Crashing the Trading Leaderboards

Backtests are cheap. Verified live results are not.

This story is about the second kind.

Who are ACubed Trading?

Andrew Swanscott was among the very first people to learn the formula, and he got into it with his usual relentless drive. In just a few weeks he created his first 700+ breakout strategies — he even published a post about it on his podcast site.

By late 2020 he had complete automation across 20+ servers, generating thousands of strategies every month, trading his own account. But he wanted something bigger: global markets, leasing strategies, managing other people’s money. He couldn’t do it alone.

On an Elite mastermind call it clicked — two traders in that group, Adam and Alan, had exactly what he was missing. Complementary skills, strong work ethic, results, ideas.

ACubed = Andrew, Alan and Adam.

A few months in they added Jim, who brought portfolio, position sizing and risk management expertise.

100% of the strategies in their portfolios are built with the Mr. Breakouts formula — all breakouts, both day trading and swing.

What are the three ACubed portfolios?

All three are executed by Striker Securities and available for lease. All results are LIVE trading results including slippage and commissions, published on the Striker website — verified by an independent third party.

That distinction matters. This isn’t a curve someone drew.

Portfolio #1: Mothership

Designed for account sizes of $750,000 or more, containing over 50 algorithmic day trading and swing strategies.

It maximises diversification across all sectors, with strategies that have ultra-low correlations to one another — an average correlation of under 3%.

That number is the whole engineering achievement. Everything else follows from it.

The result in live trading: 9 out of the last 10 months profitable. At the time of writing it sat at the top of the Striker leaderboards in the “$20,000 and up” section for 3-month, 6-month and 12-month returns.

Portfolio #2: 100k

Designed for $100,000 accounts, with well-diversified strategies across 14 potential markets. It uses quite high leverage to chase outsized returns.

Moderately diversified — and it shows. Only 5 of the past 10 months were profitable.

But look at the shape of those months: the losing months were smaller than the winners, and three months returned more than 10%, with one above 30%.

Portfolio #3: Minion

Built for small accounts trading micro and mini contracts, across five sectors — Indexes, Energies, Metals, Currencies and Grains.

It wasn’t on the leaderboard at the time of writing because absolute returns weren’t high enough yet — it had only been live since 31 January 2022.

What do the numbers say about diversification?

This is the table I’d pin above your desk:

Portfolio	Account size	# Strategies	Monthly return	Monthly Std Dev	% months profitable
Mothership	$750,000	50+	1.92%	2.37%	90% (9/10)
100k	$100,000	8-14	6.17%	10.70%	50% (5/10)
Minion	$15,000	6	5.38%	8.40%	75% (3/4)

Mothership returns 1.92% a month with a standard deviation of 2.37%. The 100k portfolio returns 6.17% with a standard deviation of 10.70%.

Three times the return. Four and a half times the volatility. Half the winning months.

Neither is wrong. They’re built for different investors with different tolerances. But you can see exactly what diversification and leverage do to the ride.

How do you build a portfolio like this?

Their full process is too sophisticated to lay out step by step, but four principles apply at every level, beginner or advanced.

1. Design

Decide what the portfolio must do before you start. Who trades it? What are their goals, account size, accepted volatility, risk profile, drawdown limits? Any special requirements — micros only, specific sectors?

Jump in without a design target and you’ll get stuck endlessly testing combinations. Define it first and it guides every decision.

2. Flow

Portfolios are far easier to build when you have plenty of strategies to choose from.

Never stop building. ACubed already have tens of thousands of strategies in their database and they’re still building non-stop — they want a constant flow arriving every day.

3. Diversify

Be intentional about which markets you test and which exits and logic you use. Don’t over-test the same theme; there are billions of combinations of markets, sessions, timeframes, POIs, filters and exits.

If something isn’t working, don’t get bogged down. Move on. Diversify markets, styles and logic — that’s the key to smooth performance.

4. Maintenance

The job isn’t done when the portfolio is built.

They review the performance of every strategy, every weekend. Yes, every one. If a strategy falls outside expected performance thresholds, it gets switched off immediately.

No second guessing. No emotion. Kill it and find a replacement.

Where should you actually start?

Andrew’s own closing advice is the least glamorous part of the story, and the most useful.

What you’ve just read is the result of years of work. You do not need 50+ strategies and a million-dollar account to be successful.

Start small. As Mark Twain put it: “Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.”

Even two or three micro strategies are worth trading. Expand over time — the live experience you gain is invaluable.

Start with an Index. Then a Grain, an Energy or a Metal. Build up step by step.

Trade small. And if you can, start building a track record verified by a third party.

You never know where it could take you.