PB ETF Journey

[ben]

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Hello PB, thanks for the updates! This sounds very interesting and I’d been keen to continue following your reports.

At least since you’ve been posting on Rask Community, it looks like you’re over 3 months in now – looking back, do you think you’ve been executing the plan as you had intended?

And I saw you wrote earlier that you were estimating <1 trade a week – has that held up so far? Does that also include your own contributions – i.e. you might have cash available but wait (letting it build up) until your system suggests it’s time to invest?

Anyway, thanks again and hope to hear your performance continues as you hope!

[PB]

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Hi Ben,

thanks for playing along at home.

Have I executed as planned?

– I modified the universe of ETFs because I felt I wasn’t likely to get enough out of some of them; so currently: T-bond ETF; Bitcoin ETF; NASDAQ ETF; Dividend ETF; Real estate ETF

– Currently invested in all except Bond ETF

– If the system enters what looks like a sustained period of being out of the market, will put the balance into some form of interest bearing ETF.

Trade frequency:

– of the original 5 positions I bought into – I still hold 4; and have flipped in and out of the Bond ETF looking for a good entry as per the trading system (and didn’t find it).

– so that was a total of one additional systematic trade in January and one in February.

 

Scaling in with additional cash contributions

– a bit of a headache; I’ve taken a pragmatic / non scientific approach to this – simply buying into existing positions once a month to try to rebalance somewhat towards my desired portfolio mix

– not completely sure this is a sound approach, as at this stage of the portfolio the cash contributions represent a relatively big %age of the total

– have been blessed for all this to occur in a rising market

Looking ahead to March, previous 10y of backtesting has returns ranging between -15.3% (2020) and +7.0% (2023).

And to answer your final question, backtesting and real world appear pretty close. Which is great.

Cheers
PB

[PB]

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March report:

Capital gain: +1.20%
Income: +.34%
Currency: +.36%
Total: +1.9%

YTD:
Capital gain: +10.98%
Income: +.46%
Currency: +2.93%
Total return: +14.37%

 

Current balance: $141k

North star: $200k

 

Another positive month although this one felt much harder than the last few – account bounced around a lot. From here, will be adding less capital each month as I have  few other matters to attend to!

Hope you are all well, and I’m really enjoying the increased tempo of discussion on this forum.

Happy Easter!

[PB]

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Looking ahead, April is usually a positive month with returns varying between:

2016: -4.6%

2021: +9.7%

Let’s hope I can keep the streak going.

[Author]

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