Be sure to check out our guest post over at research supersite Alpha Architect: Tactical Asset Allocation: Does the Day of the Month Matter? Backtests of long-term strategies like tactical asset allocation are usually shown trading at the end of the month, both because it makes the analysis simpler and because monthly asset class data […]
TAA Analysis
How to Play US Treasury ETFs in an Era of Rising Rates
In our previous post we demonstrated an approach to modeling US Treasury ETF performance in an era of rising interest rates. We showed results like the ones below, simulating the performance of various constant maturity ETFs from the interest rate peak in 1981 to the present (left half of the graph), and in a hypothetical […]
Modelling Treasury ETF Performance in an Era of Rising Rates
US Treasuries and other interest rate sensitive instruments form the backbone of many asset allocation strategies. Investors are justifiably concerned about a future of rising interest rates and the potential impact on those instruments. In this post we model that impact on constant maturity Treasury assets like the ETF TLT, which tracks long-term (20+ year) […]
Why TAA Has Been So Successful in Crises
Most Tactical Asset Allocation (TAA) strategies have followed the same basic storyline. They keep pace with the market during the good times (like we find ourselves in right now), and shine during the bad times. To illustrate, the graphs below shows the average return of all of the TAA models that we track (orange) versus the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]