About the BTFD Bot Website

Welcome to BTFD Bot. I started this website to showcase the extensive research I have conducted into finding simple yet reliable (and profitable!) swing trading strategies. All of the stocks featured on this website are widely available US listed exchange traded funds. To make price and performance comparisons more straightforward, all stock prices are listed in US dollars.

I had the inspiration for this website after subscribing to Salty Dog Investor. Many of their subscribers have juiced their portfolio returns by following a very simple strategy of buying into whatever markets are gaining momentum, and selling out of markets that are losing momentum.

Their original strategy used unit trusts (the UK equivalent of closed-end funds). The advantage of these is that most brokers do not have dealing charges when buying and selling these funds, so they can be a cost effective way of rotating between sectors without incurring significant slippage due to dealing costs and taxes.

My plan was to replicate the strategy using regular Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) instead of funds. Because ETFs are listed on exchanges it's much easier to get past price data. ETFs are also priced in real time, whereas funds are largely repriced on a daily basis.

An additional source of inspiration was viewing the annual performance of UK listed investment unit trusts on the TrustNet website. There's a really nice performance table that allows you to view the annual performance of a large number of unit trusts. I soon realised that the winners in one year are not often the winners in subsequent years. In fact, a year's winners often fizzle out and generate poor returns in subsequent years. An example is technology, which soared in 2020 only to significantly underperform in 2022. Here's a table where I've summarised the highest performing sectors over several years.

Note that all performance data is approximate and only a selection of each year's winners and losers and shown in the table. Some unit trusts significantly outperformed their peers in the same sector.

Despite the data showing that sector rotation using ETFs ought to work, I largely gave up. I just could not find a strategy that could deliver reliable returns, and nothing came close to beating the major indices themselves. About the only strategy that did show promise was the Dogs of the Dow strategy. When used with ETFs it does appear to outperform.

At the same time I started my research into sector rotation, I also started some real money testing of other trading strategies. At the time of writing I now have 10 months' data. Initially I built a small investment research website to show ETF trading strategies. However I have now switched primarily to trading individual stocks. My live money testing has shown that trading ETFs is just not as potentially profitable as trading individual stocks. So I have decided to abandon that particular website project, and switch to a website that lists both stocks and ETFs. And thus, BTF Bot was born.

Incidentally this site relies on simple tried and trusted swing trading strategies. There is no AI here (except for the AI-generated logo) and the math is comparatively straightforward.

Finally I've also established this website because like many investors I really need to boost my own portfolio's performance. I've largely managed my own investments since 1998. While I have done reasonably well over the years, I've missed out on making huge returns because I neglected to invest in either tech or the USA. In some years I've also been in completely the wrong sectors. In 2018 - 2020 I was overweight Asia, and this region has really lagged other regions during this time period. I was also overweight real estate and infrastructure in 2022. Rising interest rates smashed a lot of my holdings and I remember buying into one stock only to see it plunge by 50% the month after I bought it! If only I had known about sector rotation at the time. Then I would have rotated out of these sectors as soon as inflation started to flare up.

Brett B, 31 July 2025