Three rules. The cheapest way to own that 41 was never the steepest line.
Return is the part everyone sorts on. Holding power is the part that decides whether you are still in the seat to collect it. Three checks before this card earns your money.
01
When the return is a tie, the drawdown is the whole decision.
Three cards, the same 41 a year, and the only thing that separated them was the depth of the hole. Once two strategies print the same CAGR, you are no longer choosing a return. You are choosing how much pain you have to sit through to keep it. Pick the shallowest hole that still gives you the number.
02
A calmer universe did the work, not a clever trade.
Large and mid names instead of small and micro. Forty lines instead of fewer, equal weighted so no single stock runs the book. The 19 pct hole and the 1.71 Sharpe are not luck. They fall out of where the strategy fishes. Go further down the cap curve for the same return and you simply rent a deeper hole.
03
The shallow hole is what you survive long enough to compound.
2025 went red for the deeper cards and stayed green here. A 26 pct drawdown needs a 36 pct climb just to break even, and most people sell somewhere in the middle of that. The strategy you can actually hold through a bad year beats the one you abandon at the bottom, even when the brochure return looks identical.
Closer
When three cards print the same return, the winner is not the steepest line on the way up. It is the shallowest hole on the way down, because that is the one you are still holding when the recovery shows up.
See the live 40 holdings, the 5Y backtest, and the full Risk Metrics Report.
rupeecase.com / strategies / large-midcap