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Up0
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.
Up0March 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!
Up1Hi 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
PBUp0Hi all
greetings from 37,000 feet between Perth and Melbourne.
Feb report:
Capital gain +8.97%
Income +0.08%
Currency gain +1.14%
Total +10.19%YTD
Capital +10.61%
Income +0.08%
Currency +3.42%
Total +14.11%Was getting nervous towards the end of the month that January would repeat and I’d give most of it back.
Current balance $128k.
Next North Star: $200k
Up1Hi Ben,
great post. I’ve been a member for a few months only, and also enjoy the free content on Spotify to a large degree. I view my membership here as a way of saying thanks to Owen and his team for all the “free” stuff they make available to us.
With regards to the content available on “Core”, I find it a bit disappointing too.
On the plus side – there are no up and down rampers on the forum and zero spam – which is awesome!
On the downside, I was expecting the forum to be a lot more active – tried my best to contribute to the conversation by making my own PB ETF thread.
Interested in others’ thoughts.
PB
Up0OK just a quick one:
Jan 2024;
Capital gain + 1.58%
Currency: +2.82
Total: +4.4%
Was looking even better prior to the last two sessions!
Looking ahead – Feb historic range between -9.7% and +9.6% let’s hope for something closer to the positive end.
All the best everyone.
Up0All good points SLT – thanks for taking the time.
I did, indeed start thinking about this as an All Weather strategy – hence the name on the chart I posted above. But I got to thinking about what would be possible if I accepted the general level of market downside, and went searching for better upside? And then how might I achieve that upside. So I built a simple ETF strategy that takes <5 min / day to run.
So I’ve strayed a long way away from the All Weather principles which are designed to achieve a modest return in all market circumstances if I understand things correctly.
It won’t surprise you to know that I have read a lot of Nick Radge’s stuff which has lead me to this place, his twitter profile is worth a follow if you haven’t already done so.
I do have buy and hold in a much larger portfolio and agree with all your points that you have made with regards to that – and would also note that here, with this, I’m going to document my journey over time so that I can look back and see what my thoughts were.
To be clear, I’m absolutely prepared to abandon this if it underperforms or some other catastrophe arises! Given that it’s widely accepted that timing the market is a pathway to misery. that is clearly a non zero chance.
Some other points to note (mainly for myself):
– struggling a little bit to understand how Navexa calculates returns – particularly as I add to positions
– January so far:
Capital gain: + 3.77%
Income: +0%
Currency: +3.07%
Balance: $101k
95.4% invested.
Owen and Kate’s end of year podcast related to “finding your North star”. It really resonated with me. Although I do, perhaps think there can be a series of stars along the journey. Having achieved my first North star – $100k in the account, I move onto my next one – $200k. Which I hope to meet prior to the end of 2024 – obviously largely driven by adding to the account.
Up0Not investment advice:
I reckon that’s a fairly typical ETF spread SP, perhaps a better question might be what % should you allocate to each.
Not sure you need anything more.
Cheers!
PB
Up0Hi Owen, Sophie and everyone,
Only putting this out their because you asked!
Doctor here, and anything below is therefore absolutely not investment advice.
I really like Clarity Pharmaceuticals – CU6. Clarity Pharmaceuticals – Radiopharmaceutical Therapies and Diagnostics
Their website explains their tech better than I ever could, but essentially they have a copper-64 based radio-therapeutic molecule that can be linked to a targetting molecule to enable focussed delivery to cancer cells.
This can be used for imaging (PET scans) or treatment – a hybrid of chemotherapy and radiotherapy is the easy way to think about it.
They have multiple clinical trials on the go and a steady pipeline of news.
There’s a good summary on the 19/10/2023 episode of Equity Mates for anyone who is interested.
In summary, their products may prove useful for both cancer imaging and treatment, another area with strong tailwinds.
** I hold this share **
Up0Hi Dan,
thanks for joining in – 54.
Nice portfolio – no problem keeping it simple I reckon.
In answer to your questions:
1. Super – yes – maxed out contributions x2 + some additional contributions
2. Brokerage – if my system works in the wild as it did in back testing (and ultimately that’s the big if), it’s < 1 trade / week – so holds a lot long term. Brokerage is a part of the equation but ultimately trivial I think.
3. CGT – a good problem to have – haven’t factored into calculations, like everything if you’re paying tax for making money it’s OK. Clearly a buy and hold strategy has advantages in this regard.
Cheers
PBUp0SLT,
been thinking overnight about how I might better answer your question.
My method does not have any view on the value of the underlying assets – it simply places some guiderails around when I’ll be in the market and when I’ll be out.
By placing simple exit and entry criteria around an individual stock or ETF, I hope to limit my downside whilst getting most of the upside. I go to cash when market conditions are not favourable according to my own programmed set of rules.
You’ll see in the attached equity curve of a single ETF running my system – IVV vs SP500 – that I would miss out on the worst of the 2008 crash and about half of the 2020 drawdown.
Since 2003, running this system I would have an ROR of 8.06% with a DD of 20.8% compared to the market – 8.21% with a DD of 56.7%
Hope that helps.
One of the reasons I’m doing this here publicly is to own my results over time.
Up0Hi SLT,
thanks for the follow up.
Completely agree that past performance cannot guarantee future returns. And aware that what I might be about to suggest is not mainstream thinking on this site.
I use Realtest – which is available online, with data feed from Norgate.
I find myself asking questions such as:
* What level of draw-down am I comfortable with?
* Could portfolio draw-downs be limited by simple ETF entry and exit rules
* What effect would that have on portfolio returns
There are many other questions, of course, in particular what is the best ETF mix that can be answered in a historical context.
And I find that historical market data helps answer some of these questions.
So yes, I do find backtesting useful!
In particular, I understand the historical performance of the system that I’m trading, it’s parameters,
Up0December ETF strategy performance: +2.33%
Been thinking about how to present performance data, as I progressively add more $ into the account, it becomes difficult to express in a % – so I’m just going to play it straight and give the number that Navexia gives me.
Capital gain: + 2.72%
Income: +0.47%
Currency: -0.87%
Balance: $70k
92% invested.
Looking ahead, January has a 50% chance of being a positive month based on back-testing my strategy.
Worst January – 2022 – -12.9%
Best January – 2018 – +14.7%
Average return 0.8%
Regards to all on the forum.
Up0G’day Halfbackflanker
Just my view and I’m not in the financial planning business:
That’s a lot of exposure to one market – Australia. Also very stock market focused of course.
By my calculation and excluding the compounding effects of DRP the strategy has a rate of return of 9.1% over the last 10 years, a max draw down of 25% (early 2020) and two negative years – 2018 and 2022.
As a light hearted aside, if you went with a 1 ETF strategy (IVV) the returns over the last 10y would be 50% better. 13.9%/yr with a better max draw down of 22.5%.
Up0Thanks SLT,
was hoping to trigger a conversation and do some learning on my side. Thanks for the estate tax / death tip – didn’t know that and having millions in the US market might be a good problem to have – other than the death part of the situation.
Yes, diversifying away from super and having some fun with different asset classes.
During construction of the portfolio I considered investing into non-related asset classes – I started off looking at versions of the Dalio all-weather portfolio which may be well known to many of you. If not, that’s a rabbit hole worth going down.
I’ve also sat by and watched the Aussie market go sideways for several years. Dalio all weather felt a bit bland.
So I turned my attention to creating a system with similar levels of drawdown to the broader market and enhanced returns. I understand this may be counter to the prevailing themes of this site, but rest assured I’ve got the vast majority of my net worth in sensible assets – ETFs and real estate. For this system I only looked at high quality ETFs with a long track record.
I turned my system on at the start of November, which happened to be sensational timing – although I did not have much in the market for that month. Went with the system in full at the start of December.
In back – testing I have had one negative year since 2013 – which happened to be 2022, although 2015 and 2016 were largely sideways.
My system has simple entry and exit criteria for executing trades and is currently fully invested. It takes <5 min / day to run with very few trades.
MTD I’m +8.1% – although I expect everyone who is in the markets this month is having a great month.
That’s it for now.
