RSI SPY Trading Strategy (RSI(2) On SPY )

Last Updated on May 28, 2023

SPY is very mean revertive and RSI is a mean revertive indicator. Does this mean that RSI works on SPY? In this article, we test an RSI SPY trading strategy.

It turns out that our hypothesis is correct: the RSI works well on SPY. Even better, we improve the strategy by adding one extra indicator.

Before we go on to test the RSI SPY strategy, please make sure that you know what Relative Strength Index (RSI) is and what mean-reversion is:

• How the RSI indicator works
• How to create a mean reversion trading strategy

You might also be interested in our RSI QQQ trading strategy.

RSI SPY trading strategy:

Lets’s make a simple RSI SPY strategy:

The trading strategy is really simple and reads like this in plain English:

1. If RSI(2) is less than 15, then enter at the close.
2. Exit on close if today’s close is higher than yesterday’s high.

Here is the accumulated profit curve from 1993 until today:

The trading performance metrics look like this:

• The average gain per trade is 0.57% (470 trades)
• The win rate is 75%
• Time spent in the market is 24%
• Max drawdown is 23%
• The profit factor is 2.3

All in all, this is a very solid strategy, yet simple. Keep trading simple!

RSI SPY improved trading strategy:

Is it possible to improve the trading strategy by adding an extra parameter?

Yes, it is. We added one simple parameter that reduces the number of trades from 470 to 377 but still the total returns increase:

The trading performance metrics look like this:

• The average gain per trade is 0.76% (377 trades)
• The win rate is 77%
• Time spent in the market is 20%
• Max drawdown is 23%
• The profit factor is 2.8

The RSI SPY strategy is improved significantly with one additional parameter. We don’t want to reveal the additional indicator because this is the stuff we send out to those who subscribe to our monthly trading edges.

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RSI trading strategy video

RSI SPY strategy conclusions:

As you can see, you don’t need to do anything fancy to make trading strategies. The RSI SPY is as simple as it can get, and still, it performs just as well as buy and hold despite spending much less time in the market and having just half the drawdown.