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Gone are the days of passive investing, but...Gone are the days of passive investing, but mid-term trading could be the solution. The term passive investing was first made famous by Warren Buffet, who once said, 'If I like a stock, I will hold it forever.' However, in recent years, he has been seen cutting losses on his wrong decisions and taking profits when he finds the time is right. The dynamic of the markets have changed, and he has adapted to them. Technical Reasons - From the chart, it's clear that the days of passive investing are behind us. We can refer to the Dow Jones or S&P Index; they provide similar readings as Nasdaq, although Nasdaq has a shorter history. Since the beginning of 2022, the great volatility started with a year of bearishness. In my opinion, this could be a start of a long-term bear. What we are seeing in 2023 rally, possibly a bear retracement. Let’s support my analysis with the fundamental factors. 3 Fundamental Reasons – • Why did the decades of long-term growth, forming a linear bull market, come to an end at the beginning of 2022? This is because it marks the beginning of long-term inflationary pressure that we all have to contend with. To counter inflation, one of the most effective measures is to raise interest rates. As we all know, higher interest rates bring challenges to businesses and stock markets. Please take note of the timing. Inflation first exceeded 2% in April 2021, and since then, it has been on an upward trend, something unprecedented in the last 40 years. However, the Federal Reserve only began raising interest rates in March 2022, while the markets peaked at the beginning of 2022. Consumer Price Index Feb 21 1.68% Mar 21 2.66% Apr 21 4.15% May 21 4.94% Jun 21 5.34% Jul 21 5.27% Aug 21 5.21% Sep 21 5.39% Oct 21 6.24% Nov 21 6.83% Dec 21 7.10% Jan 22 7.53% Feb 22 7.91% Mar 22 8.56% Apr 22 8.22% May 22 8.52% Jun 22 9.00% • Why did the market turn bullish in 2023. Many attribute the rally to AI, but it goes beyond that. By the end of 2022, the market was still hovering around its lowest point. However, as seen in the inflation numbers below, there was a gradual decline from 9% in June 2022 to 6.5% in December 2022, creating a divergence between this positive news and the market's performance. At that point, I was preparing for a bear rebound or retracement. Of course, the inflation number continued its decline to 3.2% in October 2023, and the rally has continued until now. Continue Price Index Jun 22 9.00% Jul 22 8.50% Aug 22 8.30% Sep 22 8.20% Oct 22 7.70% Nov 22 7.10% Dec 22 6.50% • Why have the days of passive investing come to an end? Unless inflation can back down to 2% in a sustained manner, we should expect to see much more volatile markets in many years to come. Traders welcome volatility but not investors. There are reasons why back down to 2% in a sustained manner is unlikely to happen. Please leave me a comment, I hope to exchanges ideas with you. E-mini Nasdaq Futures and Options: Minimum fluctuation 0.25 index points = $5.00 Code: NQ Micro E-mini Nasdaq and Options: Minimum fluctuation 0.25 index points = $0.50 Code: MNQ Disclaimer: • What presented here is not a recommendation, please consult your licensed broker. • Our mission is to create lateral thinking skills for every investor and trader, knowing when to take a calculated risk with market uncertainty and a bolder risk when opportunity arises. CME Real-time Market Data help identify trading set-ups in real-time and express my market views. If you have futures in your trading portfolio, you can check out on CME Group data plans available that suit your trading needs www.tradingview.com
CME_MINI:NQ1!Short
by konhow
Six ETFs with an interesting thesisDiversifying your strategy There are lots of ways to "win" at investing. For diversification, it can be useful to bet on a lot of different strategies, because often when one strategy starts to go wrong, another will start to go right. But unless you're an expert coder with a lot of free time, you probably can't actively manage multiple different strategies yourself. That's where ETFs come in. ETFs can be great for diversifying your strategy without the hassle of actively managing your portfolio yourself. In this post, I'll look at several different ETFs that have a novel and interesting investing thesis. I don't necessarily endorse all of these, but I think they're worth a look. 1. The Sparkline Intangible Value ETF I've been following Sparkline for a while now, and they consistently put out some of the best investing research I've seen. Basically, Sparkline's thesis is that traditional metrics of value-- especially the price-to-book ratio-- don't work anymore in our technology-driven economy. More and more, what determines a company's value are "intangibles" like patents, talent, network effects, branding, and customer loyalty. Sparkline has developed ways to "measure" each of these intangible categories. For instance, a good proxy for "talent" is how many PhDs and Ivy Leaguers are employed at a firm. Sparkline plugs these variables into a machine learning model to come up with a sense of which firms are a good "value" when you include intangibles in the calculation. I've been reading this research for months and scratching my head trying to figure out how to implement it in my own investing, so I was pretty excited when they launched an ETF at the end of last month. Top holdings of $ITAN include the FAANGM stocks, Nvidia, Intel, and Cisco. It's tech heavy, but you've also got other sectors well represented, from communications and pharmaceuticals to banks, retail stores, and automakers. We only have a few days of data for $ITAN, so it's pretty meaningless to compare returns, but it has so far underperformed the index with a return of 1.7% vs. 3.1% for $SPY. 2. The iShares MSCI USA Momentum Factor ETF In the scientific literature on technical analysis, one of the only indicators that seems to actually beat the market is momentum. The iShares Momentum Factor ETF buys large- and mid-cap stocks with high price momentum. Now, it may be that momentum will stop working at some point in the future, because market conditions change. But for now, it seems to work. $MTUM has returned 280% since its inception in 2013, compared to 235% for $SPY. 3. iShares MSCI USA Quality Factor ETF Also a strong performer in the quantitative investing literature is the "quality" factor. Quality is defined as "high return on equity, stable year-over-year earnings growth, and low financial leverage." In other words, non-capital-intensive businesses with stable growth and low debt. The $QUAL ETF does a pretty decent job achieving sector-neutral exposure to the quality factor. To be honest, it tends to be a little expensive in terms of the price multiples of the stocks it buys. Maybe wait for a dip? $QUAL has returned 212% since inception, vs. 204% for $SPY. 4. Freedom 100 Emerging Markets ETF Let's say you want exposure to emerging markets, but you're worried about exposure to China or other bad-actor governments. The Freedom 100 ETF may be what you're looking for. Heavily weighted toward Taiwan, South Korea, Chile, and Poland, $FRDM is based on quantitative econ research that shows that countries with higher "economic freedom" scores tend to experience greater prosperity and economic growth. Thus, $FRDM makes active "freedom-weighted" bets on emerging markets: "Country selection and weights are based on composite freedom scores derived from 76 quantitative variables measuring each country’s level of protection for both personal and economic freedoms." Think of this like the ESG emerging markets fund. Since inception, $FRDM has returned 34% vs. 32% for $EEM. 5. Pacer 100 Cash Cows 100 ETF Companies these days use a lot of fuzzy accounting: EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA in particular. Usually P/E ratios are calculated with non-GAAP earnings measures that have been heavily adjusted. This makes modeling and forecasting easier, because non-GAAP earnings are a lot less "lumpy" than GAAP earnings are. But if you want to invest based on "real" earnings and "real" value, you should really be using GAAP earnings or free cash flow. Free cash flow is the cash remaining after expenses, interest, taxes, and long-term investments. The companies that generate a lot of free cash flow are the ones that are genuinely profitable, and not just profitable on paper. Investing in free cash flow is the thesis behind the Pacer 100 Cash Cows ETF. Free cash flow can be used for capital expenditures like R&D, for paying dividends, for buying back shares, or for acquiring other companies. Having lots of free cash flow is especially beneficial in a bear market, when asset prices are cheap and credit is tight. Why? Because a bear market is a great opportunity for a cash-rich company to buy back shares or snap up assets at an extremely low price. Just look at how the Pacer Cash Cows ETF outperformed the S&P 500 during the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic: M&A deals and cheap share buybacks helped propel the cash cows to stardom. But you can also see that during bull markets with high valuation multiples, the cash cows have lagged. $COWZ has returned just 93% vs. 112% for $SPY. I worry that $COWZ, like lots of value ETFs, is exiting stocks too quickly rather than holding them to maturity. Since it only holds the 100 cheapest FCF stocks at a time, it ends up only keeping the ones that stay cheap, which may be the lowest quality companies. You might do better to just buy some of $COWZ's higher-quality holdings and hold them forever. 6. Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF Over the long run, the equal-weighted S&P 500 index has outperformed the cap-weighted S&P 500 index. There may be a few reasons for that. First, base effects mean that small companies can grow faster in percentage terms than large ones. Second, investors pay a premium for big companies because they perceive them as lower risk. But if you average the risk across a lot of small companies, it's a lot less risky and you end up getting a discounted price overall. Third, cap-weighted indexes are kind of nuts, if you think about it. We're going to buy the most expensive companies, making them even more expensive. We're going to broadcast exactly what we intend to buy, and the basis on which we're making that decision. And literally everyone in the market is going to pile into this trade. Here's the problem: this system can be gamed . All you need is, for instance, a subreddit full of rowdy retail traders to realize that they can pump some tiny stock like GameStop up to an extremely high market cap, and then the indexes will be forced to buy it. Cap-weighted indexes probably get bullied into buying a lot of overpriced companies like Tesla that might not actually be good value for money. Buying equal weight avoids this exploit. What are your favorite ETFs? I'm always on the hunt for a good new strategy or investing thesis and would love to hear from you. What are your favorite ETFs? What's an ETF with an interesting thesis? What ETFs might be good for diversification, or might hold up well if market conditions change?
AMEX:ITANLong
by ChristopherCarrollSmith
8
A seasonal sector-switching strategy has beaten the S&P YTDThe Study I ran an analysis on monthly stock-market returns over the last 20 years or so, to determine which sector delivered the best median dividend-adjusted returns in each month. December 2020 was the last month included in the study. The sector funds included in the analysis were all equal-weighted, although they don't all use identical methodologies or have identical expense ratios, so keep that in mind. Also, for some funds, there was more data than for others. Some have been around since 2005, some 2007, some 2012. Here are the funds I included: EWRE, RCD, RGI, RTM, RYE, RYF, RHS, RYH, RYU, XAR, XBI, XHB, XME, XTL, XTN, XSW, XSD. The limitations of the data mean that the results are probably pretty noisy. I've got no real way to determine the statistical significance of these results, because there's just not enough data. A lot of this will be "noise," but probably there's some "signal" here too. Basically I compared these sector funds' median return in each month and determined which fund gave the best median return. (The median should be a more robust statistical summary than the mean, because the mean will be affected by outliers like meltups and crashes.) The Results Here are the best-performing sectors by month: January: Biotech February: Aerospace March: Real Estate April: Energy May: Semiconductors June: Real Estate July: Semiconductors August: Semiconductors September: Materials October: Transportation November: Transportation December: Metals The Backtest Since I didn't use data from 2021 to generate these results, we can backtest a sector-switching strategy on 2021. What if, in each month, we switched to the sector with the best median return for that month? The answer is that the equal-weighted index returned about 18% YTD, whereas the sector-switching strategy returned about 21%. So there's a slight edge here, but not a large one. If you're trading in a tax-deferred IRA, you'd have come out ahead by using the sector-switching strategy. But if your account isn't tax-deferred, then this strategy will have cost you more in capital gains taxes than you're making in excess returns vs. simply holding the index. The Code I've put the R code for this analysis on Github, should anyone wish to check my work: github.com
AMEX:RSPLong
by ChristopherCarrollSmith
What to do with uncommitted part of the capital in USDT or BTCHello everyone, We often experience situations when we have to hold spot positions for a long time or just hold cryptocurrency in Stable Coins. At the moment, the cryptocurrency market infrastructure has grown, and traders now have a huge choice of tools for passive income. We have tried different services, exchanges for trading accounts, and staking during the last 6 months. So we decided to share the best decisions in terms of safety and profitability. Important! Never keep your capital in one place. No one is protected from hacking or the disappearance of an "exchange. It is best to keep some part of your capital in a cold wallet and use the remaining part on several exchange platforms. Binance Swap. For BTC, in our opinion, the ideal product is the Binance Swap. (www.binance.com). You temporarily give part of your BTC to provide liquidity in the BTCWBTC pair. The average rate is 3-5%, sometimes it increases to 7% per annum. Binance also shares with you a part of the commission from deals. You can also place there your Stable Coins. For example, BUSDT/USDT, USDT/DAI, and others. All rates are different, but on average, it is from 4 to maybe 12% annually. Okex / Huobi lending On these two exchanges, you can lend your USDT for a fixed time and interest. On average, it is 7-10% per year. The other instruments that we tested were either extremely insecure or had too low a return rate.
BINANCE:BTCUSDEducation
by pennygene
Gov and corporate do not provide the same safetyShown : 1 Month performance comparison between $TLT ( US LT bonds) and two LT corp Bond ETFs $VCLT $HYG. I imagine many people switched to corporate bonds over the years because the yield on Gov Bonds was just way to low for them and instead of trying to adjust lifestyles we prefer to take more risks. So to some, it might be a surprise that these Corporate bonds can lose a lot a value quickly and do not provide the effect of saving you money in a nasty month as we have now in march 2020. The DOW is down low 20% from an all-time high now so maybe a good time to adjust your corporate bond allocation a bit.
NASDAQ:VCLT
by RabbiJacob
Safety: Performance of Low Volatility ETFs compared to S&P. Which low volatility ETFs have promising performance compared to S&P ? These ETFs may do better than S&P not by rising up faster, but falling down slower. Losses are big killers of long term gains, even if they don't do so well in the short term. For the Long term passive part of your portfolio, they may bring attractive returns with lower risk (drawdowns and volatility), especially relevant given that we are towards the end of a bull run.
AMEX:SPYEducation
by ashishgup