This is a test of Dick Stoken’s Active Combined Asset (ACA) strategy from his book Survival of the Fittest for Investors. This tactical asset allocation strategy uses price channel breakouts to choose between pairs of opposing risk and defensive asset classes. Results from 1988, net of transaction costs, follow. Read more about our backtests or […]
Blog
New Feature: Strategy Screener
We’ve added a new premium feature for paid members: a powerful Strategy Screener. The strategy screener allows members to filter and sort tactical asset allocation strategies by any of the statistics that we calculate. Members can choose the number of years to analyze, and whether to include alternate trading days. Have a peek at this […]
Aggressive Global Tactical Asset Allocation
A number of members have asked us to test the two aggressive versions of Meb Faber’s GTAA strategy from his seminal paper: A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation. I can’t overstate the importance that Faber’s work has had in popularizing the idea of TAA with the general investing community, and I highly recommend the read. Faber’s […]
The Perils of Backtesting with Unrealistic Data
As readers hear us repeat often, our results tend to be less optimistic than you’ll find elsewhere. We do our best to show backtested results that are as realistic as possible (even though showing results that are as good as possible would probably be better for business). That’s partially a result of simple things, like accounting […]
Tactical Asset Allocation in September
This is a summary of the recent performance of a number of excellent tactical asset allocation strategies. These strategies are sourced from books, academic papers, and other publications. While we don’t (yet) include every published TAA model, these strategies are broadly representative of the TAA space. Read more about our backtests or let AllocateSmartly help […]
Alternate Trading Days: An Important Analytical Tool
Many of the tactical asset allocation strategies that we track are designed to only trade at the end of the month. When tracking these strategies for members however, we show the results of trading on other days of the month as well. We don’t do this to show off our backtesting prowess; it’s an important analytical […]
Adaptive Asset Allocation
This is a test of a tactical asset allocation strategy from the team at GestaltU and ReSolve Asset Management as described in the paper: Adaptive Asset Allocation: A Primer. The model combines momentum with a minimum variance portfolio to trade a diverse array of global asset classes. The paper is a particularly accessible treatment of issues with traditional […]
Average TAA Allocation by Month
We delayed adding the latest strategy to our site (GestaltU’s Adaptive Asset Allocation) for a week due to technical hurdles running the minimum variance component of the strategy in near real-time for members. Historical results on GestaltU’s strategy are exceptional though, and we plan to have the challenges with real-time worked out shortly. In the […]
David Varadi’s Percentile Channels
This is a test of a tactical asset allocation strategy from David Varadi of CSS Analytics. I’ve been a long-time fan of David’s work. David always devises unique approaches to trading, swimming just outside the mainstream. This strategy is a good example of that. The strategy is notable for its extremely low volatility relative to return. […]
Tactical Asset Allocation Performance in August
This is a summary of the recent performance of a number of excellent asset allocation strategies. These strategies are sourced from books, academic papers, and other publications. They range from simple, static portfolio allocations, to complex and dynamic portfolio optimization. Read more about our backtests and what we do. Recent Performance of Asset Allocation Strategies Use […]