Readers have asked for our take on “the single greatest predictor of future stock market returns”, aka the Aggregate Investor Allocation to Equities. This indicator was first shared by Philosophical Economics back in 2013, and recently resurrected by Portfolio Optimizer (two excellent sites you should be following). A very brief primer: The Aggregate Investor Allocation […]
Various Miscellany
Vintage Economic Data: Part of Our Perpetual Drive to Better Results
Some of the strategies we track use economic data, like the unemployment rate, when making investment decisions. Like 99.99% of strategy backtests you’ll encounter, we’ve always taken the shortcut of basing our historical results on that economic data as it looks today. The problem is that introduces a degree of “lookahead bias”. Economic data is […]
A Note About Commodities and How We Represent Them on Our Platform
We represent each asset class on our platform using the largest, most liquid ETF available (read why). Currently, we represent the asset class “diversified commodities” with the Invesco ETF DBC, but after this weekend, we’ll be changing to a different Invesco ETF PDBC. There are two reasons for this change: For non-US investors, there are […]
Portfolio Optimizer Version 2.0
We’ve just released version 2.0 of our Portfolio Optimizer, and the nerds in us are pretty excited. New here? We track tactical asset allocation strategies. Members can combine those strategies together into what we call “Model Portfolios”. The Portfolio Optimizer shows the optimal mix of strategies to trade in your Model Portfolios based on objectives […]
Site Upgrade: Add Buy & Hold Assets to Model Portfolios
We completed a major site upgrade last week. We reworked a lot of our code as part of our never-ending quest for speed and scalability, but most of that should be invisible to members. There are, however, a couple of big changes that members will enjoy. Buy & Hold assets may now be included in […]
New Feature: Cluster Analysis
We track a lot of tactical strategies, and it can be difficult to understand how they all fit together in the big picture. The usual correlation matrix (example) is helpful when drilling down on a single strategy, but it’s near impossible to see the forest for the trees among the 1000’s of data points. In […]
New 3rd party app: Flow Allocator
If you’re a Mac user and a hardcore asset allocation nerd like us, check out this new 3rd party app: Flow Allocator (available in the Mac Store for U.S. users). Our aim is to be best in class in terms of determining your optimal asset allocation, but we’ve always been hands off in terms of […]
Max Sortino Added to the Portfolio Optimizer (And Whether That Matters)
We track more than 60 Tactical Asset Allocation strategies, which members can combine together into custom portfolios. To make creating those portfolios easier, we provide an optimizer showing the best performing combinations of strategies based on the member’s investment objective, such as maximizing the Sharpe Ratio (risk-adjusted return) or minimizing volatility. By popular demand, we’ve […]
New Feature: Optimized Model Portfolios
We track more than 60 Tactical Asset Allocation strategies. Members can combine those strategies into what we call “Model Portfolios”. Combining strategies in this way reduces the risk of any single strategy going off the rails and helps to provide smoother, more consistent investment returns. But deciding which strategies to trade in your Model Portfolio […]
New Platform Features and a Look at What’s Coming Next
We continue to expand our platform based on invaluable feedback from members. Here’s a quick look at features we’ve added over the last month, and what’s coming up in the near future. New Feature #1: Longer Model Portfolio Backtests New here? Our platform allows members to combine multiple TAA strategies together into what we call […]