- Automatic 7 (aggressive, leveraged): 200% IEF
- Mom and Pop (conservative) : 100% IEF
Well, those gold trades were certainly ill – timed. Gold looks like it wants to finish September down over 10%. Well as much as I hate to see my model portfolios take it on the chin because of the yellow metal, I am somewhat comforted by the fact that in my personal accounts, I got out of gold in the $1750′s, losing “only” about 4.5% on that. Oh well. Final numbers for September will be posted next week, along with my actual trading results for 2011, which have differed materially from the A7 model portfolios, and hopefully for the better. We shall see. Good luck out there…all asset classes feel dangerous to me, but that’s probably because I watch Bloomberg TV too much.
PS…I either am very “savvy” or I have a death wish because I will be following my unbounded A7 model (which allows for unlimited leverage) and getting 3x long 10 year treasuries via the futures market.
What worked last month? Treasuries and gold.
August was a strong month for Automatic 7, which returned 6.8% Mom and Pop returned 1.1%. Both systems are at new equity peaks. This month I added a couple of free ETF portfolios from MyETFHedgeFund.com to the list of tracked portfolios. Remember, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, especially if you can join ‘em for free.
Notice also that the TAA portfolios (A7, M&P, Msci, MEFA, MEFC) all posted positive returns in August, while the established benchmarks lost money. I mentally include GTAA as an “established benchmark” because I think it’s becoming clear that the fund is not nearly as nimble as the TAA systems that we are tracking. In fact, GTAA may disappear from the list of tracked systems soon. I saw a comment at MarketSci about using PRPFX (Permanent Portfolio) as a benchmark, and that seems like a good idea.
| Growth of $1 |
| Month |
A7 |
M&P |
Msci |
MEFA |
MEFC |
50/50 |
GTAA |
VT |
| 12/2010 |
1.073 |
1.030 |
1.017 |
1.050 |
1.032 |
1.016 |
1.046 |
1.077 |
| 1/2011 |
1.103 |
1.043 |
1.006 |
1.080 |
1.047 |
1.028 |
1.049 |
1.092 |
| 2/2011 |
1.146 |
1.063 |
1.036 |
1.117 |
1.067 |
1.045 |
1.077 |
1.124 |
| 3/2011 |
1.163 |
1.073 |
1.020 |
1.137 |
1.069 |
1.044 |
1.072 |
1.123 |
| 4/2011 |
1.206 |
1.101 |
1.070 |
1.185 |
1.089 |
1.069 |
1.111 |
1.172 |
| 5/2011 |
1.183 |
1.094 |
1.055 |
1.150 |
1.076 |
1.076 |
1.082 |
1.145 |
| 6/2011 |
1.154 |
1.081 |
1.039 |
1.131 |
1.058 |
1.064 |
1.060 |
1.104 |
| 7/2011 |
1.172 |
1.098 |
1.069 |
1.132 |
1.060 |
1.071 |
1.059 |
1.066 |
| 8/2011 |
1.252 |
1.110 |
1.082 |
1.160 |
1.092 |
1.066 |
1.005 |
0.968 |
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| Returns |
A7 |
M&P |
Msci |
MEFA |
MEFC |
50/50 |
GTAA |
VT |
| Last Month |
6.8% |
1.1% |
1.2% |
2.4% |
3.1% |
-0.4% |
-5.1% |
-9.2% |
| Year to Date |
16.7% |
7.8% |
6.3% |
10.5% |
5.9% |
5.0% |
-3.9% |
-10.1% |
Systems / Benchmarks:
A7 (Automatic 7 – EdMamula.com aggressive)
M&P (Mom and Pop – EdMamula.com conservative)
Msci (MarketSci TAA)
MEFA / MEFC (MyETFHedgeFund.com A=Agressive C=Conservative)
50/50 – 50% SPY / 50% IEF
(GTAA) Cambria Global Tactical ETF
VT – Vanguard Total World Stock ETF
Notes:
Interactive Brokers Tier I USD Margin Interest rate applied to leveraged portfolios (A7)
MyETFHedgeFund results up to and including May 2011 are a backtest result.