The strategies
What we do with the number
The Gresham Index tells you where the market is. But we also created two strategies how we use it. They are not financial advice, they are for educational purposes only.
Two strategies translate the index into deposits and, in one case, sales. Both are published in full below.
Smart DCA
The deposit scales with the zone. Nothing is ever sold. Save more when conditions are cheap, less when they're not — with a rule for "cheap" that isn't a feeling.
Full Cycle
Everything Smart DCA does, plus two things: it sells small amounts into distribution conditions, and puts that cash back to work in the deep zones.
Smart DCA
The "base" is whatever you'd normally DCA in each period.
If your total contribution over the years is fixed, then re-timing when that same money goes in changes surprisingly little — we tested it, and it's close to a wash. Smart DCA's effect comes from somewhere less exciting and more real: it changes how much is saved, by asking for more in exactly the stretches when saving feels least rewarding. That's a discipline tool, not a timing trick, and we'd rather say so than dress it up.
Full Cycle
The mechanism, in one picture
Money raised near the 2017 peak is what bought the December 2018 floor.
The tranches are small on purpose. Selling 1.5% or 4% of a position per week is not an exit — it's a trim. The strategy never fully leaves, because leaving requires being right about the top, and nobody is reliably right about the top.
The cash is not the point — redeployment is. Fifteen percent of the reserve per week means the reserve is never spent on a single guess about the bottom.
Whatever rhythm is used
The rules above are stated weekly, because weekly is the cadence everything was tested at. If deposited fortnightly or monthly, the deposit multipliers stay exactly the same — they multiply whatever is put in per period — while the reserve and sell fractions scale to that period.
| Weekly | Fortnightly | Monthly | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reserve deployment — Heavy Accumulation | 15% | 30% | 50% |
| Reserve deployment — Strong Accumulation | 8% | 16% | 30% |
| Sell — Distribution | 1.5% | 3% | 6.4% |
| Sell — Heavy Distribution | 4% | 8% | 17.1% |
A monthly saver reading "sell 17.1%" is looking at the monthly equivalent of 4% a week, not a different strategy.
What the historical record shows
Two different questions have two different answers, measured in two different ways. We keep them apart, because combining them produces numbers that sound impressive and mean nothing.
"If I follow the deposit rhythm, what did each euro I put in earn?"
Deposits differ between strategies by design, so the measure is the return per euro actually deposited. Historical simulation, 2014–2026.
- Every one of the exceptions is a start near the 2017 mania, measured before the following cycle completed. There have been no losing combinations at any evaluation date after December 2021.
- Smart DCA, which never sells, finished ahead from 88.2% of start days — median 1.38×.
- The advantage grows with time invested: median 1.19× over roughly one year, 1.58× over five, 4.24× over twelve.
"Same total money either way. Does timing it change anything?"
An identical amount is committed on an identical schedule, and only the timing of deployment differs. Historical simulation, 2014–2026.
- Less money at risk during the falls, not merely more at the end.
- Average sale price, as a share of each cycle's peak: 37% in 2017, 71% in 2021, 92% in 2025. The trims got closer to the top each cycle — a description of what happened, not a promise about the next one.
Both simulations, every start date, every setting — the simulator is public and runs on live data. Check any period you like, including the ones that flatter us least.
What this costs
Every strategy has a shape, and this one has consequences that should be known before starting rather than discover during.
You will look wrong at the top
At the December 2017 peak, someone following Full Cycle was 34% behind someone who had simply held everything. The edge appeared afterwards, in the accumulation phase that followed. If watching a trimmed position lag a euphoric market would make you abandon the plan, this strategy is worse than useless to you.
It is a bet against a permanent grind upward
In a synthetic regime where Bitcoin rises fiftyfold with no drawdown worse than −17%, the strategy trails a plain schedule by 54%. That is the explicit trade: protection against cycle mistiming, paid for with some upside if cycles simply stop happening. No such regime has occurred. That is not a guarantee it won't.
It asks most of you exactly when it is hardest
The deep zones ask for triple deposits during the stretches that feel most hopeless. That is the mechanism working, and it is genuinely difficult.
It does not judge whether Bitcoin survives
The index times cycles. If Bitcoin were to fail permanently, it would read "cheap" all the way down and keep buying. Nothing here is a view on Bitcoin's long-term outcome.
Selling has tax consequences we do not model
Full Cycle realises gains when it trims, and treatment varies by jurisdiction. Nothing in these simulations accounts for tax. Check your own position with an advisor before following a strategy that sells.
And the ordinary caveat, meant literally: these are historical simulations of a rule applied to past data. The past is the only thing anyone can test on, and it is not a forecast.