Profit disposition: 3 Backtests
We backtested 3 profit disposition strategies across US stocks. 0 beat the benchmark before correction; best −3.8 pts/yr.
Every result below is the strategy's annualized return minus an equal-weight benchmark, rebalanced daily, on the same assets and days. Strategies are charged real trading costs; the benchmark pays none. Data stops at the discovery cutoff. See the full family index, the full method and every result, or download the raw registry (JSON).
0 of 3 strategies finished ahead of the benchmark on the raw number, and 0 had an unadjusted p-value under 0.05. After one correction across all 688 tests in the registry, 0 passed, so no result here is a confirmed edge. Scored 2026-10-03, using data up to 2025-03-15. Method: see the evidence page.
How to read these results
"Ahead" means a higher return than the benchmark in this historical test, and "behind" means a lower one. Neither is a confirmed edge. A strategy is only counted as working if it survives a correction for how many strategies were tried, because testing hundreds of ideas will throw up some lucky winners by chance. Profit disposition is grouped by the signal it trades on, not by the asset it was tested on, and every strategy here saw only data up to the same cutoff date, so none could see data another could not.
Results
- Does moving a stock exit to breakeven after a gain work? (US stocks): behind the benchmark by 3.8 percentage points a year. Not statistically significant. Source: retail trading content: move stop to breakeven after four percent profit stock trade.
- Does taking half the stock profit position early work? (US stocks): behind the benchmark by 7.2 percentage points a year. Not statistically significant. Source: retail trading content: sell half after five percent profit stock position harvesting.
- Does giving back accumulated gains identify a bad stock hold? (US stocks): behind the benchmark by 13.2 percentage points a year. Not statistically significant. Source: retail trading content: exit trade cumulative gains losses participation giveback.