A couple of weeks ago, I came across an excellent post on the blog Systematic Relative Strength, which focuses a lot on the benefits of relative strength investing, momentum and tactical asset allocation.
You already know that the average Hedge Fund return last year was around -5%, according to the HFRI Fund Weighted composite index. For the author, the problem in 2011 was not the strategies, it was the how the market behaved. The focus of ...
Continue Reading →Diversify not only your asset classes but also your investing strategies. This cannot be repeated enough. Diversification through uncorrelated or moderately correlated strategies is most probably the best way to diversify one’s portfolio.
We are strong proponents of the benefits and power of well-crafted global tactical asset allocation strategies and we believe such strategies should have the largest share of anyone’s portfolio. Alongside these strategies, it is worth holding a smart set of core positions. These positions can either be ETFs, stocks or ...
Continue Reading →Just a quick update on the performance of our new core dividend stock portfolio, which is off to a strong start. The return on the capital we invested in 9 stocks in the portfolio is 7.65% since January 6. This is twice as much as the SPY return in the meantime (+3.80%).
The average return for the 9 stocks is 8.17%, the two biggest winners being Strayer Education (+22.33%) and Aflac (+11.12%). The only loser so far is Conoco Philips (-3.69%). ...
Continue Reading →The last big correction in Gold occurred between March and December 2008 and lasted between 8 and 9 months. At this stage it is still unclear whether the bull market has ended of if it still has legs. My personal belief is that we’ll see a new all-time high in Gold within a year or two. The amount of liquidity, past and future QE form the Fed, current LTRO from the Fed, negative real interest rates persisting in the foreseeable future are only some of ...
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The SPY (S&P500) clearly broke above the October 2011 last week. But it is now headed into a much bigger overhead resistance. And it is approaching it in big overbought conditions. This kind of multi-year resistance (see blue, gree and pink trend lines in the chart) is not the kind of resistance that you break on a first attempt.
Pink line: the resistance line drawn ...
Continue Reading →We have just updated the statistics of all the portfolio with data including the year 2011 as a whole. You can see the updated statistics
We recently posted a list of dividend stocks that triggered quite a lot of interest. You can see the list here. For further details on how we screened for this list, click here.
The purpose of this post is to highlight how we intend to use this stock screen to build a core portfolio of strong dividend stocks with attractive valuations. Once a month, after DRIP updates ...
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Good afternoon everybody,
The U.S. equity markets have continued to hold well over the last couple of weeks but are struggling to hold ground at
Starting this January 2012, we will post every month for free (around the 10th of the month) a list of strong dividend paying stocks. This list of stocks could serve as a starting point for further investigation before actually adding the picks to a core stock portfolio.
The strategy is detailed here. In a nutshell, it aims at identifying high yield stocks that have been increasing dividends for years and have good prospects of continuing doing ...
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This is the first post of a new series in which we will periodically analyze charts of important ETFs.
Today we start with the one which is probably the most important at the moment: the US Dollar Chart, proxied by UUP (US Dollar Index Bullish Fund). Indeed, over the last years, the Dollar has shown a strong inverse correlation with risk assets (although with varying strength – see lower part of the monthly chart below. When the dollar rises, this usually puts ...
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