SledgeKey Backtests
Classic strategies, tested two ways
Every strategy here is backtested on survivorship-free, point-in-time data, with the companies that went bankrupt, were seized, or left the exchange kept in the test the whole way through. On the midcap value page we run it a second time on a survivor-only universe, the way most free tools quietly do, to put an exact number on the bias. Each page discloses its full methodology, and reading any of it requires no account.
Midcap Value
P/E under 15 and a $2B–$20B market cap band, held from 2017 through 2026. The honest run, which had to carry Silicon Valley Bank into its collapse, trailed the index by 4.1 points a year; a survivor-only backtester would have quietly hidden 1.77 of those points.
Live
The Magic Formula
Joel Greenblatt's cheap-and-high-return-on-capital screen from The Little Book That Beats the Market, run honestly from 2017 through 2026 with delisted companies kept in. It made just over 13% a year and trailed a plain S&P 500 index fund by two and a half points.
Live
Piotroski-Style Financial Strength
A levels version of Joseph Piotroski's financial-strength checklist, bolted onto a price-to-book value anchor and run from 2017 through 2026. Kept honest it made 10.46% a year and trailed the index. A survivor-only universe pads that by 1.3 points a year it never earned.
Live
Graham's Defensive Investor
Benjamin Graham's defensive investor rules, five absolute filters run once a year from August 2016 to August 2026. Kept honest it made 11.90% a year and trailed the index by 3.46 points. For the first five rebalances it never found twenty companies that qualified, and in 2017 it found seven.
Live
How these backtests are run
Every page discloses its complete configuration: every filter, threshold, weighting rule, rebalance schedule, and cost assumption. The universe is NYSE and NASDAQ operating companies (no SPACs, REITs, ETFs, or funds) built point-in-time, so eligibility at each rebalance reflects the companies actually listed on that date. In the honest runs, holdings that delist are booked out at their frozen last traded price. In the survivor-only runs, later-delisted companies are excluded from the universe entirely, which is what most free backtesting tools silently do.
When a strategy loses to the index, the page says so, and every analysis carries a caveats section listing what the result fails to establish.
Run this yourself
Every configuration on these pages is reproducible in the app. The free Starter plan screens all 5,000+ NYSE and NASDAQ companies across all 31 metrics and backtests two years of point-in-time data, with no credit card and no expiry. SledgeKey+ extends the same engine to the full ten years, adds Black-Scholes protective put hedging, a 5,000-path Monte Carlo projection, and a 10-section research PDF, for $22 a month or $220 a year.