The Compounding
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What actually happened

Five ways of investing, all tested over the same 6.45 years. Pick one to see what it did — and how far it fell along the way.

Tick more than one to compare them. 1 selected.

Plan M plus leverage

Very high risk

Both of the strategies above running at once — the options picks and the 3x funds on top of each other. It produced the biggest number on this page, and it is also the one most likely to hurt you: two kinds of leverage stacked means a bad stretch compounds in both places at the same time.

$0$500$1,000$1,500$2,0002020202120222023202420252026$1,871

$100 became

$1,871

Growth / year

57%

Worst drop

−36%

vs the market

7.8×

Best year (2023)

180%

Worst year (2022)

−14%

Longest wait to recover

18 mo

Time to double

6 mo

After inflation

$1,458

How much of this is just prices going up?

Things cost 28% more at the end of this test than at the start. So the $1,871 above only buys what $1,458 would have bought in 2020. Anything that grew less than 28% over these 6.45 years actually lost you buying power.

  • 2020 1.3%
  • 2021 7.2%
  • 2022 6.4%
  • 2023 3.3%
  • 2024 2.9%
  • 2025 2.6%*
  • 2026 2.0%*

* part-year. Source: FRED · CPIAUCSL (US Bureau of Labor Statistics).

The number that catches most people out is the wait. At its worst this fell to $64 per $100, and it spent 18 months below a high it had already reached. Sitting through that is the hard part — not choosing the strategy.

Measured 2020-01-31 to 2026-07-15 (6.45 years). Backtested, not live — a computer replaying old prices, not real money that was traded.

How Plan M plus leverage actually works

The exact rules — what it buys, when it sells, how much it risks on each trade — are for members. We keep them closed on purpose: a strategy everyone can copy stops working.

Get accessFree while we're in beta.

What $100 would have become

If you had put in $100 at the start and left it alone. The scale is squashed so all five fit — each step up the side is a doubling, not a fixed number of dollars.

$100$250$500$1,000$2,0002020202120222023202420252026$239$333$566$981$1,871
  • Buy the whole US market
  • Buy the tech market
  • OVTLYR Plan M
  • Plan M, funds only
  • Plan M plus leverage

Measured 2020-01-31 to 2026-07-15 (6.45 years). Backtested, not live.

All strategies

Buy the whole US market
Own a slice of the 500 biggest US companies and never sell. $100 became $239 between 2020-01-31 and 2026-07-15, with a worst drop of 34%.
Buy the tech market
Own the 100 biggest Nasdaq companies and never sell. $100 became $333 between 2020-01-31 and 2026-07-15, with a worst drop of 35%.
OVTLYR Plan M
Buys call options on a few stocks a signal picks, and waits in cash the rest of the time. $100 became $566 between 2020-01-31 and 2026-07-15, with a worst drop of 37%.
Plan M, funds only
The same timing signal, using 3x funds instead of options. $100 became $981 between 2020-01-31 and 2026-07-15, with a worst drop of 34%.
Plan M plus leverage
The options strategy and the 3x funds, stacked together. $100 became $1,871 between 2020-01-31 and 2026-07-15, with a worst drop of 36%.

Read this before you believe any of it

  • These are backtests — a computer replaying old prices, not real money that was actually traded.
  • 6.45 years is a short time, and the test starts a few weeks before the COVID crash and runs through one of the strongest stretches the market has ever had. A different 6.45 years could look very different.
  • The faster ones use leverage — borrowed money, which makes losses bigger just as much as gains.
  • Doing well in the past does not tell you what happens next.