This page explains exactly how Mintr Screeners' strategy performance numbers were produced, what they don't account for, and what they don't mean. It's linked from every place a strategy's backtested result is shown — read it alongside that number, not instead of it. Looking for how the Swing / Mid / Long ratings shown next to every stock are calculated instead? See the Rating Methodology & Limitations page — this one covers only the separate Mintr Screeners strategy-screen system.
A Mintr Screeners "strategy" is a fixed, published set of rules — technical and, for most strategies, fundamental conditions — applied mechanically to historical price data (to produce the performance figures shown next to it) and to live daily data (to produce the picks shown on the site today). It is not a discretionary call by a person, and it is not personalized to any individual user.
Every strategy's performance figures come from testing against real historical daily price data covering a multi-year window that includes both the 2020 COVID crash and the 2022 bear market, not just a favorable recent run. Strategies added to the roster later are tested against that same starting point, not a shorter or more convenient window, so every strategy's number is comparable to every other's. The specific dates, current beat-rate, and validation status for each strategy are shown live on its own card in Mintr Screeners — this page describes the method behind those numbers, not the numbers themselves, since the roster and its numbers can change as strategies are reviewed, improved, or retired.
Each strategy is simulated as its own rotating portfolio: equal-weight, capped at a fixed number of concurrent positions, rebalanced daily. When a position closes and a slot opens up, the highest-ranked currently-qualifying stock (by that strategy's own ranking rule) fills it. If fewer stocks qualify than there are open slots, those slots sit in cash earning 0% — a real, expected outcome for a rules-based screen on a day the market doesn't offer enough matching setups, not an error in the simulation.
Positions are held for a fixed time period unless the strategy has its own stop-loss or comparable exit rule, in which case that can close the position early. Holding-period length is itself tested, not assumed — the current convention was chosen by directly comparing shorter and longer holds against each other and keeping whichever performed best. Each strategy's own exit rule (time-based only, or with an additional stop) is disclosed on its own card — see Mintr Screeners for the current rule that applies to any specific strategy, since not every strategy uses the same exit rule and that can change as strategies are reviewed.
Beyond a single full-history number, each strategy is checked with a rolling walk-forward test: instead of testing once over the whole window, the strategy is replayed starting from many different, overlapping one-year windows, and we measure the share of those windows in which it beat the S&P 500. A strategy is only shown as "Validated" if that edge holds up consistently across most of those windows, not just in a single full-period test.
Backtested performance typically overstates what a real investor would experience. Hypothetical results benefit from hindsight — a strategy's rules are finalized after seeing how they performed historically — and can be affected by curve-fitting, where a rule set is tuned in ways that fit the past without generalizing to the future. Combined with the costs and simplifications described above, live results should be expected to run below these simulated ones.
A strategy that beat the market historically may not in the future. Market conditions change; a rule set validated against a multi-year window that included both a crash and a bear market is still not guaranteed to hold in different future conditions.
This is not personalized investment advice. No strategy or pick shown by Mintr Screeners is a recommendation that any particular person buy or sell any particular security. Mintr does not know your financial situation, goals, or risk tolerance.
All investing carries risk of loss, including loss of principal. A strategy beating the S&P 500 in backtesting does not mean it carries less risk than the S&P 500 — a higher-return strategy can also carry a deeper drawdown along the way.
We test every strategy against the full available history and against many overlapping windows within it, not a single favorable period — and we publish the result even when it's weak. This has changed our own conclusions more than once: a strategy that looked strong on a shorter, more recent price-history window was later found, once tested against a longer history including a real bear market, to be a weaker or even negative result — and we disabled it rather than keep the earlier, more flattering number live.
The strategy roster is not static — it's actively reviewed, and strategies are added, improved, or retired as new testing results come in. A strategy currently shown as "Validated" passed the same rolling-window test every other active strategy has to pass; a strategy that stops clearing that bar is retired rather than left showing an outdated result. We don't treat a strategy's presence on the site as a permanent claim — it reflects the most recent evaluation, not a one-time judgment.
Questions about this methodology? Contact contact@mintr.com. See also our Privacy Policy.