Portfolio on 8.14.20

Gave back all the gains from the week before, down 1.2% for this week. Gold and bonds were great help for most of the year, but not the last few days. I’m glad the strategy recently reduced it’s exposure to these two, I just wish it had gone further. I mentioned last week how the…

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Portfolio on 8.7.20

Still climbing, up 1.18% for the week. This upward trend is relentless. Today was interesting though. Until the rally in stocks at the close, the everything was down, and meaningfully so. It was headed toward the worst day in 8 weeks until the save at the end. One day does not make a trend, but…

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Along the Curve.

A funny thing about the top of a curve: it’s flat. This flatness leads to an interesting investment question: are you willing to give up some return to reduce the bumpiness of the ride? The Flat Top When you look at the geometric frontier as a whole and not just the top point by itself,…

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Portfolio on 7.31.20

What a month. Again up over a percent and a half for the week. Minor changes today, going with a bit less gold. We’ll see if this is a good move or not. Gold is the hardest part of the portfolio to get right. On July 31st, 2020, the strategy rebalanced to: 48% SPY ,…

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Factor of Safety

Surprisingly, designing a bridge or building has similarities to constructing an investment portfolio. We’re going to discuss some engineering concepts for a bit. Bear with me, because I will connect each and every one back to the investing world. Imagine you have to design a structural beam. To design this beam the engineer must understand…

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Portfolio on 7.24.20

We’ll I missed posting this last week. Up about a percent and a half for last week. Moving slowly more into stocks. Gold is getting volatile, so it’s lessening in the portfolio. On July 24th, 2020, the strategy rebalanced to: 48% SPY , 40% TLT , 12% GLD

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Portfolio on 7.17.20

Up about seven tenths of a percent for the week. The market is starting to look pretty normal. Volatility is a little high, but not much. Correlations are a little lower than normal, but not extreme. This is slightly defensive portfolio, but opportunistically so as the total portfolio correlation is low (which is why the…

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Geometric Frontier

I fear I have gone past explaining a concept and need to take step back. Recently I used this chart which has the standard deviation on the x-axis (as opposed to the % of the asset in the portfolio). I want to explain where this chart comes from. To re-cap, the example uses two assets…

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Portfolio on 7.10.20

Well that was quite a start to the second half a the year. Up 1.6 percent this week. Obviously I like weeks like this when everything gains strongly, but I feel like these universal up-moves sometimes return the favor in a negative way later on. Well see. The portfolio is becoming more and more permanent…

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Portfolio on 7.2.20

Up 1.2 percent. Quite a good week, back to all time highs, about six and a third percent up for the year. Stocks and bonds are very negatively correlated right now, so the bonds allocation goes up. On July 2nd, 2020, the strategy rebalanced to: 32% SPY , 44% TLT , 24% GLD This may…

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