Rules beat hesitation on NVDA
How the Market Wave Algorithm for Equities beat buy and hold by up to 524%, and monthly dollar-cost averaging by up to 971%, across three runs.
The same Market Wave algorithm our crypto clients run every day, applied unchanged to a single stock: Nvidia, the company at the center of the AI compute build-out.
Nvidia is the opposite kind of test: the strongest trend in the market, and the hardest stock to actually buy
We showed what Market Wave does on Tesla, a great company stuck in a wide range, and MSTR, a violently volatile name. Nvidia is neither sideways nor a round trip.
We took the exact algorithm, unchanged, and ran it three ways. Same logic, same discipline, different asset class. All three windows end June 22, 2026, each starting from $100,000 in cash and zero shares.
Daily chart
Market Wave+102.8%
- Buy and hold
- +82.8%
- DCA
- +16.0%
1-hour chart
Market Wave+74.9%
- Buy and hold
- +26.3%
- DCA
- +2.3%
Weekly chart
Market Wave+1,192.4%
- Buy and hold
- +668.9%
- DCA
- +221.0%
Backtested performance. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational purposes only.
The stock everyone believed in, and few felt they could buy
Nvidia is the backbone of artificial intelligence. The training and inference behind nearly every major AI system runs on its chips, so its results read like a barometer for the entire build-out. The split-adjusted price action tells a story of almost uninterrupted ascent.
Near $5.1T by June 2026, the most valuable company in the world. Blackwell systems sell faster than they can be made, Vera Rubin is sampling for H2 2026, and the four largest cloud companies are on track for roughly $700B of 2026 capex.
Price levels per public market data, split-adjusted, as of late June 2026. Not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.
- Start 2022About $30, split-adjusted
- Oct 2022About $11, the bear-market low
- End 2023About $49 close
- End 2024About $134, the year of the 10-for-1 split
- End 2025About $186 close
- May 14, 2026All-time-high close of $235.47
- Late Jun 2026Pullback to about $210
Here is the catch. A stock that goes up this much, this fast, becomes psychologically very hard to buy. At every step it looked more expensive than the last. Believing in Nvidia was easy. Buying it, and staying with it while every new price looked like the top, was the hard part.
When "it is already too high" becomes the costliest idea on Wall Street
A falling stock is easy to avoid. A cheap stock is easy to buy. A great company in the strongest uptrend of the decade, already up many multiples and making new highs, is the position human psychology is worst equipped to handle. With Nvidia the problem is not chop, it is hesitation.
Anchoring
Your sense of fair value ties to a price you already saw. A stock that was $50 last year feels too expensive at $130 today, even after the business has grown into and past it.
Recency and regret
After watching it run without you, buying now feels like the moment you finally get punished for chasing. So you wait for a pullback that, in a powerful trend, often never gives back what you hoped.
Decision fatigue
A stock that trends this hard asks, over years, whether today is finally too high. As high-stakes, emotional choices pile up, decision quality falls, and most of the trend is left on the table.
The common pattern: investors spend the entire move waiting for a better entry, buy a small amount near the highs out of frustration, then sell in the first real dip. They were right about the company and still ended up underwater on their own behavior.
This is the core problem an algorithm is built to solve. It follows the rules.
What Market Wave actually does
Market Wave is Arch Public's trend and momentum capture algorithm, the same one already running across crypto for our clients. It is built to do three things with rules instead of emotions.
Ride confirmed moves
It enters on rule-based confirmation of a trend, not on a hunch, a headline, or a feeling that a price is too high or too low.
Exit on rules, not nerves
It takes profits and steps out on defined exit triggers, banking gains into cash rather than hoping or fearing.
Step aside cleanly
In chop and indecision it is willing to hold cash and wait, which is exactly when human investors tend to overtrade.
Everything that follows uses this algorithm unchanged. The only variables are the time window and the chart interval: a daily view, a 1-hour view, and a weekly view. Same logic, same stock, dialed for different objectives.
Backtested results. Trading stocks involves significant risk, including possible loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
“The ‘it is already too high to buy’ test”
June 1, 2024 to June 22, 2026 · Daily chart
This window opens right around the June 2024 split, in the thick of the AI frenzy, when the average investor was most convinced they had missed it. Over a stretch where buy and hold returned a very strong 82.8%, the algorithm did better still, by staying with a trend that hesitation kept telling people to fade.
+102.8%
- Buy and hold +82.8%, outperformance +20.0 percentage points
- DCA +16.0%, outperformance +86.9 percentage points
- Ending value
- $202,833.64
- Realized profit, banked
- $30,171.12
- Unrealized, open position
- $72,662.52
- Shares held
- 784 at $117.55 avg cost
Backtested from a daily-chart trade schedule, valued June 22, 2026. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational purposes only.
“The ‘cash yield on a mature winner’ test”
July 22, 2025 to June 22, 2026 · 1-hour chart
Same algorithm, faster chart, across the most recent stretch, including Nvidia's all-time high in May 2026 and the pullback after. The point is different: not catching a megatrend early, but harvesting a stock's volatility for cash even after most of the rapid growth is behind it.
+74.9%
- Buy and hold +26.3%, outperformance +48.6 percentage points
- DCA +2.3%, outperformance +72.6 percentage points
- Ending value
- $174,895.26
- Realized profit, banked
- $69,005.95
- Unrealized, open position
- $5,889.31
- Shares held
- 833 at $202.72 avg cost
Backtested from a 1-hour-chart trade schedule, valued June 22, 2026. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational purposes only.
“The ‘catch it early’ test”
January 1, 2022 to June 22, 2026 · Weekly chart
Starting from $100,000 in early 2022, when Nvidia traded around $30 split-adjusted and had just begun a brutal decline toward its $11 low, the algorithm waited for confirmation, accumulated aggressively on dips, then rode the trend for years. Buy and hold returned a remarkable 668.9%, and the algorithm still beat it by more than five hundred points.
+1,192.4%
- Buy and hold +668.9%, outperformance +523.6 percentage points
- DCA +221.0%, outperformance +971.4 percentage points
- Ending value
- $1,292,435.44
- Realized profit, banked
- $48,051.86
- Unrealized, open position
- $1,144,383.58
- Shares held
- 6,021 at $19.42 avg cost
Backtested from a weekly-chart trade schedule, valued June 22, 2026. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational purposes only.
Three windows, one algorithm
In every case the algorithm finished ahead of both buy and hold and dollar-cost averaging.
| Metric | Daily | 1-hour | Weekly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Window | Jun 2024 to Jun 2026 | Jul 2025 to Jun 2026 | Jan 2022 to Jun 2026 |
| Starting capital | $100,000.00 | $100,000.00 | $100,000.00 |
| Strategy ending value | $202,833.64 | $174,895.26 | $1,292,435.44 |
| Strategy ROI | +102.8% | +74.9% | +1,192.4% |
| Nvidia buy and hold ROI | +82.8% | +26.3% | +668.9% |
| Monthly DCA ROI | +16.0% | +2.3% | +221.0% |
| Outperformance vs buy and hold | +20.0 pts | +48.6 pts | +523.6 pts |
| Outperformance vs DCA | +86.9 pts | +72.6 pts | +971.4 pts |
| Realized profit, banked | $30,171.12 | $69,005.95 | $48,051.86 |
| Unrealized profit, open | $72,662.52 | $5,889.31 | $1,144,383.58 |
| Shares held at end | 784 | 833 | 6,021 |
| Average cost basis | $117.55 | $202.72 | $19.42 |
Backtested results. Do-nothing cash ROI is 0.0% in every window. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational purposes only.
Trend-riding versus cash yield, one algorithm answering three questions
None of these scenarios is the "real" one. They are the same algorithm asked three different questions, and the realized-versus-unrealized split tells you which question each one was asked.
Weekly: ride the trend
Realized $48K, unrealized $1.14M. The goal was capturing a multi-year trend, so the algorithm built a large position early at a $19.42 average cost and let it run. The right move on a confirmed secular uptrend is to stay in it, not to keep selling it.
1-hour: harvest cash
Realized $69K, unrealized $5.9K. The goal was yield, so the algorithm banked roughly $69,006 of its $74,895 gain as realized cash, harvesting swings on a more mature stock. The daily scenario sits in between, with both a real banked profit and a large held position.
A buy and hold investor owns exactly one decision: hold. On Nvidia that worked out well, which is why the gaps are smaller than on a sideways stock like Tesla, but it still left return on the table and offered no way to harvest cash along the way.
The algorithm's edge is not prediction. It is a single, emotion-free posture toward the trend.
For educational purposes only. Not investment advice.
Rules beat hesitation
- 01
The hardest stock to own is the one going straight up
Nvidia rewarded believers, but only the ones who could actually buy it and stay with it while every new price looked like the top. Anchoring and regret talk most investors out of the best trends, not the worst ones.
- 02
One algorithm, many jobs
The same Market Wave logic produced a four-figure return by catching a trend early and holding it, and a 75% cash-yield return by working the swings on a mature winner. A single human posture cannot easily replicate that flexibility.
- 03
Decision fatigue makes the average investor their own worst enemy
A stock that trends this hard demands a relentless series of emotional decisions, and decision quality degrades as those demands pile up. The most probable human outcome is a steady drip of hesitations that leaves most of the move uncaptured.
An algorithmic approach addresses all three at once. It does not get tired, it does not anchor to a price it saw last year, and it does not decide a number is too high simply because it used to be lower. It removes the bias and executes the plan, which on the strongest trend in the market is precisely where the return potential lives.
For educational purposes only. Trading stocks involves significant risk.
Rules, not reactions, on the strongest trend in the market
Arch Public's equities strategies are live, bringing the same algorithms our crypto clients trust to individual stocks including Nvidia, Tesla, Meta, and Amazon. The architecture is unchanged from what made the platform work in crypto.
Zero custody. Your assets never leave your account. Full control. Pause, adjust, or stop any strategy at any time. Rules, not reactions. The algorithm executes the plan so the fear that a price is "too high" does not make the call.
How much of the next great trend will your portfolio actually capture, and how much of it will hesitation leave on the table?
Nvidia buy and hold, weekly
+668.9%
The Market Wave Algorithm for Equities, weekly
+1,192.4%