Sources of long-term historical data are few and far between. Because it’s been generously provided for free, one of the most often used is data from Professor French (of Fama-French fame). Others include Shiller and Ibbotson. These datasets are fine for a first pass at testing out ideas, but they often don’t remotely match up […]
Things That Don't Work
Sector Rotation with Fama-French Alphas
Allocate Smartly tests and tracks asset allocation strategies sourced from books, academic papers and other publications. Most of the strategies that we test though never make it on to this site. There are a variety of reasons that might be, but often it’s simply because they’re not very good. Usually we just let those strategies […]
Timing TAA Strategies Based on Relative Strength: A Suboptimal Approach
We track a wide range of tactical asset allocation strategies in near real-time (41 and counting), which members can combine into their own custom portfolios. We provide members with a wealth of data to understand how each strategy fits into a coherent trading plan, but we don’t tell members the absolute “best” ones to trade […]
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 […]