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One decade of S&P 500 daily returns compounded at eight fixed bet sizes: ending wealth and worst drawdown

Answered against 22 years of US equities and 12 years of US options data and published with the query that produced it. This result is stored as of 2026-07-31, from Kelly Criterion Position Sizing, Measured.

as of ranking 8×3read in context →
One decade of S&P 500 daily returns compounded at eight fixed bet sizes: ending wealth and worst drawdown — 8 rows by 3 columns, computed from US exchange, SIP and OPRA data.
bet_sizeending_multiplemax_drawdown_pct
0.5x1.9218.2
1x3.3934.2
1.5x5.5248
2x8.2759.6
2.5x11.3769.2
3x14.3477
4x17.488.1
5x14.3594.5
Rows × columns
8 × 3
Computed
Completeness
No missing values
Source
US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data
Licence
Strasmore terms · free, no signup
Formats
JSON · CSV · the SQL below

What each column holds

Column definitions for One decade of S&P 500 daily returns compounded at eight fixed bet sizes: ending wealth and worst drawdown, derived from the stored result.
ColumnTypeRangeNotes
bet_size text 8 distinct values (0.5x, 1.5x, 1x…)
ending_multiple number 1.92 to 17.4
max_drawdown_pct number 18.2 to 94.5 percent

Computed from Strasmore's warehouse of US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data. Equity prices are delayed; options greeks and implied volatility are end-of-day. This result is stored, not recomputed on load — it is exactly the numbers that were returned on , and the query below is what returned them.

the exact SQL behind every number
WITH daily AS (
    SELECT toDate(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) AS dt,
           argMax(toFloat64(close), window_start) AS c
    FROM global_markets.delayed_stocks_minute_aggs
    WHERE ticker = 'SPY'
      AND window_start >= '2016-01-01 00:00:00'
      AND window_start <  '2026-01-01 00:00:00'
      AND (toHour(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) * 60
           + toMinute(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York'))) BETWEEN 570 AND 959
    GROUP BY dt
),
steps AS (
    SELECT dt, c,
           lagInFrame(c) OVER (ORDER BY dt ROWS BETWEEN 1 PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW) AS prev
    FROM daily
),
rets AS (
    SELECT dt, c / prev - 1 AS ret
    FROM steps
    WHERE prev > 0
),
sizes AS (
    SELECT arrayJoin([0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0]) AS bet
),
paths AS (
    SELECT bet, dt,
           exp(sum(log(greatest(1 + bet * ret, 0.0001)))
               OVER (PARTITION BY bet ORDER BY dt
                     ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW)) AS equity
    FROM rets CROSS JOIN sizes
),
peaks AS (
    SELECT bet, dt, equity,
           max(equity) OVER (PARTITION BY bet ORDER BY dt
                             ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW) AS peak
    FROM paths
)
SELECT concat(toString(bet), 'x') AS bet_size,
       round(argMax(equity, dt), 2) AS ending_multiple,
       round(100 * max(1 - equity / peak), 1) AS max_drawdown_pct
FROM peaks
GROUP BY bet
ORDER BY bet

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