The portfolio and articles about the portfolio are long running at IndexUniverse and can be a very constructive read. He quantifies (75 and 50) specific targets in contrast to my simply looking to go down less (this will mean different things at different times) during bear phases and go along for the ride to the upside. The way this has played out for me has been down less, I have had a couple of years being very close to the market during up years and one year that the SPX was up very little and I was up a lot. Generally I expect to lag a little when the market is up a lot and hope to do well the rest of the time including hoping to go down less when the market goes down a lot.
Despite those difference I believe there is some conceptual overlap between what I do and write about and what Serrapere does. Another big difference however is in portfolio construction. Page 8 of the article discloses Serrapere's portfolio and it is interesting, revealing and constructive for learning about blending things together.
Below the portfolio (a screen shot from the article would be difficult to see);
- AMJ 3.5%
- ARBFX 3.7%
- DBA 4.9%
- EWZ 3.2%
- GAF 3.2%
- GDX 12.9%
- GIM 12.8%
- GLD 12.8%
- JRS 3.9% (short position)
- MERFX 3.7%
- MOO 3.0%
- PXJ 3.3%
- TBT 24.7% (thought of as a short/hedge position)
- TDF 3.1%
- TIP 7.1%
- VXX 7.4% (thought of as a short/hedge position)
- VXZ 7.5% (thought of as a short/hedge position)
- XLE 3.9%
Whatever the exact numbers were back then the hedge was simple; a little SDS, a lot of cash and generally underweight volatility. These days the cash level has come down and the few additions I've made have been relatively volatile.
Serrapere's willingness to go heavy, 24% in TBT and 15% between the two VIX ETNs, goes far beyond anything I'm comfortable with. In building a diversified portfolio you are guaranteed to be wrong about at least a couple of things. In looking at 40 holdings (about what I use) I know a few things will not work out as hoped for or something may work very well for a while but then not (or vice versa). An example of this is Monsanto (MON). Many clients own it. I bought it a while ago in the high $80s. It skyrocketed at first and I sold some just above $120. At that time it was working great. Then it came in with the market which is no shock but has lagged this rally by a lot. I have no doubt it will "work again" but for the rally it has not behaved as hoped for.
The target weight for MON is about 2% so it not working or even worse had it endured some sort of calamitous decline does not create a big drag on the portfolio. In contrast Serrapere's 25% to gold (12% each to GDX and GLD, which clients own) could have backfired badly had gold gone down. Yes he could have sold ahead of such a decline but would you? I don't want to have to be right about something like this (what if they dropped 8% you sell and then they both go up 50%?).
In terms of creating specific portfolio effects or characteristics I think it is much easier to go narrower than Serrapere by using individual stocks as part of the mix and avoiding certain things in ETFs (like avoiding financials in Brazil by using a mining stock instead of EWZ) and my fondness for Norway has turned out to be very lucky--these are tough to capture in ETFs for now.
It is not my intention to be overly critical because he was very close to his objective. My intention is to point out that there is more than one way to target any end result. I believe, as mentioned above, he and I share some conceptual beliefs. I think his path to his result is the more difficult path and I imagine he would say something similar about my portfolio and have other criticisms.
If you believe in taking little bits of process from many places to create your own process then you must look at other people's process with both a critical and constructive eye and clearly there is plenty we can learn from Serrapere's process.
A quick funny; Richard Kang was on CNBC Asia on Thursday morning and had a great one-liner saying that US t-bills had gone from being risk-free return to return-free risk.
10 comments:
Helpful and interesting topic, Roger. Thanks.
I admire John for setting a specific and measurable objective. I go even one step further and set a minimum annual $ objective. As a retiree, I can't eat performance percentages. With a slug of bonds and other relatively conservative positions, my portfolio has about half the volatility of the market on both the upside and downside.
I'm being lazy, no doubt, but maybe a number cruncher here would like to put the 75/50 into the context of absolute returns. IOW, usually if you're building a portfolio, you probably talk about % return per year. It might be interesting to take the stock returns (or maybe a slightly more asset balanced portfolio) and determine the 75/50 of those numbers. I would then consider this a "target" and sprinkle in assets accordingly.
Wow there are a lot of moving parts in that portfolio.
Bill B: That's possible; some of the portfolios I track go back to 1998. I'll see if i can look into it over the weekend.
I'm looking at ARBFX and MERFX which comprise 7.4% of the portfolio. Is that too heavy? I understand these funds are half collateral (cash) which makes them expensive vehicles; they have never really had a great return. It seems like that's di-worse-ification.
Sure, they have done fine when the market has been poor, but so has cash, cds, and t-bills.
I don't care what they keep saying about you, SD, you're a good guy in my book.
So those two funds are absolute return vehichles intended to deliver a particular effect. if they deliver that effect then it almost doesn't matter how they do it. knowing whether it does or does not do what it is "supposed to" you can then decide whether the manner it does operate is acceptable to you or not.
7.4% is more than I went with those types of products but too much is in the eye.
Re: "The 75/50 means that the portfolio tries to capture 75% of the market's upside with only 50% of the downside over the course of a stock market cycle."
The original hedge as founded by Alfred Winslow Jones targeted 75% long 50% short.
Seems to me that the last time this subject came up, someone (RW?) quoted some numbers or maybe linked to what 75/50 meant in terms of actual returns. I remember thinking that up 75 did the trick quite nicely. Hopefully, they'll check in today.
There are a number of studies on this but I'd guess the link Anon 8:28 refers to is this chart at http://tinyurl.com/mwls6y - a very succinct summation.
Basically if losses are contained to 50% of a market drop then capturing 64% of market gains will achieve market returns over a whole cycle. Naturally this means capturing 70% of market gains will exceed market returns over that same cycle. Descriptions such as "beat the market" are inappropriate in this context because the strategy does not require outguessing or beating anything, just reacting in a systematic and measured fashion to established market trends.
Thanks for the link RW!
There was an analysis of Australia on SA recently that seemed to go into good depth. Perhaps a few will be interested. http://seekingalpha.com/article/167772-australian-rate-hike-looking-at-the-logic
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