Most portfolios diversify by holding more assets. AWP Futures diversifies by combining different sources of return.

AWP stands for All Weather Portfolio. It is a systematic, seven-pod strategy designed to pursue long-term growth while managing volatility and drawdowns across changing market environments.

The model does not depend on a single market, indicator, or forecast. Each pod evaluates opportunities independently and can reduce risk when conditions become unfavorable.

The proprietary signals, parameters, and allocation rules will remain confidential.

Diversification by Strategy
AWP Futures combines several quantitative approaches, including trend, momentum, relative strength, cross-asset analysis, volatility, and defensive positioning.

Because the seven pods respond to different market information, the portfolio is less dependent on any single strategy continuing to perform.

When opportunities are limited, unused allocations can remain in short-term Treasury instruments rather than being forced into the market.

This is diversification by strategy, not merely by ticker.

The individual pods followed distinctly different paths. Combining them produced a smoother and more consistent historical equity curve than relying on any one pod alone.

That is the central premise of AWP Futures: its strength comes from the interaction of complementary return streams.

Built for Futures Implementation
AWP Futures is designed primarily for implementation through liquid futures and micro futures contracts.

Futures provide efficient access to equity, Treasury, commodity, currency, precious-metal, and other markets while allowing unused capital to remain in Treasury bills.

The production system translates its signals into a next-session trading blotter showing target exposures, contract quantities, total notional exposure, and Treasury allocations.

Futures are being used for efficient implementation—not as justification for uncontrolled leverage. When a futures contract is too large to represent the intended allocation accurately, the corresponding ETF may be used instead.

Historical Performance
The finalized portfolio was backtested from February 2016 through July 2026.


SPY produced greater ending wealth over the period, but it did so with a substantially more volatile return path. AWP Futures 1× delivered competitive growth with considerably lower historical volatility and drawdown.

The comparison illustrates the model’s objective: strong compounding with less dependence on traditional equity-market risk.

Exposure Comparison
Because AWP Futures is implemented through futures, I also evaluated the portfolio at 2× and 3× exposure.

These results were calculated by applying leverage to each daily portfolio return and recompounding the complete series. They were not created by simply multiplying the 1× statistics.




The chart shows how the same underlying return stream compounded at different exposure levels. Higher exposure increased historical returns significantly, but it also magnified volatility and drawdowns.

The 2× and 3× simulations are risk-scaling studies—not return forecasts.

Designed Around Robustness
An attractive backtest is not enough. Quantitative strategies can appear exceptional when their rules are overly fitted to historical data.

AWP Futures was therefore developed around robustness rather than the highest isolated backtest result. The research process included:

Point-in-time signal construction

Execution after signals became observable

Independent analysis of every pod

Full-history and trailing-period evaluation

Rolling-return and drawdown analysis

Parameter-neighborhood testing

Allocation-sensitivity testing

Turnover analysis

Comparison with passive equity exposure

Reconciliation of model targets with executable futures positions

The final configuration was selected from a stable range of results—not from a single optimization peak.

Risk Management Within the Architecture
AWP Futures does not rely on one stop-loss or discretionary decision to control risk.

Each pod independently determines whether conditions are favorable. Predetermined portfolio weights limit dependence on any one strategy, while unused allocations can move into defensive Treasury exposure.

Overlapping positions are combined before futures contracts are calculated, and micro futures are used where practical to improve sizing precision.

This architecture cannot eliminate losses. Future drawdowns may be materially larger than those observed in the backtest, and several pods can lose money simultaneously.

The objective is to take risk selectively and systematically—not to suggest that risk has disappeared.

Entering Production
AWP Futures is now entering production.

Its positioning and performance will be documented here on Substack and tracked on Collective2, creating an ongoing record as the strategy moves from historical research into real-world validation.

I will share material positioning changes, performance updates, drawdowns, and observations while keeping the model’s proprietary rules confidential.

The backtest is encouraging. The live record will be the more important test.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Backtested results are hypothetical, depend on data and implementation assumptions, and do not represent actual trading. Past performance does not guarantee future results.