IWM
iShares Russell 2000 ETF
stock NYSE ETF

I was up over 600% in about 5 weeks trading iron condors. The two big jumps these last two weeks of course blew through my short calls. Lost about 1/4 of the money I made. I am trading call credit spreads mostly on IWM. But I’m not really sure what to expect. It doesn’t make sense for it to keep breaking out, but then again nothing does. Just go at least 3dte and as far OTM as possible. Credit spreads have a very high probability of profit in comparison to just about every other options strategy.

Learn to trade one thing. I am profitable everyday but I had to establish rules and I have traded for 30 years now. I trade Futures and trade MES, MNQ and M2K. This equates to SPY, QQQ and IWM. You can also do MGC for Gold or MCL for crude oil.
I paper traded until I could do 100 trades and be profitable. Then switched to real money. My prep time is 30 minutes a day. I keep it very simple. Futures trade 24 hours a day almost. Look it up but I trade the open from 9:45 to 11:00 and close 2:30 to 4:

And yet somehow, magically, QQQ, SPY, and IWM all scream up...

Interesting. Maybe TDA charged that higher price for SPX. I usually stick to SPY and IWM when trading indices.

None of this shit makes sense: SPY/QQQ/IWM ⬆️, USO ⬆️, GLD/SLV ⬆️, VIX ⬇️. Literally nonsensical. And this the year I’m unemployed and decide to try options 🤦‍♀️

IWM 4/24 $250P anyone?

Death taxes and IWM fucking up my puts

I think IWM will give more rewards for Put speculation in the shorter term because those 2k companies seem more sensitive to this Oil shock while SPY and QQQ can hold out a little longer.
That's my bet anyway.

If the structured notes on performance of IWM and SPY are issued by lender, the holder of the notes is on the hook for the loss. At this point the lender won't care how much indices crater, or how much overissuance of ETFs in relation to "real collateral" there will be.

Interesting strategy! I was curious about the actual numbers, so I built an independent backtest in Python to replicate this using ETF proxies for all 15 indices (MTUM, QUAL, VLUE, IWM for US factors; IEMO.L, XDEQ.DE, IEVL.L, CUSS.L for Europe factors; XLY, XLP, XLE, XLV, XLI, XLK, XLB for sectors).
**My setup:** Monthly rebalance, 12-month lookback for relative momentum, top pick from each basket (factor + sector), 50/50 split, cash when SPY 12m return < 0.
**Results (2001-2026, USD):**
- Strategy CAGR: 10.3% vs SPY 9.0%
- Max Drawdown: -25.9% vs SPY -50.8%
- Sharpe: 0.65 vs 0.51
The standout is the **drawdown protection** -- the strategy cut max drawdown in half vs SPY. In 2008 we got -9.4% vs SPY -36.8%, and in 2022 we got +16.7% vs SPY -18.2%. Those two years alone are massive.
**However, recent years are more mixed:**
- 2023: +9.6% vs SPY +26.2% (cash filter stayed on too long after 2022)
- 2024: +13.0% vs SPY +24.9% (US mega-caps dominated, hard for rotation to keep up)
- 2025: +19.3% vs SPY +17.7% (outperforming again)
**Current signal (April 2026):** VLUE (US Value, +45.9% momentum) + XLE (Energy, +54.3% momentum).
A few notes: my numbers are in USD while yours are in EUR, which explains some of the gap -- EUR/USD swings can shift annual returns by 5-15%. Also I used ETF proxies (some European factor ETFs only go back to ~2013), whereas you use actual MSCI index data going back to 2000.
12-month lookback was indeed the best in my sensitivity analysis (tested 3, 6, 9, 12 months). The core idea clearly works -- momentum-based rotation with drawdown protection delivers excellent risk-adjusted returns.
For anyone wanting to explore more tactical allocation strategies, I built [BestFolio](https://bestfolio.app) which covers 90+ strategies including factor and sector rotation. Happy to discuss methodology.

I was up over 600% in about 5 weeks trading iron condors. The two big jumps these last two weeks of course blew through my short calls. Lost about 1/4 of the money I made. I am trading call credit spreads mostly on IWM. But I’m not really sure what to expect. It doesn’t make sense for it to keep breaking out, but then again nothing does. Just go at least 3dte and as far OTM as possible. Credit spreads have a very high probability of profit in comparison to just about every other options strategy.

Learn to trade one thing. I am profitable everyday but I had to establish rules and I have traded for 30 years now. I trade Futures and trade MES, MNQ and M2K. This equates to SPY, QQQ and IWM. You can also do MGC for Gold or MCL for crude oil.
I paper traded until I could do 100 trades and be profitable. Then switched to real money. My prep time is 30 minutes a day. I keep it very simple. Futures trade 24 hours a day almost. Look it up but I trade the open from 9:45 to 11:00 and close 2:30 to 4:

And yet somehow, magically, QQQ, SPY, and IWM all scream up...

Interesting. Maybe TDA charged that higher price for SPX. I usually stick to SPY and IWM when trading indices.

None of this shit makes sense: SPY/QQQ/IWM ⬆️, USO ⬆️, GLD/SLV ⬆️, VIX ⬇️. Literally nonsensical. And this the year I’m unemployed and decide to try options 🤦‍♀️

IWM 4/24 $250P anyone?

Death taxes and IWM fucking up my puts

I think IWM will give more rewards for Put speculation in the shorter term because those 2k companies seem more sensitive to this Oil shock while SPY and QQQ can hold out a little longer.
That's my bet anyway.

If the structured notes on performance of IWM and SPY are issued by lender, the holder of the notes is on the hook for the loss. At this point the lender won't care how much indices crater, or how much overissuance of ETFs in relation to "real collateral" there will be.

Interesting strategy! I was curious about the actual numbers, so I built an independent backtest in Python to replicate this using ETF proxies for all 15 indices (MTUM, QUAL, VLUE, IWM for US factors; IEMO.L, XDEQ.DE, IEVL.L, CUSS.L for Europe factors; XLY, XLP, XLE, XLV, XLI, XLK, XLB for sectors).
**My setup:** Monthly rebalance, 12-month lookback for relative momentum, top pick from each basket (factor + sector), 50/50 split, cash when SPY 12m return < 0.
**Results (2001-2026, USD):**
- Strategy CAGR: 10.3% vs SPY 9.0%
- Max Drawdown: -25.9% vs SPY -50.8%
- Sharpe: 0.65 vs 0.51
The standout is the **drawdown protection** -- the strategy cut max drawdown in half vs SPY. In 2008 we got -9.4% vs SPY -36.8%, and in 2022 we got +16.7% vs SPY -18.2%. Those two years alone are massive.
**However, recent years are more mixed:**
- 2023: +9.6% vs SPY +26.2% (cash filter stayed on too long after 2022)
- 2024: +13.0% vs SPY +24.9% (US mega-caps dominated, hard for rotation to keep up)
- 2025: +19.3% vs SPY +17.7% (outperforming again)
**Current signal (April 2026):** VLUE (US Value, +45.9% momentum) + XLE (Energy, +54.3% momentum).
A few notes: my numbers are in USD while yours are in EUR, which explains some of the gap -- EUR/USD swings can shift annual returns by 5-15%. Also I used ETF proxies (some European factor ETFs only go back to ~2013), whereas you use actual MSCI index data going back to 2000.
12-month lookback was indeed the best in my sensitivity analysis (tested 3, 6, 9, 12 months). The core idea clearly works -- momentum-based rotation with drawdown protection delivers excellent risk-adjusted returns.
For anyone wanting to explore more tactical allocation strategies, I built [BestFolio](https://bestfolio.app) which covers 90+ strategies including factor and sector rotation. Happy to discuss methodology.