S&P 500 Backtest Bias - Quant Trader Interview Question
Difficulty: Medium
Category: Regression Analysis
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Topics: backtesting, survivorship-bias, statistics, trading-strategy
Problem Description
You are backtesting a stock selection strategy from 2000 to 2023. Your dataset consists only of stocks that are currently (as of December 31, 2023) in the S&P 500 index. You find that your strategy generated an impressive annualized return of 15%. Why is this backtest likely to overstate the true historical performance of the strategy?
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