Introducing BackAlpha: Transparent Backtesting for Long-Term Investors

Published May 5, 2025

We're excited to introduce BackAlpha, a modern platform designed to help long-term investors explore how different stock strategies would have performed throughout history. At BackAlpha, we believe data should guide decisions — not hype, opinion, or guesswork. Our mission is to bring transparent, simulation-based strategy analysis to anyone serious about improving their investment approach.

What is BackAlpha?

BackAlpha is a strategy simulation platform focused on realism and clarity. It allows users to evaluate how different strategies — like Buy and Hold, Dollar Cost Averaging, and more — would have performed on actual historical data from individual stocks, sector funds, and index-tracking instruments. Each strategy report highlights total return, drawdowns, and other key performance metrics. While many strategies use adjusted close prices, BackAlpha emphasizes transparency about the assumptions behind each analysis.

Why We Built It

Too many trading strategies sound good on paper — but fail in practice. They're vague, subjective, and impossible to test consistently. We built BackAlpha to solve that. Our platform is designed to let you test ideas clearly, using consistent rules and clean historical data. Whether you're looking for evidence behind long-term investing or comparing the mechanics of different approaches, BackAlpha gives you clarity grounded in numbers.

How to Use the Website

Explore the Strategies section to view results across different stocks and time periods. Choose from multiple backtest durations — 3, 5, 10, or 30 years — and dive into detailed breakdowns of each strategy's performance over time.

Tips for Exploring BackAlpha

You can change the ticker symbol directly in the URL to view results for different stocks. For example, change /strategies/buy-and-hold/spy to /strategies/buy-and-hold/aapl.
Use the range buttons (3y, 5y, 10y, 30y) on each strategy page to simulate different holding periods.
The share button allows you to save or bookmark any strategy report for later review or discussion.

What's Next

We're just getting started. In the coming weeks, we'll expand the platform with more strategies, deeper data exploration tools, and more advanced comparison features. Whether you're a long-term ETF investor or analyzing individual stocks, BackAlpha aims to be your go-to source for reliable backtesting insights.

If you have feedback or ideas you'd love to see, we're all ears — and excited to grow BackAlpha with you.