I first read about the Couch Potato strategy in the MoneySense magazine. I liked this simple strategy because it was easy to understand and easy to manage. The Couch Potato strategy is similar to the Permanent Portfolio strategy that I have analyzed previously. The Couch Potato strategy invests money in ... [Read more...]

I want to address comments that were asked in my last post, Permanent Portfolio – Simple Tools, about Permanent Portfolio strategy. Specifically: The impact of transaction costs on the perfromance and Create a modified version of risk allocation portfolio that distributes weights across 3 asset classes: stocks(SPY), gold(GLD), and treasuries(... [Read more...]

I have previously described and back-tested the Permanent Portfolio strategy based on the series of posts at the GestaltU blog. Today I want to show how we can improve the Permanent Portfolio strategy perfromance using following simple tools: Volatility targeting Risk allocation Tactical market filter First, let’s load the ... [Read more...]

Today I want to follow up with the Minimum Correlation Algorithm Paper post and show how to incorporate the Minimum Correlation Algorithm into your portfolio construction work flow and also explain why I like the Minimum Correlation Algorithm. First, let’s load the ETF’s data set used in the ... [Read more...]

First, just a quick update: I’m moving the release date of the SIT package a few months down the road, probably in November. Now back to the post. Recently I came across a series of interesting posts about the Permanent Portfolio at the GestaltU blog. Today I want to ... [Read more...]

While back-testing trading strategies I want all assets to have long history. Unfortunately, sometimes there is no tradeable stock or ETF with sufficient history. For example, I might use GLD as a proxy for Gold allocation, but GLD is only began trading in November of 2004. We can extend the GLD’... [Read more...]

Today I want to continue with Adaptive Asset Allocation theme and examine how the strategy results are sensitive to look-back parameters used for momentum and volatility computations. I will follow the sample steps that were outlined by David Varadi on the robustness of parameters of the Adaptive Asset Allocation algorithm ... [Read more...]

Today I want to highlight a whitepaper about Adaptive Asset Allocation by Butler, Philbrick and Gordillo and the discussion by David Varadi on the robustness of parameters of the Adaptive Asset Allocation algorithm. In this post I will follow the steps of the Adaptive Asset Allocation paper, and in the ... [Read more...]

Today I want to show how to use Factor Attribution to boost performance of the 1-Month Reversal Strategy. The Short-Term Residual Reversal by D. Blitz, J. Huij, S. Lansdorp, M. Verbeek (2011) paper presents the idea and discusses the results as applied to US stock market since 1929. To improve 1-Month Reversal ... [Read more...]

Today I want to show a simple example of the 1-Month Reversal Strategy. Each month we will buy 20% of loosers and short sell 20% of winners from the S&P 500 index. The loosers and winners are measured by prior 1-Month returns. I will use this post to set the stage for ... [Read more...]

In the prior post, Factor Attribution 2, I have shown how Factor Attribution can be applied to decompose fund’s returns in to Market, Capitalization, and Value factors, the “three-factor model” of Fama and French. Today, I want to show you a different application of Factor Attribution. First, let’s run ... [Read more...]

I have discussed Volatility Position Sizing in the Volatility Position Sizing to improve Risk Adjusted Performance post using the Average True Range (ATR) as a measure of Volatility. Today I want show how to use historical volatility to adjust portfolio leverage. Let’s start with Buy and Hold strategy using ... [Read more...]

I finally got around to publishing my time series cross-validation package to github, and I plan to push it out to CRAN  shortly. You can clone the repo using github for mac, for windows, or linux, and then run the following script to... [Read more...]

Today I want to examine the performance of stocks in the S&P 500 grouped into Quantiles based on one year historical Volatility. The idea is very simple: each week we will form Volatility Quantiles portfolios by grouping stocks in the S&P 500 into Quantiles using one year historical Volatility. Next ... [Read more...]

In the last post, Classical Technical Patterns, I discussed the algorithm and pattern definitions presented in the Foundations of Technical Analysis by A. Lo, H. Mamaysky, J. Wang (2000) paper. Today, I want to check how different patterns performed historically using SPY. I will follow the rolling window procedure discussed on ... [Read more...]

Today I want to show how to use Volatility Position Sizing to improve strategy’s Risk Adjusted Performance. I will use the Average True Range (ATR) as a measure of Volatility and will increase allocation during low Volatility periods and will decrease allocation during high Volatility periods. Following are two ... [Read more...]

I came across a free source of Intraday Forex data while reading Forex Trading with R : Part 1 post. You can download either Daily or Hourly historical Forex data from the FXHISTORICALDATA.COM. The outline of this post: Download and Import Forex data Reference and Plot Intraday data Daily Backtest Intraday ... [Read more...]

I want to introduce the Transaction Cost and Execution Price functionality in the Backtesting library in the Systematic Investor Toolbox. The Transaction Cost is implemented by a commission parameter in the bt.run() function. You may specify the commissions in $ per share for “share” type backtest and as a percentage ... [Read more...]

David Varadi have recently wrote two posts about Gini Coefficient: I Dream of Gini, and Mean-Gini Optimization. I want to show how to use Gini risk measure to construct efficient frontier and compare it with alternative risk measures I discussed previously. I will use Gini mean difference risk measure – the ... [Read more...]

In the last post, Portfolio Optimization: Specify constraints with GNU MathProg language, Paolo and MC raised a question: “How would you construct an equal risk contribution portfolio?” Unfortunately, this problem cannot be expressed as a Linear or Quadratic Programming problem. The outline for this post: I will show how Equal ... [Read more...]