The short of it
- A plain S&P 500 index fund returned 13.7% a year from 2017-01-03 to 2026-08-14, the line Traderbot tests every strategy against
- Only two of the seven strategies in the comparison table beat that benchmark, and the highest returner also carried an 80.4% deepest fall
- Institutional Consensus, built on public 13F filings, finished behind the benchmark at 13.0% a year against 13.7%
- Traderbot's mirror holds 465,335 daily closing prices back to 2014-01-01, and charges one percent on money movements rather than an ongoing fund fee
What low cost index funds actually hold
Low cost index funds are not a bet on which company wins next quarter. They buy the entire list a benchmark tracks, in the weight the benchmark assigns each name, and change almost nothing between one rebalancing and the next. Because the fund does not pay analysts to argue over which stock to hold, it can charge a small fraction of what an actively managed fund charges. A low cost s&p 500 index fund is the plainest version of this idea: five hundred companies, one price, one fee, no manager picking winners.
The appeal shows up over time rather than in any single year. Traderbot's own price history runs to 465,335 daily closing prices, the oldest from 2014-01-01, and inside that record an s&p low cost index fund held from 2017-01-03 to 2026-08-14 returned 13.7% a year. No stock-picking, no filing to read, no timing decision - just ownership of the index, carried at a low fee.
That single number becomes the yardstick for everything else here, because it is what a person gets for doing nothing beyond holding the fund.
Nine years of a low cost index fund against twelve trading strategies
Traderbot backtests twelve strategies against that same 13.7%-a-year line, and the comparison is not close in either direction. Some strategies beat the benchmark by a wide margin and paid for it in drawdown; most did not beat it at all. The table below holds every result as Traderbot ran it, each strategy started from $10,000.00 on 2017-01-03.
| Strategy | Annual return | Deepest fall | Ending value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crypto Trend | 48.0% | 80.4% | $433,052.62 |
| Ladder 36 Plus | 15.4% | 43.7% | $39,797.75 |
| Institutional Consensus | 13.0% | 46.9% | $32,381.38 |
| Volatility Target | 9.6% | 25.2% | $24,073.85 |
| Dual Momentum | 8.7% | 43.7% | $22,239.50 |
| Trend 200 | 7.9% | 25.1% | $20,744.96 |
| Risk Parity | 7.4% | 23.7% | $19,879.54 |
| Ladder 36 | 7.0% | 28.3% | $19,252.46 |
| Fund Mirror | 6.2% | 21.8% | $17,820.18 |
| Capitol Flow | 2.0% | 60.0% | $12,051.65 |
| Insider Cluster | 0.8% | 35.1% | $10,771.27 |
| Sector Rotation | -0.5% | 36.6% | $9,508.82 |
Only two of these twelve strategies cleared the benchmark's 13.7% a year, and one did it by holding bitcoin and ether through an 80.4% peak-to-trough fall that few investors would sit through. Institutional Consensus, which buys whatever institutional managers bought most last quarter, still finished a step behind the index it was measured against, and Sector Rotation lost money in absolute terms across the same nine years.
What ten thousand dollars turned into
Run the benchmark's own rate forward and the arithmetic is plain. Nine years and roughly seven months separate 2017-01-03 from 2026-08-14. Compounding $10,000.00 at 13.7% a year across that stretch gives a little over $34,300, close to what the table shows Institutional Consensus actually reached.
That estimate sits well ahead of Fund Mirror's $17,820.18 or the $12,051.65 that Capitol Flow, the strategy built on congressional trades, managed to reach over the identical window. Ladder 36, the plain savings-plan version of the same idea, landed lower still at $19,252.46.
Why the best index funds still look alike
Search for the best index funds or the top index funds and the results converge fast, because most large providers now track the same handful of benchmarks with the same weighting rules. An s and p index fund from one company holds the same 500 names as one from a competitor; the difference between them is the fee and how closely each one tracks the benchmark, not the stock list.
That is a narrow thing to compete on, and it is part of why a low cost index fund keeps beating strategies built to outsmart it. Once the holding list is fixed by the benchmark, the only remaining lever a provider has is price.
Where an ai index fund fits in
A newer label, the ai index fund, applies a model instead of a fixed weighting rule to decide what the fund holds, while keeping the same broad universe of stocks. It is still a fund with a fee and a holding list, not a person choosing trades in real time.
Traderbot's own model-driven strategies sit in a similar category. Trend 200 held stocks only while the price sat above its long average and returned 7.9% a year over the same nine-year stretch, short of the plain index it was measured against. Risk Parity, which gave the quieter asset the larger share, landed close behind it at 7.4% a year.
Checking the paperwork behind the picks
Strategies like Institutional Consensus and Fund Mirror are built on public filings rather than on guesswork. Once a manager's US holdings pass $100 million, a form 13F comes due within 45 days of the quarter end, and Traderbot's mirror currently holds 2,609 fund lines from 13 managers, the newest filing read on 2026-08-14.
Berkshire Hathaway's most recent 13F, filed the same day, reported $299,253,556,246.00 across 27 positions, a figure anyone can check through SEC EDGAR company search.
Traderbot runs this same index fund comparison, and every strategy tested against it, on the plan page. The account behind it holds simulated money rather than a live brokerage balance, and Traderbot charges one percent on each operation that moves money through it.