Performance Update: April 2026
How the MarketFighter Strategy beat the market by 5.72% in March, ended in the green, and continues to outperform in 2026.
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
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!
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.