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...]

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...]

I want to share a brilliant idea and a great example from the You’re Looking at the Wrong Number post at the GestaltU blog. Today, I will focus on the section of this post that outlines simple steps to improve a typical 60/40 stock/bond portfolio by using risk allocation ... [Read more...]

In my last post, Factor Attribution to improve performance of the 1-Month Reversal Strategy, I discussed how Factor Attribution can be used to boost performance of the 1-Month Reversal Strategy. Today I want to dig a little dipper and examine this strategy for each sector and also run a sector-neutral ... [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...]

Diversification is hard to find nowadays because financial markets are becoming increasingly correlated. I found a good visually presentation of Cross Sectional Correlation of stocks in the S&P 500 index in the Trading correlation by D. Varadi and C. Rittenhouse article. Let’s compute and plot the average correlation among ... [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...]

Nico brought to my attention the 130/30: The New Long-Only (2008) by A. Lo, P. Patel paper in his comment to the Multiple Factor Model – Building CSFB Factors post. This paper presents a very detailed step by step guide to building 130/30 Index using average CSFB Factors as the alpha model and MSCI ... [Read more...]

In the last post, Multiple Factor Model – Building Risk Model, I have shown how to build a multiple factor risk model. In this post I want to explain why do we need a risk model and how it is used during portfolio construction process. The covariance matrix is used during ... [Read more...]

This is the third post in the series about Multiple Factor Models. I will build on the code presented in the prior post, Multiple Factor Model – Building Fundamental Factors, and I will show how to build majority of factors described in the CSFB Alpha Factor Framework. For details of the ... [Read more...]

This is the second post in the series about Multiple Factor Models. I will build on the code presented in the prior post, Multiple Factor Model – Fundamental Data, and I will show how to build Fundamental factors described in the CSFB Alpha Factor Framework. For details of the CSFB Alpha ... [Read more...]