It was easy to beat spy over this period by investing into, say, a Nasdaq index.

What were max drawdowns on spy and your experiment?

If yours was smaller, then it's interesting, because it means higher returns with lower volatility.

* Also, looking at SPY data it looks like its 1-year return from today was 26.05% rather than the 3x smaller number you gave. Even considering that you operate in CAD that's quite a discrepancy...