Allocate Smartly

TAA Analysis

Pragmatic Asset Allocation from Vojtko and Javorská of Quantpedia

This is a test of Pragmatic Asset Allocation from Vojtko and Javorská of Quantpedia. While the strategy is “tactical” (i.e. changes allocation over time in response to market conditions), it’s also designed to ensure tax efficiency. We track many tactical strategies that have been tax efficient, but none that enforce that efficiency through explicit rules […]

Tactical Asset Allocation and Taxes: FIFO vs LIFO Deep Dive

This is a deep dive into which share disposal method – FIFO or LIFO – would have been more tax advantageous for the 80+ asset allocation strategies we track. When selling shares FIFO (first in, first out), the oldest shares held are sold first. When selling LIFO (last in, first out), the most recently purchased […]

Make Things Easy on Yourself: “Roll Up” Small Asset Positions

Here are some things we know about Tactical Asset Allocation: (Learn more: What is TAA?) We shouldn’t go 100% “all in” on just one TAA strategy. That introduces “specification risk”, or the risk that we’ve bet on an underperforming horse. Instead, we should combine multiple strategies together into what we call Model Portfolios. When trading […]

European Investors and TAA Strategies: Four Approaches

We track 80+ Tactical Asset Allocation (TAA) strategies, most of which were designed from the perspective of a US investor trading US ETFs. Most European investors can’t access US ETFs, instead trading UCITS funds listed on non-US exchanges, often denominated in currencies other than USD. In this post we’ll provide data analyzing four approaches a […]

Inflation and Stock/Treasury Correlation

There has been a surge in correlation between US stocks and Treasuries over the last couple of years. To illustrate, below we’ve shown the rolling 3-year correlation between US stocks and 10-year Treasuries since 1900 (based on monthly returns). Note the spike at the far right of the chart. What is correlation? In this context, […]

Long-term Returns for US Treasury Funds Are Predictable

Long-term returns for US Treasury bond funds with a constant maturity (like IEF, TLT and SHY) have been quite predictable simply using initial Treasury yields as an estimate. This observation was popularized by John Bogle. Here’s an excellent recent look from Portfolio Optimizer. How predictable? Below we’ve shown the intial yield on 10-Year US Treasury […]

Super-Secret Proprietary Black Box Strategies

Note: This is a rare non-geeky, non-quantitative, stream of thought blog post. Because we’re so deep into this world of Tactical Asset Allocation (TAA), we’re sometimes asked for our thoughts on such-and-such black box TAA strategy. By “black box” we mean a strategy for which the trading rules are not disclosed to investors (nor to […]