Allocate Smartly

Various Miscellany

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 […]

Geek Note: How to Properly Lag Monthly Economic Data

We’ll be talking about Paul Novell’s flagship SPY-COMP strategy on the blog tomorrow. The strategy uses monthly economic data, like the kind available from the FRED database. We’ve covered a handful of strategies like this in the past (think Philosophical Economics’ Growth Trend-Timing). Whenever we do, we invariably get a ton of questions, because it […]

Investing in “Distressed” TAA Strategies

In response to a member question: Have you ever looked at a systematic approach that invested only in tactical asset allocation strategies that were experiencing a significant drawdown? We know that performance chasing is a flawed behavioral bias, so an approach like this could exploit it. We always appreciate thoughtful questions like this from members. […]

Sneak Peak: Robustness to Noise

This is an early preview of a new analytical tool we’ll be adding to our platform later this month. Learn more about what we do. Broadly speaking, the goal of tactical asset allocation is to take advantage of broad market trends via trend-following and/or momentum. Those trends can be difficult to identify because of “noise”; […]

We’ve Added Three New Strategies

There’s a little something for everyone in this latest batch of new strategies. We’ll be exploring all three strategies in more detail on this blog in the coming month. 1. Movement Capital’s Composite Strategy (member link to backtest) Movement Capital is new on our radar, but has quickly become one of our go-to resources for […]

Allocate Smartly Just Got Even Better

We completed a BIG site upgrade over the weekend. 90% of the changes are behind the scenes. We refactored our code top to bottom. This site has come a long ways from its humble beginnings and it needed some spring cleaning. This will also help with scalability, to make sure we stay a few steps […]