/short portfolio data from the Ken French Data Library.)

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The probability of outperformance

In all of my work I look for high probability of outperformance. So does Andrew Berkin and Larry Swedroe in their amazing book Your Complete Guide to Factor-Based Investing, which I highly recommend, by the way.

Here’s what they calculated based on historical data for the primary factors:

The table shows another calculation of premiums based on long/short portfolios backtested all the way back to 1927. But what’s even more interesting is the calculations of the odds of outperformance while holding each factor. Notice how it increases with the holding time.

Wait. Where’s the caveat?

Did this almost seem too good to be true? If it was that easy to achieve market-beating returns, everyone would buy factor ETFs instead of the pure index funds. But here’s the problem:

Although factors have exhibited excess returns over long time horizons, they have all faced severe drawdowns and prolonged periods of underperformance relative to general market benchmarks.

It takes an immense amount of discipline and patience to stick to an investment through 10 years of underperformance. This is exactly what happened to the value factor not long ago in 2010-2020, and similar bad periods have occurred for other factors as well.

To sum up: What we have here is a range of premium effects that historically generated significant outperformance, if only you could stick to them long enough. But few people possess the patience and discipline to stomach this. The FOMO when comparing to an index fund that keeps winning as years go by is almost humanly impossible to stand.

How can factors be used to outperform?

I have been there, investing for the long term in factor-based ETFs, only to realize I had no clue which of the factors would do well in the near future.

I realized the only way I could really benefit from factor investing was to find a way to rotate between the factors based on data. This led to a lot of research and to eventually developing a strategy that incorporates factor ETFs as a major pillar.

ETF rotation is becoming increasingly popular. The idea is that you rotate between a well-defined basket of ETFs (e.g. factor-based ETFs) at consistent intervals, buying only the one that performs the best according to certain criteria.

I found that relative price momentum can work really well with factors. This is a common technique used in trading systems design. By looking at historical price data you can compare the factors and order them by recent performance. And here’s the kicker:

Choosing the factor with the strongest performance during the past 1-12 months takes out most of the bad “factor stints”, if you simply rebalance at consistent intervals (like at the start of each month).

If you have followed my work, you may already know how my strategy works and how it has performed. If not, you can read about it here:

➡️ My Investment Approach that Outperformed the Stock Market in 25 of 26 years

The essence of the MarketFighter Strategy is to harness the power of relative price momentum on factors as well as on sectors with a drawdown protection layer on top. Having a system to calculate this eliminates all the gut feeling and human bias.

Combining these three pillars has created a remarkably consistent strategy that significantly outperformed the market over the past 25+ years. It does not require any business analysis, stock picking or news reading.

My system calculates the trades needed to follow the strategy each month and I send them to subscribers before the market opens. I have traded the same system with my own money for more than five years now. Subscribe if you want to follow along.

Thanks for reading!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.

First of all, a warm welcome to all the new subscribers who joined since last time!

The positive comments and feedback I have received since I started publishing my strategy have been overwhelming. Thank you all for that!

A lot of you have requested lists of specific ETF tickers needed to follow the strategy. My intention with today’s post is to provide everything you need regarding that.

If you’re only here for the ticker lists, feel free to scroll down. 👇

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What’s the best way to invest in ETFs?

ETF is short for Exchange-Traded Fund and represents an easy way for investors to diversify across a large number of stocks through the purchase of a single ticker on a stock exchange.

They are similar to regular funds, except most of them are passive, which means they automatically follow an index as opposed to having a fund manager actively pick each individual stock.

The most common usage of ETFs is for passive index investing. With this strategy you simply buy and hold an ETF that tracks a broad market index like the MSCI World or the S&P 500.

This simple approach is reported to beat 95% of professional fund managers over time because it automatically avoids any form of bias or emotion in decision-making.

How to optimize index investing

Not many years ago I was doing passive index investing myself — convinced by the books and the research telling me it was next to impossible to beat this simple approach in the long run anyway.

But my analytical mindset and curiosity couldn’t stop thinking about ways to optimize or improve this. I have described my journey and the strategy it led to here:

➡️ My Investment Approach that Outperformed the Stock Market in 25 of 26 years

Basically, I realized I could improve ETF returns significantly and consistently by systematically rotating between sector-focused ETFs and factor-focused ETFs, resulting in +20% annual returns over the past 10 years.

I created a simple algorithm that picks the strongest sector and the strongest factor based on relative price momentum. This results in a maximum of two trades to be executed on the first trading day of each month.

Sounds complicated? It’s not. Here’s the best part: It’s super easy to copy my approach, as I calculate exactly which trades should be executed (the signals) each month and send it to all subscribers before the market opens.

What you need to know about the ETF market

The global market for ETFs can be confusing and overwhelming. Different rules apply in different regions. The same ETFs can have different tickers on different exchanges. And the availability of specific tickers can differ from broker to broker, from country to country.

For these reasons (and because I’m writing for a global audience), I didn’t originally include a list of specific ETF tickers when I described the investment universe and the indices needed to trade the MarketFighter Strategy in this post:

➡️ Revealing the Exact Universe Behind the MarketFighter Strategy

What I did in that post was to give you the overview of the 15 indices the strategy tracks and compares. Give it a read if you want to learn more about why the strategy works with the specific ETFs and corresponding indices. For now, I will just share this quick illustration from the article:

It became obvious to me from all the requests, that it was not enough to simply list the indices. So I decided to assemble two detailed lists:

• One with specific ETFs available to the European market

• One with specific ETFs available on US exchanges

People living in the European Union have limited access to US-listed ETFs because of regulatory compliance rules. From most other regions of the world, you will have access to the ETF tickers on the US market.

List of ETFs for the European market

The list below contains my suggestions for ETFs listed on the European market. These are the ones I’m trading myself, as I live in Denmark. They are all UCITS-compliant which means they fulfill the regulatory requirements for selling to retail investors living in the European Union.

Each element in the list is headlined by the index it tracks (the factor or sector to invest in). It includes the full name of the ETF, a ticker name and the unique ISIN code.

On the European market the ISIN code is the safest way to identify an ETF, as the ticker codes differ from one exchange to another. It’s important to note that the ticker names I have listed below are the Xetra Exchange tickers (listed in Germany):

USA MOMENTUM

iShares Edge MSCI USA Momentum Factor UCITS ETF
QDVA 🔸 IE00BD1F4N50

USA QUALITY

iShares Edge MSCI USA Quality Factor UCITS ETF
QDVB 🔸 IE00BD1F4L37

USA VALUE

iShares Edge MSCI USA Value Factor UCITS ETF
QDVI 🔸 IE00BD1F4M44

USA SMALL CAP

iShares MSCI USA Small Cap ESG Enhanced CTB UCITS ETF
SXRG 🔸 IE00B3VWM098

EUROPE MOMENTUM

iShares Edge MSCI Europe Momentum Factor UCITS ETF
CEMR 🔸 IE00BQN1K786

EUROPE QUALITY

iShares Edge MSCI Europe Quality Factor UCITS ETF
CEMQ 🔸 IE00BQN1K562

EUROPE VALUE

iShares Edge MSCI Europe Value Factor UCITS ETF
CEMS 🔸 IE00BQN1K901

EUROPE SMALL CAP

Xtrackers MSCI Europe Small Cap UCITS ETF
XXSC 🔸 LU0322253906

CONSUMER DISCRETIONARY

iShares S&P 500 Consumer Discretionary Sector UCITS ETF
QDVK 🔸 IE00B4MCHD36

CONSUMER STAPLES

iShares S&P 500 Consumer Staples Sector UCITS ETF
2B7D 🔸 IE00B40B8R38

ENERGY

iShares S&P 500 Energy Sector UCITS ETF
QDVF 🔸 IE00B42NKQ00

HEALTH CARE

iShares S&P 500 Health Care Sector UCITS ETF
QDVG 🔸 IE00B43HR379

INDUSTRIALS

iShares S&P 500 Industrials Sector UCITS ETF
2B7C 🔸 IE00B4LN9N13

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

iShares S&P 500 Information Technology Sector UCITS ETF
QDVE 🔸 IE00B3WJKG14

MATERIALS

iShares S&P 500 Materials Sector UCITS ETF
2B7B 🔸 IE00B4MKCJ84

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List of ETFs for the US market

The American market for ETFs is in many ways less complicated than the European one. You can count on the ticker name, and there are less regulatory restrictions. This also means most other retail investors in other parts of the world will have access to trade these ETFs.

One thing to be aware of though, is that some of the indices I use in the system are not tracked in exactly the same way by any US-listed ETF. This is the case for the following:

• Europe Momentum

• Europe Quality

• Europe Value

In these cases I suggest the “International” (Ex-US) versions that include the full developed market outside of United States. Europe typically constitutes 60-70% of this. These alternatives are the closest matches on the US market, and I don’t believe their returns will be dramatically different, as they track the same risk premia.

Below is my list of suggestions for US-listed ETFs, headlined by the index they track, followed by the full ETF name, the ticker code and the ISIN code for unique identification:

USA MOMENTUM

iShares MSCI USA Momentum Factor ETF
MTUM 🔹 US46432F3964

USA QUALITY

iShares MSCI USA Quality Factor ETF
QUAL 🔹 US46432F3394

USA VALUE

iShares MSCI USA Value Factor ETF
VLUE 🔹 US46432F3881

USA SMALL CAP

iShares U.S. Small-Cap Equity Factor ETF
SMLF 🔹 US46434V2907

EUROPE MOMENTUM

iShares MSCI Intl Momentum Factor ETF
IMTM 🔹 US46434V4499

EUROPE QUALITY

iShares MSCI Intl Quality Factor ETF
IQLT 🔹 US46434V4564

EUROPE VALUE

iShares MSCI Intl Value Factor ETF
IVLU 🔹 US46435G4091

EUROPE SMALL CAP

iShares MSCI Europe Small-Cap ETF
IEUS 🔹 US4642884971

CONSUMER DISCRETIONARY

State Street Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR ETF
XLY 🔹 US81369Y4070

CONSUMER STAPLES

State Street Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR ETF
XLP 🔹 US81369Y3080

ENERGY

State Street Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF
XLE 🔹 US81369Y5069

HEALTH CARE

State Street Health Care Select Sector SPDR ETF
XLV 🔹 US81369Y2090

INDUSTRIALS

State Street Industrial Select Sector SPDR ETF
XLI 🔹 US81369Y7040

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

State Street Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF
XLK 🔹 US81369Y8030

MATERIALS

State Street Materials Select Sector SPDR ETF
XLB 🔹 US81369Y1001

Leveraged ETFs for the fearless

One subscriber requested a list of leveraged ETFs to follow the strategy with higher impact. First of all, I want to make it clear that I’m not recommending the use of leveraged ETFs, as I haven’t tested the strategy with these!

But for traders with a high risk appetite, there are actually 2x-leveraged sector ETFs available in the US. These track the daily changes with 200% exposure to the tracked sector index. They are listed with the following tickers:

• ROM | Ultra Technology

• DIG | Ultra Energy

• RXL | Ultra Health Care

• UYM | Ultra Materials

• UGE | Ultra Consumer Staples

• UCC | Ultra Consumer Discretionary

• UXI | Ultra Industrials

I have not managed to find any leveraged factor ETFs listed in the US. On the European market the use of leverage in ETFs is much less widespread, and I didn’t find any suitable solutions.

How to use the lists

Save these lists somewhere if you want to have an overview of the ETFs needed to follow the MarketFighter Strategy. Make sure to subscribe if you want to receive similar free articles with strategic insights.

If you want full access to the strategy and receive the monthly trading signals, simply upgrade to the paid subscription to join us. (Psst: You get the best price by doing this through a web browser and not inside the Substack mobile app!)

Thanks for reading!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.

Welcome to the monthly performance update for anyone following the MarketFighter Strategy — a simple systematic investment approach with a high probability of outperforming the market (doing so in 25 of the past 26 years).

I’m writing this to give you a transparent look into the recent performance. If you traded the strategy in March like I did, I’m sure you will enjoy reading this update 👇

New to the strategy? Check out these links:
➡️ The quick introduction
➡️ The detailed breakdown of the strategy

What a month we had in March!

While global stock markets tumbled due to the war in Iran and the staggering oil price, followers of the MarketFighter Strategy experienced another month in green territory. Here is our monthly performance so far in 2026 compared to our market benchmark, the MSCI World Index:

Three consecutive months of solid outperformance is not something you can expect to see often. Trading and investment strategies should be measured in years and decades, not in months or days. Still, it’s hard not to be very satisfied with the results so far in 2026.

Detailed monthly breakdown

In the table below I have provided the exact performance of our strategy compared to the World Index, as well as the alpha (the excess return, or the difference between our return and the market return):

The table also lists the allocation in each month. These are the two ETFs the system decided to allocate money into based on the relative price momentum rules that are the foundation behind the strategy.

You can read more about the investment universe and the 15 indices and corresponding ETFs the strategy uses here:

➡️ Indices and ETFs in our investment universe

If you’re looking for the April trading signal and curious about which ETFs the system is currently allocated to, I wrote a separate article here:

➡️ The April 2026 Trading Signal

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The main driver of returns

The strategy stands on two legs: factor momentum and sector momentum. The two tend to outperform at different times. This means by combining them, we get a smoother return profile. In some months the sector allocation will be great, while the factor allocation is mediocre and vice versa.

Since the strategy moved out of Technology and into the Energy sector on February 1st, it has delivered staggering returns. No one could predict the war or the recent development in the oil price, but the system detected a high relative momentum in the Energy sector at the end of January — long before the headlines caught up.

This purely data-driven decision was the primary cause of the returns we have achieved in the past two months.

It’s pure math. The system doesn’t care why the market moves. It only recognizes the move, compares it to alternatives and suggests an allocation to the asset with the highest probability of near-term outperformance.

The chart below (provided by YCharts) illustrates how much of a game-changer it has been to be allocated in Energy compared to all other sectors in March:

A note on the macro situation

There are thousands of active macro analysts with strong opinions on what’s happening in the world at the moment. I’m not one of them.

My edge is my systematic approach. I will not try to predict anything, and I will not follow the same approach that leads most investors to mediocre returns, attempting to benefit from the same information that is available to everyone.

For my strategy to work well, I need to ignore the media narrative and all the analysis and opinions I see everywhere. Simply trusting my system has provided far better returns for me.

Sometimes that means executing a trade that feels wrong in the moment. Sometimes it means going against your own opinion — whether it came from the media, from your own analysis, or from someone else.

If you consider following this strategy, you need to decide if you still want to study macro analysis, fundamentals and opinions, or if you are ready to pursue an entirely systematic approach to optimizing returns.

I hope you enjoyed this. Thank you for reading!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.

It’s time for the monthly allocation change. As March came to a close, the system has now calculated the momentum data, and the selection for April is ready.

Before the first market opening of each month I send out the trading signal provided by the systematic monthly rotation strategy. The signal tells us which two ETFs the system will move into for the coming month.

If you’re just here for the signal, feel free to scroll down to find it! 👇

First time here? Check out these links:
➡️ The quick introduction
➡️ The detailed breakdown of the strategy

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March was incredible for the strategy

For subscribers who followed along and traded the March signal, this month was a joy. I will put up a full performance report for March during the coming week, but I can already say it has been a pleasure to watch our strategy stay in green while the rest of the market has been in turmoil. I posted this little chart a few days ago:

This kind of outperformance is of course not to be expected every month. Such a large alpha achieved in only one month is out of the ordinary, even for this strategy.

As you might have noticed, it was entirely driven by the US Energy Sector ETF which benefited from the staggering oil prices.

I’m not here to be a macro analyst and I will never attempt to predict anything. If you ask me if this performance in the energy sector will continue, my answer is:

I have absolutely no idea.

My take on the market is entirely data-driven, and I move my money to the areas of the market where the historical probability of outperformance is the highest. This has worked well for more than 25 years, but there have been ups and downs along the way. March was without a doubt in the former category!

Now for the trading signal you have been waiting for…

The April 2026 Signal

For the coming month of April 2026, the MarketFighter strategy will be holding these two positions, equally weighted:

THE FACTOR ALLOCATION (50%):
▶️ MSCI USA Enhanced Value

THE SECTOR ALLOCATION (50%):
▶️ S&P 500 Energy Sector

US investors can implement the signal by holding these ETFs:

✅ VLUE ticker (ISIN: US46432F3881)

✅ XLE ticker (ISIN: US81369Y5069)

European investors can implement the signal by holding these ETFs:

✅ IUVD ticker (ISIN: IE00BFF5RX68)

✅ QDVF ticker (ISIN: IE00B42NKQ00)

Moving from European Value to US Value

While the sector allocation remains unchanged in Energy, the factor allocation moves from European value stocks and into their American counterpart.

This is the result of a significant performance in the MSCI USA Enhanced Value Index relative to the European index in recent months.

As systematic observers we simply rely on the momentum-based rules to identify the asset with the highest probability of outperformance in the coming month.

Actions and rebalancing

If you are new to the strategy and want to follow along, simply buy and hold the two positions until you receive the next trading signal in your inbox, when we reach May.

If you traded the March signal and want to follow along, it means you will already own an ETF tracking the S&P 500 Energy Sector, which will continue in April. You will also own an ETF tracking the MSCI Europe Enhanced Value Index, which you need to sell, and use the money to buy an ETF tracking the MSCI USA Enhanced Value Index instead, as mentioned above.

The strategy is designed to have an equal 50/50 balance between the two ETFs at the beginning of each month. However, drifting a bit from the 50/50 does not mean the system will break. If your trading fees are low, feel free to rebalance as much as you want, but don’t worry if your positioning moves closer to 60/40 or 40/60.

Don’t forget to subscribe for more information on the MarketFighter strategy and for future trading signals!

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Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.