How do I actually trade these signals?

The published track record assumes a specific and quite simple execution: you hold each month's target allocation for the whole month, and you move to the next month's targets at the month-end close. Everything on this site is built on that assumption.

Nobody trades exactly that way. Understanding where your execution differs from the model is most of what determines whether your account tracks the published curve.

The monthly rhythm

1. Signals are computed from month-end closing prices. Nothing partial, nothing intraday.
2. The resulting allocation is for the month ahead. It appears on the site the evening the month closes, once the day's data has settled.
3. You trade into those targets. In practice this means at or near the open of the first trading day of the new month.
4. You hold. Unless the strategy uses drift bands, no action is needed until the next month-end.

The gap between step 1 and step 3 is where reality enters. The model buys at the previous close; you buy the next morning at whatever the market opens at. Sometimes that helps you, sometimes it hurts, and over many months it mostly washes out. It does not disappear, though, and it is the main reason two people running the same strategy get slightly different results.

Wait for the month to close

The Provisional row projects what next month's allocation would be if the current month ended today. It is genuinely useful for anticipating a change and getting mentally prepared for it.

It is not a trade instruction. Signals computed on a partial month can and do reverse in the final days. Trading a projection early means occasionally taking a position the strategy never actually called for, and then paying again to undo it.

Wait for the month to close and the allocation to settle.

Not every month requires a trade

Some months the targets are unchanged and your holdings have drifted only slightly. Some strategies deliberately let positions run and only trade when a holding wanders outside a set band.

Do not manufacture activity. The published results already account for holding without trading, and adding trades the strategy did not call for only adds cost. See the Trading Friction FAQ for how the model distinguishes drift from an actual trade.

Costs the model assumes

Trading Friction charges 10 basis points one way for a non-leveraged ETF, 15 for a 2x fund, and 20 for a 3x fund. That covers spread and market impact under normal conditions in liquid funds.

You can do better or worse. Limit orders in calm conditions cost less. Market orders at the open, when spreads are at their widest, cost more. Small accounts trading illiquid leveraged funds can cost considerably more. If your execution is habitually worse than the model assumes, your results will drift below the published curve for reasons that have nothing to do with the strategy.

Account type matters

These strategies rotate, and rotation realizes gains. In a tax-deferred account that is irrelevant. In a taxable account it is a real and recurring cost.

The Taxable Account toggle and the Tax Profile panel exist to let you see the size of that difference for a given strategy before you commit to running it somewhere it will be taxed.

AutoPilot

Some strategies are available through AutoPilot, which handles execution rather than leaving it to you. The strategy page indicates whether a given strategy is supported. It removes the timing and discipline problems described above, which for many people are the largest source of tracking difference.

Where real accounts diverge from the published curve

Ranked roughly by how much damage each one does:

1. Skipping signals. Deciding not to take a defensive move because it feels wrong, or not to re-enter because it feels early. This is by far the biggest one, and it is the reason a rules-based strategy exists at all.
2. Trading late. A signal acted on a week into the month is a different position than the one the model held.
3. Partial implementation. Running the strategy with part of the account and something else with the rest produces neither result.
4. Execution costs above what the friction model assumes.
5. Fractional share and rounding differences. Small and unavoidable.

Note that the first three are behavioral, not mechanical. The published record assumes a level of discipline that is genuinely hard to sustain through a stretch where the strategy is behind.

One caution

None of this is personal financial advice. It describes how the published signals are constructed and how they were assumed to be executed. Whether any strategy is appropriate for you, and how much of your money belongs in it, are questions this site cannot answer.