Is the Blossom 100 skill or style?

The short answer

• The outperformance mostly survives. Adjusting for the usual style factors barely dents it: depending on the model, the Blossom 100 (All) beat what its exposures predict by about 7–10% a year since January 2024.
• It's not a size, value or momentum story. Those tilts are close to zero. The one clear tilt is toward less-profitable, fast-growing, heavy-spending companies (think AI, crypto-linked and speculative tech). That tilt added about +2.9% a year.
• It's suggestive, not proven. Depending on the model it's 1.5 to 2.2 standard errors from zero, right on the edge of what a statistician would call meaningful. Another year or two of data would settle it.
• The US version and the Millionaire 100 need more time. The US Blossom 100 has under two years of history and its alpha swings from about +5% to +17% depending on the model; the Millionaire 100 has under a year. We wouldn't quote either yet.

Where the Blossom 100's return came from

Blossom 100 (All), Jan 2024 – Sep 2026. Average yearly return above cash: +25.0%, split by source (Fama-French 5 factors + momentum + Canada + Bitcoin).

Purple is what no factor explains. Grey bars are returns explained by exposures you could get cheaply elsewhere.

Every model we ran

Different ways of defining the factors give a similar answer, which is what makes the result believable. Alpha is yearly; ± is one standard error (adjusted for day-to-day correlation); R² is how much of the daily movement the model explains.

The Blossom 100's factor tilts

Blossom 100 (All), Fama-French 5 + momentum + Canada + Bitcoin. A loading of 0 means no tilt; negative means it leans the other way.

• Market 0.87: over the full history it moves slightly less than the S&P. Its beta has been higher in 2026 (the scorecard's year-to-date number).
• Profitability −0.33, investment −0.28: leans toward less-profitable, fast-expanding companies. That's the speculative-growth tilt.
• Canada +0.26: it leans toward Canadian stocks, as you'd expect from TSX names like Enbridge, TD and Shopify.

How it was calculated

• Returns: the Blossom 100's daily index levels (the same series as the live page) minus the 1-month T-bill rate.
• Academic factors: Fama-French 5 factors and momentum, daily, from Kenneth French's data library. Published through Sep 30, 2026.
• ETF factors (run through Nov 6):
  • Market: SPY.
  • Size: IWM minus SPY.
  • Value: IWD minus IWF.
  • Momentum: MTUM minus SPY.
  • Quality: QUAL minus SPY.
  • Nasdaq tilt: QQQ minus SPY.
  • Canada: EWC minus SPY.
  • Bitcoin: BTC-USD.
  All are total-return prices from Yahoo Finance.
• Method: daily regression. Yearly figures are the average daily return × 252 (not compounded). Alpha is the intercept × 252. Standard errors use Newey-West (5 lags). "Return it explains" = loading × the factor's average return × 252.
• Caveats:
  • The index is price-only (no dividends) while the factors include dividends, so the true alpha is slightly higher than shown (by roughly the index's dividend yield, about 1%).
  • Canadian holdings are priced in CAD.
  • Under three years of data means wide error bars.
  • The index rules (top 100 by dollars held, monthly reset, ETFs excluded) were not tuned to performance.
• Not investment advice. Past performance, including the index's, doesn't predict future returns.