Quantopian's community platform is shutting down. Please read this post for more information and download your code.
Back to Community
simple momentum trade

Follow the trend

5 responses

You need to change the benchmark to get a more realistic comparison

set_benchmark(symbol('AAPL'))  

@ Gavin Heale Could you explain a little about why need to set the benchmark to be AAPL? Really thanks.

Xin,
If you set the benchmark as SPY, even buy and hold strategy on AAPL is going to give you almost same or better results. Hence I guess its good practice to set the benchmark as stock itself to test if the strategy really works.

Thanks, Is this because the performance of AAPL is better than the SPY during the tested period? And once set the benchmark as AAPL, it turns out that this strategy gives the same result as the buy and hold strategy.

Yes. Its important to pick a good benchmark to understand if your strategy is really working or not. You should also try it using different instruments just to make sure it isnt just luck it works for one.