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Showing content with the highest reputation on 07/05/2022 in Posts

  1. 1 point
    It is much more profitable over the long run, with less risk, than index investing. I don't index invest at all anymore -- virtually the entirety of my stock allocation (less a small amount I keep for opportunities and small account I trade SO in) is in Diversified Anchor. Anchor normally performs much better in market drawdowns than has been seen in the first 15% of this market decline. We dug into why, and the answer is easy -- this is EXTREMELY low volatility for a market drop of this size. Normally when the market is down over 20% (as it is currently) you can expect VIX to be over 40, if not even higher. We're currently in the 25 range. This directly impacts Anchor as we have not been getting the bump on the long calls and long puts in value from the increase in volatility. Because we didn't get that bump, we got to ride the market all the way down until we hit delta parity on the long put and call. I predicted that if this happened in a low vol environment, Anchor would stop seeing losses around 12.5% or so. Unfortunatey that number is closer to 15%-17%. HOWEVER, this last month has proven spectacular. I don't have all the numbers in yet (still waiting on brokerage statements), but I had a client just make me price the EFA Anchor performance. From May 1 to the present, EFA was down 8.7%, EFA Anchor was only down 2.1%. We beat the "EFA Market" by over 6.5%. If we go down a bit more, we'll hit the point where we can increase leverage without increasing risk -- so we'd benefit more on the upside. In fast crashes (like 2020), Anchor crushes the market (hedging plus volatility) In large up markets (2019 and end of 2020) Anchor beats the market due to its leveraged In slow down markets, Anchor pretty much tracks the market until the "max pain"point is reached, then it beats the market (this number, depending on a lot of factors should be between 15% and 20%). In times of normal volatility during declines, it should be in the 10% to 12.5% range. In slow up markets, Anchor should match or slighlty lag the market (again depending on a large variety of factors). In a slow SMALL decline, Anchor will lag the market. There are a few other conditions where Anchor lags -- if you have a slow down sawtooth market, Anchor can REALLY underperform. (market goes down 5% then up 4% then down 5% then up 4% etc, for six months or so). The market could be flat to down 2% and Anchor could easily be down 10% or more. (This market condition has never existed in the US for an extended period, but it has in some other markets, so I expect it to eventually happen). But even if we lag 8% one year out of 10, are even 2 of 10, then beat it the other 7, we crush it over time -- all while remaining hedged with lower risk. Sure, I wish we weren't down 17% on the year right now. (Also due to us refusing to take a loss on the diagonal for too long, that hurt about 2%). I would be "happy" at -12.5% given this market. And we have a great new staff member, Roy Revere, who is working on optimizing the diagonal rolls through all market conditions as well. There is always room for improvement --- but I'm still VERY happy with the strategy and will keep trading in my account.
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