2020 – a.k.a the year from hell (but not for investors) 1918 – The Spanish flu pandemic. By now, most of us have such pictures of ourselves or our loved ones so that our grand-children can show their kids some 100 years from now. It has been an extraordinary year by any measure. The events of 2020 are unprecedented and beside the spread of COVID-19 include, amongst others: The Australian wildfires burned through 47 million … Read more
Market surge in November U.S. and foreign equity markets had an exceptional month due to major progress towards a coronavirus vaccine and expectations of easy monetary policy from central banks. The S&P 500 is up +10.9%, EFA (Developed countries) +14.3%, EEM +9.2% while hard hit economies like Italy and Spain are up +25% and 27% respectively. Safe heavens under pressure The surge in stocks has put competitive pressure on safe-haven assets such as bonds … Read more
Election volatility October turned out to be a volatile month that ended up negative for most assets classes: The U.S. market lost -2.5%, gold (GLD -0.5%), Treasuries (TLT -3.4%) while the U.S. dollar was flat (UUP +0.1%). Our strategies pretty much followed the market correction with performances ranging from -0.2% to -3.1% for non-leveraged strategies. The HEDGE for this past month was almost half in Gold and half in TLT, so the large drop in … Read more
Election and volatility On September 22th, we received the following message as our main broker increased margin requirements for U.S. stocks: Consequently, to protect (the broker) and its customers, … will increase margin requirements by as much as 35% above normal margin requirements leading up to the November U.S. election. With the increase fully implemented, the new requirements would be 67.5% Initial and 33.75% Maintenance (vs 50% and 25%) In effect, this is similar to … Read more
A guest post by our subscriber Richard Thomas I would like to discuss a strategy I have been working on and would welcome any feedback. All my optimizations use a 5-year lookback period. I know there has been much discussion about this over the years and there does not appear to be firm consensus on the best period to use, however 5 years covers a good growth period and some good pullbacks in 2015, 2018 … Read more
We offer several “pre-canned” portfolios in our “Core Portfolio” and “Portfolio Library”. While we put a lot of brain and effort into designing these, they cannot and will not serve everybody’s risk/return profile or personal preference. And they are not meant to – rather they should serve as starting point for your very own, personalized custom Portfolio. As we just implemented (yet) another change to our Core Portfolios we’re getting many requests on how to … Read more
The S&P 500 moves higher August was positive for the U.S. equity market (SPY +7%) and very negative for long term Treasuries (TLT -5%) as yields were hit by the FED’s decision to pursue a ‘flexible’ 2% inflation target. Gold remained flat (GLD -0.3%), just below it’s all time highs. Our strategies were split around zero some posting moderate gains and some moderate losses. The under performance of most strategies vs the SP500 is due … Read more
As a follow-up to the changes implemented last month in response to the delisting of UGLD and ZIV we are implementing again some changes: New 2x leveraged Universal Investment Strategy New 2x leveraged US Market Strategy New Portfolio configuration & reoptimization To keep the newsletter manageable we’ve detailed these changes in a separate post. All strategies positive. Another good month for LI strategies and portfolios, most returning 3-5% for the month of July. July’s notable … Read more
Based on the feedback we received last month after the changes in the Maximum Yield (MYRS) and Leveraged Universal Investment Strategy (3xUIS) we are again implementing several changes this month: New 2 times leveraged Universal Investment strategy Many subscribers reported issues implementing the leveraged GLD positions we did to circumvent the delisted UGLD. Also the process of having to scale down the positions manually raised many questions, as did the effective leverage of the scaled … Read more
Updates ETFs UGLD and ZIV are set to be delisted on July 12, 2020. We have adjusted our Maximum Yield and Leveraged Universal Strategies accordingly. You may close any positions in UGLD and ZIV to avoid delays. Please read more here. New pricing extended to all subscribers. All strategies positive for June All strategies were positive in June and most outperformed both the S&P 500 (1.8%) and the Long-Term Treasury (0.3%). Hedging and diversification is … Read more