One engine, three books

The system is fully algorithmic — no discretionary changes, no manual overrides, no exceptions. It generates signals, and those signals get executed. The strategy allocates across three largely uncorrelated return streams: US stocks, gold and Bitcoin. Depending on the book, the stocks come from different indices: NDX Rotate + X (opens in a new tab) from the Nasdaq 100; eToro (opens in a new tab) from the Nasdaq 100 and Russell 1000; Meridian Systematic (opens in a new tab) from the Nasdaq 100, S&P 100 and Russell 1000. Momentum-driven rotation happens within the stock sleeve; the three asset classes are reset to their target weights once a year, at year-end. Each asset class serves a distinct role — stocks deliver growth, gold delivers stability, and Bitcoin delivers asymmetric upside. They don't move in lockstep, and the book is built on exactly that.

Once a month the candidates for every stock sleeve are ranked again. A stock has to be in its own long-term uptrend; the ranking uses a momentum score blended over several horizons from three to twelve months, and the top names per index enter the book at equal weight. In the wider books, a name already taken by a higher-priority sleeve is skipped, so no stock is held twice.

On top of that sits the volatility gate, and it applies only to the stock sleeves. Each sleeve holds stocks only while its index is in its long-term uptrend and its recent volatility stays below a multiple of its own one-year average; otherwise that sleeve goes to cash at the next month-end. It is not a rare event: the stock part sits in cash roughly one month in three, the Nasdaq 100 sleeve 34% of the 31 years. Gold and Bitcoin, on the other hand, stay invested at all times. The stock half thus spends about a third of its life in cash, and that is why the worst fall in the NDX Rotate + X (opens in a new tab) backtest is −23.0% instead of −35.9% without the gate.

The targets are about 25% CAGR at a maximum drawdown of about 25% — targets, not promises.