How it works

Fixed rules, checked once a month, on S&P 500 stocks. Nobody picks the trades and nothing is changed afterwards.

1. Once a month, look at every S&P 500 stock's monthly chart

After each month ends, a frozen detector looks for three shapes that draw a clear ceiling on the monthly chart: a bull flag (a sharp rise, then a short pause), a cup and handle and an inverse head and shoulders. Only well-formed shapes count, and only when the price is sitting just under the ceiling, the level.

2. Three gates decide what is offered

Market gate: no new trades while the wider market is weak.
Not overstretched: a stock that has already run a long way is left alone.
Seasonal gate: new trades only in the months that tested best; the rest of the year it only manages what it holds.

A signal that passes all three is offered; the rest are shown as held back, with the gate that stopped them.

3. Buy only if the price breaks through

An offered signal gets a buy-stop order at its level for the next month. It buys only if the price trades up through the level. A stop goes underneath from the start, set from the stock's own monthly range, so the most a trade can lose is known before it is bought.

4. Let winners run, cut losers

A losing trade is sold at its stop. A winning trade is kept until the monthly trend turns down; there is no profit target, so the big winners are allowed to become big. Trades are held for months, often years.

5. The account

£50,000 on paper, split into a few equal slots so no single stock can sink it. When more orders fill than there are free slots, the strongest signal takes the slot. Spare money sits in an S&P 500 fund. Dealing costs, a spread and fund charges are all counted.

When to buy and when to sell

Everything happens once a month, after the month ends. The site shows exactly what the paper account does, so you can follow it step by step. It is information, not advice: whether you copy a trade is up to you.

The quickest way is the This month's actions box at the top of the Record and Signals pages. It is refreshed soon after the 1st of every month and has three lists:

BUY

New buy-stop orders for the coming month: each stock, its level, and the stop to use if it fills. If the list is empty it says why.

SELL

Winning trades the rules sold at the month-end close, with the reason. If you hold one of these, sell it.

KEEP

Trades still held, each with its stop. Nothing to do except check your stop-loss order is still in place.

The steps below say what to do with each list.

When to buy

Soon after the 1st of each month, look at the BUY list in This month's actions (the Signals page has the full detail: every shape found and which gate held any back). Each stock has its level and its stop.
For each one you want, place a buy-stop order at the level, valid for that month. It only buys if the price rises through the level; if it never does, nothing happens.
If the order fills, place a stop-loss order at the stop shown. That is the most the trade is allowed to lose.
Orders that have not filled by the end of the month are cancelled. A new list appears after the next month ends.

When to sell

A losing trade sells itself: the stop-loss order you placed does it, on whatever day the price falls to it.
A winning trade is held until the monthly trend turns down. After each month ends, any trade the rules sold appears in the SELL list of This month's actions, with the reason. If one of yours is on that list, that is the signal to sell.
Everything else is in the KEEP list: leave it alone and make sure its stop-loss order is still there.
Open any trade on the Record for its Breakdown: it says whether the trade is still held, what would end it, and, once sold, when and why.

The Trader Launchpad desktop app does the same for your own trades: press I bought this on a signal and it tracks the trade for you and tells you when the rules say sell.

Reading the charts

Every chart on this site is a monthly chart: one candle for each month. You do not need to know anything about charts to follow the record, but a minute here makes the trade breakdowns much easier to read.

Why monthly? The same shapes were tested on daily and weekly charts first. On daily charts the picks did worse than random stocks bought under the same rules; on weekly charts the trades lost to simply holding an S&P 500 fund. Only the monthly chart showed an edge. Checking the monthly shapes every week, instead of once a month, did not improve it either. Monthly charts filter out the noise, the shapes take longer to form, and the moves that follow tend to be bigger and last longer.

Candles

Each candle shows four prices for its month. The thick body runs from where the month opened to where it closed; the thin wick shows the highest and lowest prices traded. Green means the month closed higher than it opened, red lower.

The trend line

The grey line is an exponential moving average (EMA): an average of the past months' closing prices, recalculated each month, that gives the most recent months more weight than older ones, so it turns sooner than a plain average when the trend changes. It ignores the month-to-month noise and shows which way the price has been heading. When the price sits above it, the trend is up. Trader Launchpad uses it to decide when a winning trade's run is over.

The three shapes

Each shape is a pause after a rise, or a recovery after a fall, that draws a clear ceiling: the level (gold). The idea is simple: when the price finally pushes through a ceiling it has been held under, it often keeps going. Only well-formed shapes count, and only when the price is close to the level.

A trade breakdown

Open any trade on the record and you get a chart like this. The gold dashed line is the level where the buy-stop sat, the red dashed line is the stop that limits the loss, and the tags on the right give their prices and the last price. The blue dot is where the trade was bought, the gold dot where it was sold, and the shaded band is the time it was held.

What the tests say, honestly

Over 20 years of US large caps the same rules made about 15% a year against about 11% for random S&P 500 stocks bought in the same months under the same rules, and 12–13% for an index fund. The lead was lumpy: most of it came from a few strong years, it was behind the index in plenty of single years, and falls of about a third happened. The rules did no better than random stocks in the UK, Europe or US mid caps, on daily charts or on ETFs. That is why this record is US only, and why it is a live test rather than a promise.

Why fingerprints

Each month is sealed with a SHA-256 fingerprint that includes the previous month's, and the fingerprint is published. Anyone can check later that no month was changed. The same record drives Trader Launchpad, the desktop app, so the site and the app cannot disagree.

A paper record, not advice. Past results, real or tested, do not promise future ones. The exact settings behind each rule are part of Trader Launchpad itself and are not published here.

Simulated record: what the system would have done, timestamped and cost-adjusted. Not a projection, not advice.v12.0 (2026-10-21)