ETF Strategy Research and Strategy Blog: Rotation Strategies

Portfolio Builder: How to create a Portfolio of Portfolios

We’ve received a couple of request in the last weeks whether it is possible to create a “Portfolio of Portfolios” in our Portfolio Builder. For example, to create a portfolio holding several of our Core Portfolios plus a custom portfolio in a fixed-weight or custom blend. Or to combine a one of the portfolios in the Portfolio Library with a single strategy or ETF. Cases for this include: You like two of our preset portfolios … Read more

The Logical-Invest newsletter for January 2019

Must reads: Frank Grossmann’s article “How to Hedge in Times of Market Trouble” (Seeking Alpha, LI Blog) 2019 strategy updates (LI Blog) Protecting your money After almost 10 years of a continuous bull market and 2 years of exceptional growth (2016-2017), 2018 was the first year that the SP500 turned negative. Apart from the dollar index, most asset classes also fell. To make things worse, the S&P500 dropped -20% from the September highs during what is … Read more

How to create a hedge strategy in times of market troubles

In this article I would like to explain how to create a hedge strategy for an equity position, so that draw-downs, like the current one (December 2018), are minimized. During this 10-year bull market, many investors have forgotten that investing only in equities can be quite risky. It has been simple to buy the SPY S&P 500 ETF and profit from rising valuations. This year-end 20% correction makes many investors reconsider safe haven assets like … Read more

The Logical-Invest monthly newsletter for December 2018

Logical Invest Investment Outlook December 2018 The graph below is from a recent Bloomberg article entitled “A Brutal Global Market in 2018 Has Just One Champion“. That one champion, according to the article, was Treasury bills. It goes on to say: “By one simple measure, this is the worst cross-asset performance in more than a century“. Below you can see 89% of all assets had negative performances year-to-date (as of Nov. 22). This may be an exaggeration … Read more

Logical-Invest Investment Strategy changes for 2019

We have made some quite important changes to the Logical Invest strategies for 2019. Please note that the January strategy allocations will be calculated based on these updated strategies. 401 / IRA compliant base strategies The new strategies will not use leveraged or inverse ETFs, making them and the portfolios derived from them, more 401 / IRA friendly. The changes have been backtested and do not reduce the performance of the strategies due to a … Read more

Risk Management using Timed Hedging – Avoid DrawDowns

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As you perhaps know I have invested all my money in my own strategies, and I and my family (the best wife of all and 4 nice children) are living from the return of these investments. So, I just cannot afford to lose much money in market corrections. Therefore I always try to improve the strategies to lower the risk of major losses through hedging. Timed Hedging The new “Timed hedging” is a major improvement … Read more

Volatility Premium – Why we invest in ZIV and not in XIV

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Several times I have been asked why we invest in ZIV (inverse mid-term volatility) and not in XIV (inverse front month volatility) in our Maximum Yield Rotation Strategy and in the “Global Market Rotation Enhanced Strategy” to harvest the volatility premium. Harvest Volatility Premium smartly After all, front month VIX Future contango is about 2-3x bigger then medium term contango. At the moment XIV profits from nearly 9% monthly VIX Futures contango. ZIV profits from about 3% … Read more

401k investment: Sleep Well Bond Rotation Strategy – Annual performance of 15%

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You can employ this strategy perfectly in your 401k investment, because it outperforms the stock market by more than double and this with one third of the volatility or risk. This means that since 2008, the return to risk ratio is about six times higher than an investment in the SPY ETF which tracks the S&P 500. Even this year, when many investors are selling bonds due to increasing yields through FED tapering, the bond rotation strategy … Read more

Strategies For Trading Inverse Volatility

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Update: You can see the most recent performance our our inverse volatility strategy here. Consult vixcentral for the daily VIC term curve. In this paper, I present five different strategies you can use to trade inverse volatility. Why trade inverse volatility you ask? Because since 2011, trading inverse volatility was probably the most rewarding investment an investor could make in the markets. Annual returns of between 40% – 100% have been possible which crushes any other … Read more

A new enhanced Global Market Rotation Strategy with adaptive ETF investment allocation

Update: See the current performance of this ETF investment strategy here. A new enhanced Global Market Rotation Strategy with adaptive ETF investment allocation The GMR strategy performed well during the last 10 years. Especially during years with a strong trend in one of the 5 world markets, this strategy was able to switch early to the best ETF and stay invested until another market ETF took the lead. A known problem for such monthly rotation strategies … Read more