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VIX Term Structure Inversions Since 2018: What Backwardation Actually Signals
Every VIX term structure inversion from 2018 to 2026, catalogued from 413 weeks of point-in-time data. The market spent 14.5% of weeks in backwardation, median VIX during inversions was 23.8, and the surprising result: inversion carries almost no directional edge (median forward returns nearly identical) but forward return dispersion jumps 60%. Backwardation is a position-sizing signal, not a direction signal.
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VRP Backtest: The Fill Model Is the Edge (8-Year Study, 2026)
Same VRP strategy, same signal, same 8 years, same trades. Change only the fill model and SPY total return swings from -5% to +62%. The "edge" lives in the fill assumption, not the signal.
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VRP Short Put Spreads: Honest 7-Year Backtest, 5 Symbols (2026)
Single VRP short-put-spread strategy, tuned once on SPY, frozen, deployed unchanged on QQQ/IWM/AMZN/NVDA/SPXW with honest fills. The 70% win rate held; under post-and-wait fills the Sharpe did not, while the companion fill-model study shows mid-fills flip the result - execution, not the premium, decides the outcome.
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I Backtested 96 SPY Put Credit Spread Strategies Over 7 Years - Here's What Actually Worked
Seven years of 1-minute SPY chains. 96 grid cells. Honest fills, signal-gated sizing, drawdown breaker. Same cell ran +5,400% with a stop loss and -100% without. Multi-DTE pooling somehow underperformed single-DTE. SL=200% turned out worse than no stop at all. The best signal in 16k trades was a one-line flag that beat my 3-layer composite. The Calmar-leader cell is in the grid - I'm telling you the shape, not the coordinates.
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GEX Backtest: 8 Years of SPY Show Gamma Exposure Mostly Tracks VIX
A pre-registered GEX backtest on 1,972 SPY days (2018-2026) finds gamma exposure works raw, but GEX/DEX/VEX/CHEX add little after VIX and ATM IV controls.
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The SPY Put Spread Matrix - 18 Million Spreads, 8 Years, Theoretical vs Realized
Every put credit spread permutation on SPY from 2017-01-03 to 2026-04-02 priced with SVI+Black-Scholes, then joined with actual spot at expiry. 18.3 million rows. Average theoretical EV is minus $0.48. Average realized P&L is plus $0.58. The gap is the VRP plus SPY drift that flat-vol pricing cannot see.
Run your own backtests
The studies on this page use FlashAlpha historical options data. The Historical API gives you the same data to test your own question.