Does Risk Reducer book-exit (put-write) actually work?

REAL

A measurable edge that survived the checks we ran.

The claim

Apply the Risk Reducer as a book-level risk-off EXIT on a real put-write to cut the tail — Trading Truth (our test)

What we did

Tested against Buy & hold SPY (gates) / same book no exit (overlay), 2022-2025 (real ES option surface, true daily MTM).

The result

Result: 0.5 Calmar (return / max drawdown)

maxDD -$61,674 -> -$15,960 (cut 74%), 2022 -$41,800 -> +$1,919, Calmar 0.31 -> 0.50

Verdict

The flagship Risk Reducer, applied as a book-level risk-off EXIT (flatten mid-trade, not just gate entries), cut a real put-write's max drawdown 74% and turned 2022 positive -- the best risk overlay we've tested. Costs ~58% of annual return; the prior-day-signal causality check is still pending (lookahead not yet cleared).

What the test did and did not do

net of real costs
point-in-time data
tested out of sample
checked for look-ahead

Almost nobody publishing a backtest says which of these they did. We list the ones we failed as well as the ones we passed.

Tested 2026-06-23. The same treatment, applied to every other system, is on the test bench.

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Written with AI assistance from our own test database. The numbers are computed, not composed.
General market commentary for education, not personalised investment advice. Backtested results are hypothetical. Trading carries a real risk of loss.