ETF Strategy Research and Strategy Blog: Rotation Strategies

The Logical-Invest newsletter for February 2019

Our top 3 strategies this past month: Leveraged Universal Investment strategy with +7.5% return. Maximum Yield strategy at +4.3% U.S. Sector strategy (free to subscribe) at +3.1% News: Alex’s new post describes the process of blending Portfolios (rather than Strategies or ETFs) using the Portfolio Builder. Bouncing into 2019 Three fundamental trends to watch as 2019 unfolds: The first trend includes the reversal of QE in the U.S, the end of the asset purchase program of … 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

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 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

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

Invest in VIX volatility using ZIV

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Update January 2017: The recent performance of investing in volatility can be seen here. You are probably wondering how we could achieve yearly performances of more than 50% with some of our rotation strategies. The reason is that the Maximum Yield Rotation Strategy and the Global Market Rotation Enhanced Strategy are investing in inverse volatility. Invest in inverse Volatility So, here are now some facts to show you why I like inverse volatility so much. … Read more

A Global Market Rotation Strategy with an annual performance of 41.4% since 2003

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The following ETF strategy is one of my favorite rotation strategies, which many of my friends, customers and I use now for some years. The Global Market ETF Rotation Strategy (GMR) The GMR Strategy switches between 6 different ETF on a monthly basis. The back tested return of this strategy since 2003 is quite impressive. Annual performance (CAGR) = 41.4% (S&P500=8.4%) Total performance since 2003 = 3740% (S&P500=134%) 69% of trades have positive return versus … Read more

Harvesting Contango: How To Build An ETF Rotation Strategy With More Than 50% Annualized Returns

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In this paper I want to explain the readers how the Maximum Yield Rotation Strategy of www.logical-invest.com is built. This strategy harvests the so called Contango. Harvesting Contango by investing in inverse volatility This Strategy harvests contango and achieves very high returns investing in inverse volatility. From 2011 to today the annual performance was more than 70% per year. Year to date the performance is 40.9%. The Sharpe Ratio (Return/Risk) of 2.12 is a “DREAM VALUE” … 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