Generating 104% Returns in One Year with the Pebble Delta Forecast and the S&P 500
August 11, 2025
Over the past year, we have been tracking the investment returns generated by the guidance from the Simple Forecast Recommendation of the Pebble Delta Forecast.
The goal of this strategy is ambitious: beat the market and dramatically shrink the time to early retirement without the effort and stress of gambling with options, day trading, stock picking, or crypto.
The execution of this strategy is very simple, just buy and hold based the Forecast’s Be In / Be Out recommendation, and wait.
For the past year, the results have been a tremendous success.
The Timeline — Only Two Trades This Year
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July 29, 2024 — Evaluation starts (102 days invested)
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November 8, 2024 — SELL: “OUT” signal triggered. Moved to short-term Treasuries. (168 days on the sidelines)
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April 25, 2025 — BUY: “IN” signal returned. Bought back into the S&P 500 (94 days invested)
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July 28, 2025 — Evaluation period ends.
The Investing Experience - Three Phases of the Past Year
Phase 1 - IN - Waiting For The Top
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July 29, 2024 - In Fall 2024, the presidential election season was in full swing. At that point, 2024 was already a very strong year, with the S&P 500 up 26% year-to-date. Once the Forecast signaled OUT after the election was decided, the choice to exit the market was easy — locking in big gains and avoiding the risk of post-election volatility.
Phase 2 - OUT - Waiting For The Crash, Watching For The Bottom
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November 8, 2024 - Sitting out during what could have been more gains didn’t feel difficult — the Forecast had done its job well in 2024. For four months, the market drifted sideways. Then in early March, the market began to tumble — almost exactly as the forecast had anticipated. Vindication.
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Now the investing mindset switches to watchful patience, waiting to let the drawdown run its course. By early April, the drop was enough to reset the market cycle and begin watching for signs to get back into the market. Within weeks, the data improved and the IN signal returned.
Phase 3 - IN - Letting The Recovery Run
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April 25, 2025 - Re-entering in late April meant hoping to catch the second half of the recovery phase. The Forecast had done its job well again, avoiding the drawdown and post-bottom volatility.
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Being back in the market means getting back focusing on the long view. Trusting that market always comes back eventually, but with the hope that big drops are finished and recovery will continue.
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May, June, and July delivered a nearly ideal recovery — a 15% gain in just three months, with the market climbing almost straight up.
The Results — Why a Market Timing Forecast Matters
It was a strong year for the S&P 500 overall (17% returns for the year), but buy-and-hold investors still had to endure a painful 19% drawdown in April 2025.
By successfully avoiding that high-risk window, the Forecast guided returns were significantly better.
Nearly doubling the S&P 500 return to 30% is excellent, a perfect example of the value regularly delivered by the Pebble Delta Forecast.
But the 3x Leveraged ETF returns coming in at 104% is eye popping, almost too big to believe. Historically though, these are good, but typical returns when you combine Leveraged ETFs with reliability avoiding the damage from large downturns (read more below).
The Key: Avoiding the Big Drops
In the modern era, aggressive investors now have the option to amplify returns (and risk) through the use of daily leveraged ETFs. But leveraged ETFs have a bad reputation, and for good reason.
Leveraged ETFs can increase returns, but are psychologically difficult for typical investors to use effectively over time.
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If you hold them during major market declines, they can suffer massive losses.
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Their increased volatility can also be hard to handle on a day to day basis.
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The math of leveraged compounding works against you, as it takes longer for any losses to recover.
These facts make Leveraged ETFs by themselves a non-option for most investors.
But here’s the secret: if you can reliably get out of the market before large declines, the extra risk of leverage turns into extra reward.
And that’s exactly what the Pebble Delta Forecast is designed to do.
Historical Results
This past year wasn’t a fluke. From 1964–2024, the S&P 500 saw 15 major downturns. The typical downturn dropped ~25% and took ~15 months to fully recover.
Pebble Delta’s Simple Forecast Recommendation successfully anticipated 13 of those 15 downturns — not by predicting the exact day of the top, but by identifying when market risk was building to dangerous levels and exiting before the large declines.
1964 - 2025
Avoiding just a few of those big declines has a massive effect on long-term returns. Over decades, it’s the difference between ordinary growth and extraordinary compounding.
Since 1964, the S&P 500 has returned ~8% a year. At that rate, it would take ~30 years to grow 80K into 1 million dollars.
However, using the Simple Forecast Recommendation of the Pebble Delta Forecast nearly doubles S&P 500 historical returns to ~15% a year and shaves ~12 years off the time to 1 million.
Using the Pebble Delta Forecast in combination with leveraged ETFs creates an appealing option with huge historical returns of 30-40% a year, while minimizing risk and downturns to a level equal or better than typical buy-and-hold investing.
1964 - 2025
1964 - 2025
What This Means for Investors
This past year added one more cycle to the Pebble Delta Forecast’s history of success.
And the results are clear: One forecast. Two trades. No stressful guesswork. And the
results were more than 6x better than a traditional S&P 500 return.
Leveraged ETFs by themselves are still a bad idea for most investors — unless you have a reliable, disciplined way to avoid the worst declines. The Pebble Delta Forecast makes that possible.
Looking Ahead
The takeaways remain simple:
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Avoiding big drawdowns matters more than catching every rally.
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Leverage can turn from dangerous to powerful when paired with risk avoidance.
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A reliable Forecast takes the emotion and guesswork out of market timing.
Disclaimer
Pebble Delta provides market forecasts and related content for informational and educational purposes only. Pebble Delta is not a registered investment advisor and does not provide personalized financial advice or investment recommendations.
Past performance does is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. You are solely responsible for any financial decisions you make based on information from Pebble Delta. We recommend consulting a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
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