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, […]
Various Miscellany
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 […]
New Feature: 10-Year Stock Market Return Forecast
We are often asked about stock market valuation models such as Shiller’s CAPE Ratio and the Buffet Indicator. These models predict long-term returns, usually forecasting the next 10 years. Our recent analysis of one such valuation model, the Aggregate Investor Allocation to Equities, motivated us to take our our own deep dive into the subject. […]
Our Take on “The Single Greatest Predictor of Future Stock Market Returns”
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 […]
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 […]