A Look Back on the Last 18 Months of Victaurs: An 83% Hit Rate & Alpha?
Auditing trailing blog calls to quantify hit rate, average & median wins, plus big picture thoughts.
TL;DR
The results: An audit of the last 18 months reveals an 83% hit rate (5 out of every 6) on long & short calls, with an average absolute return of 34.1%.
The alpha: Victaurs picks generated 15.3% in average excess return over the S&P 500 per idea.
The bad: A handful of implicit call pair trade shorts geared at “hedging” certain longs were big losers assuming picks were still held today.
The go forward promise: No “AI slop” or “furu hype” just CFA & Wall Street-grade deep dives, transparent tracking, and a relentless focus on the specific “linchpins” that move individual stocks — all written in plain english.
Winston Churchill once said “however beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” One of the best parts of my near ancient (and short) career in professional sports was that the results were really really obvious, near perfect feedback loops. You do something right, crowd cheers, you’re the hero. You do something wrong, crowd boos, you’re the zero.
Which got me thinking, how have the results been for this 20 month old journey at Victaurs?
To put it bluntly, very good. And when I say very good I mean a few things. One, hit rate. Did a long go up, did a short go down. Two, did it produce strong absolute returns. And three, did it produce good relative returns compared to the S&P 500 because at least to me, a good goal is to outperform the SPY over long periods of time, otherwise you should just index.
The results are good across all three metrics:
Hit rate: the historical hit rate of Victaurs calls in blog posts has been 83%. So 5 out of 6 times a call is made it is correct.
Absolute returns: the average price return of a given call has been 34.1% and the median return has been 32.2%.
Relative returns: looking at a theoretical “I could’ve just bought the S&P” at time of each call/publication tells me the average outperformance was 15.3% and the median was 11.3%.
I’m not looking for the crowd to cheer but I feel good about this. More than anything this confirms, in writing and on paper that high conviction longs and shorts end up going the direction they should and they end up winning.
The haters will say that the blog focuses mostly on financials & banks. And that’s fine. YTD my overall portfolio is up around 33.43% heading into year end, and it holds all different sectors from healthcare, to energy, to financials, to things like ADBE. I invest with a mind towards a 12-24 month horizon if not longer.
When I started in 2024 I didn’t know what the blog would become, but it’s has been a great way to share my process and what I learn while I do the work to learn about companies, markets, and manage my money. So here’s the plan for 2026; the plan is to lean more into this. I won’t promise you that backwards looking performance is a predictor of future, because it’s not. But I will tell you that as a subscriber you should continue to expect more longs, more shorts, and more posts breaking down the real linchpins for individual stocks in plain english, but with a depth that is CFA and Wall Street worthy — with no AI slop or furu hype.
If this type thing is for you, then subscribe and join now. On the docket are a few more updates including changes to pricing (it’s going up), better tracking, and more access for top tier members. If you want to see the full results of my audit read on in the appendix below. Going forward this will be shared and updated for premium friends.
If not, I wish you a prosperous and growth filled 2026.
The best is ahead,
Victaurs
Appendix:
I audited the track record by stripping out narrative, hindsight, and storytelling and treating every published signal like evidence in a forensic review. For an objectivity AI was used and every trade mentioned in the blog over the last 18 months was pulled, timestamped, and classified based on what it actually was at the moment of publication. Signals that expressed a clear, high-conviction directional view were treated as explicit positions. Mentions that functioned as pair trades, relative value ideas, or “I don’t like this” were treated as implicit calls.
Entry prices were logged as of the publication date and performance was measured over the same holding window against the S&P 500 via SPY to calculate real alpha, not my beloved vibes. To eliminate narrative bias, I imposed a constant hold assumption and every position was treated as if it remained open through the audit pricing cutoff of 12/20/25. In reality, several positions were exited earlier and profitably, as documented in Premium Chat, which means realized returns likely understate actual returns posted. The historical book has leaned heavily into Financials, a sector that outperformed during this window, though diversification into other sectors has increased based on subscriber feedback.
Explicit longs delivered an 83.3% win rate over the audit period. The average return was 34.1% and the median return was 32.2%, with the median closely tracking the average across the distribution. Explicit shorts also produced an 83.3% win rate. The average return was 14.4% and the median return was 24.0% Implicit shorts posted a 25.0% win rate, real bad. The average return was -27.2% and the median return was -26.5%.
Lessons for myself that I already know, but it’s always worth writing:
When I try to pair trade a sector that is ripping higher, it doesn’t work. Stop doing this. (HSBA, LLOY, CBG).
When I have convcition on a long, trust the read and lean in even harder. (C, HOOD, NWG, BARC)
While the analysis assumes I didn’t, when a call goes wrong get out. Keep risk limits. (FOUR, PYPL).
When I say things like “I could never own this” like in FGBI case, I should short it.
I have a 6th sense for shorting hype driven Fintech IPOs certain to rug retail investors (CRCL, CHYM, KLAR).
My lens and process and way of thinking works. It will work over time, not every time. Plus I’m having some fun sharing the write-ups with all of you and building a community.
