There are a few ways to trade : 1. spend a very long time (like 8 hours / day ) glueing your backside to the trading chair and eyes to the computer screens 2. listen to professional writers who appear to have done some analysis. Then just trade the closing & opening. Spend about 10 minutes at closing and 10 minutes at opening every day and hope that tons and tons of money will just fall from the sky. 3. Because #1 involves staring at the screens for so long, automate the trading. What we know of trading is that there is simply no shortcut to reaching financial freedom.
Yes I ran a test from 1993, buying close, selling open, with $1 per trade commission. That's where I got the 4.5% yearly return. I didn't compare with buying open, selling close though.
Not sure why you keep believing that trading profitably means staring at the screen/charts for 8 hours or more per day. Some day-trading systems require no more than 10 to 15 minutes of screen time per day.
I think it is important for traders to spend lots of time to develop their own holy grail / trade plan. We are all different. What works for one person may not work for another person. One thing for sure; it is hard work and there is no shortcut.
Yes, searching for the holy grail could take an entire lifetime. This is by far the most time-consuming activity, as far as trading is concerned.
If you did this in 2020 - you'd be up 79 ES points excluding commissions and assuming you'd actually get filled on the Close/Open. You'd have to endure a 808,75 point drawdown. That's more than 40K on 1 ES contract. A quick study, so I'll stand corrected if there's anything wrong.
I also did backtest on equities, non-edge exists anymore if there was any. the gain is $0.002/share, which can not cover commissions, let alone the dd is huge.