Fall 2015 ETF Review

SYNOPSIS

Last Week… Last week was practically the mirror image of what we saw the week before, as far as the indexes we track are concerned. Indexes which fell 3-4% the previous week, rebounded almost that much last week. Canadian stocks remain weak, however. The S&P/TSX Small Cap Index had just a modest gain and the S&P/TSX Venture Index continued to decline. All three of the Canadian indexes that we report on weekly continue to have negative trend values, while the three US indexes now have positive trends.

ProfiTrend Portfolio… Meanwhile, our newly re-invented ProfiTrend Portfolio (PTP), is now almost a month old, and is gaining ground after a rough start. Annualized gains can whipsaw when holding times are really short. A relatively small change over a few days can mushroom into something much larger (up or down). We anticipate that the PTP AGR will gradually become more stable as the number of constituents grows and our holdings have an opportunity to outperform the benchmarks that we use. The 84% reading this week is a far cry from -45% reported in our previous edition.

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Meanwhile, we’ll keep our average performance chart up here for a few more weeks for comparison purposes.
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We encourage all do-it-yourself investors to track their portfolios in a similar fashion.
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Media Lies Revisited… Last week we took another shot at the media for creating a “new story” about the relationship between oil prices and stock prices. The “new story” was diametrically opposed to the old story, yet it spread like wild-fire through the BizTV channels anyway. We rushed out last week’s edition on Sunday around midnight, so that there couldn’t be any bias about our interpretation of the events and what subsequently transpired during this past trading week. More on that, too, in this week’s TrendWatch Weekly. And, by the way, the most obvious headline that the media should have been using (following their usual logic) this past week is “Terrorist Attacks In Paris Drive Stock Prices Higher Throughout The Week”. We wonder why they didn’t run with that? It makes just as much sense as the rest of their headlines!

PTA Perspective… Fall 2015 ETF Review
Assets under management among ETF providers has grown 28,100% since 1997, but that’s not good enough. Oddly, the mutual fund asset base is still growing too, and there’s no reason whatsoever to choose mutual funds over ETFs. 75-85% of mutual fund managers underperform the benchmarks indexes for their funds, and they charge phenomenal fees to do so relative to passive ETFs. The S&P 500 average gain over the past 20 years was 8%/year. The average mutual fund investor gained 1.9%/year. We’ll tell you much more in this week’s PTA Perspective feature.

Seasonality… Don’t forget that you’ll have to act early to take advantage of the infamous US Thanksgiving Effect. It’s always a gamble to be sure, but the odds are very much in our favour. US stocks rise an average +0.4% on the day before the November 26 holiday, and +0.4% on the Friday after the holiday. The success rates are 78% and 75% respectively. You’ll need to place your first bet near the close on Tuesday, then cash out near the close on Wednesday. At that time you’ll place a new bet, and will sell near the close on Friday. Or you can place a two day bet and ignore the late Wednesday transactions.

State Street Investor Confidence Index… This issue of Trendwatch Weekly has been deliberately delayed until today (Tuesday) to include the results from the latest monthly State Street Investor Confidence Index. The Global ICI decreased to 106.8, down 7.2 points from October’s revised reading of 114. The decline in sentiment was driven by a decrease in the North American ICI from 124.8 to 112.9 along with the Asian ICI falling 9.3 points to 100.7. By contrast, the European ICI rose by 6.3 points to 96.5. Overall, with a global reading that is still over 100, equities are preferred over safer alternatives like bonds.

Lies, Media Lies, and Statistics

SYNOPSIS

Last Week… Last week was a slaughter when all was said and done. The long-term week-over-week winning streak came to a decisive end. All but one of the major indexes that we summarize in TrendWatch Weekly lost from 3.1% to 4.3% over the five days. All index trend values are negative once again.

ProfiTrend Portfolio… This definitely took its toll on our recently re-invented ProfiTrend Portfolio (PTP), which is just 3 weeks old. We’re the loser relative to our benchmarks right now, after a move to the plus side last week. Such is often the nature of a new portfolio, when overall market conditions turn abruptly sour.
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PTA Perspective… Lies, Media Lies, and Statistics
The original phrase goes “There are three kinds of lies… lies, damned lies and statistics”. The saying has been attributed to Mark Twain or British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli; but it doesn’t appear in either of those two authors’ published works. But, it really doesn’t matter where it came from. The implication is that there are lies that we can probably tolerate from time to time, worse lies that are really harmful, and misrepresented scientific findings. The original implication was that statistical lies were the most insidious; since most people didn’t understand statistics in Twain’s or Disraeli’s era, nor did they want to. But, since science always has had a reputation of respectability, it was unconscionable back then to mislead people by misrepresenting scientific results. So, let’s fast-forward to the 21st century, where there are enough knowledgeable people around, that “lying with statistics” is almost impossible. That leaves “damned lies” as the most insidious category, and I’ve adopted “media lies” as the most insidious of all “damned lies”, when applied to the investment world. One of the biggest media lies we’ve ever seen appeared on BizTV networks on Thursday. We found it quite disturbing. The media collectively decided to change the long-held view on the relationship between energy prices and stock prices. And we don’t mean a minor change. They reversed direction 180 degrees! From A causes B, to B causes A. You’ll have to decide yourself how ludicrous this was, once we fill you in with the details.
Seasonality… Last week we added some material on the infamous US Thanksgiving Effect. US stocks rise an average +0.4% on the day before the November 26 holiday, and +0.4% on the Friday after the holiday. The success rates are 78% and 75% respectively. In the SEASONALITY section this week we add some information on how to specifically play the Thanksgiving trade with stocks, derivatives, ETFs or binary options.

Alpha (α) & Beta (β): Two Greeks That You Should Probably Get to Know

SYNOPSIS

Last Week… Last week was even more positive for US stocks than the previous week. This week-over-week winning streak may hit some kind of record soon. Meanwhile, Canadian stocks continued in retreat mode, with the exception of a tiny gain by the S&P/TSX Composite Index.

ProfiTrend Portfolio… At the time we went to 100% cash, we knew this was the first time, since we’ve been keeping a log of such things. In our investment career, probably lots of times; but not since we developed the relative trend analysis™ (RTA) framework and have been tracking it much better than we used to. Anyway, we were already mostly in cash before the August meltdown, so going to 100% wasn’t the end of the world. Within a couple weeks we were nibbling on prospects again. So far, with modestly negative results. But annualizing just a few stocks held for a few days can produce some rather extreme results… positive or negative. In our case negative. Down -47% with the first few purchases two weeks ago, then down -57%, reported last week. Nonetheless, the overall portfolio was down less than 1%. Last week we added a couple more positions and actually sold one (yes, already!). That put us on the positive side of the AGR scale.
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The S&P/TSX Composite Index AGR dropped to -11% from 0.0% a week earlier. The S&P 500 AGR rose to 31% from 26% the previous week.
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We’re going to keep our 4-year average returns chart up here for a while… at least until we have exceeded our previous average with the PTP. We’ve even matched up the scales in the two charts, so it’s easy to review our progress.
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Mini-Report: Analysis of sequential weekly gains
We have a bonus feature this week. After a six week gaining streak in the S&P 500, we decided to find out how unusual this is statistically. It is quite uncommon, as it turns out. We bring you the distribution weekly winning streaks over the past five years.

PTA Perspective… Alpha (α) & Beta (β): Two Greeks That You Should Probably Get to Know

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Although we’re constantly reminding you of how our relative trend analysis™ (RTA) methodology offers you a basic selection process for buying new stocks and a basis for selling later on, we occasionally like to explain how our process relates to traditional approaches. In this case we discuss alpha (α) and beta (β)… two historical measures of (a) stock appreciation relative to a stock index, and (b) stock volatility relative to the volatility of a stock index. These have interesting properties in and of themselves; but we make a case for how RTA takes the same concepts into the 21st century.
Seasonality… We repeat the basic summary for November and cover the infamous US Thanksgiving Effect. US stocks rise an average +0.4% on the day before the November 26 holiday, and +0.4% on the Friday after the holiday. The success rates are 78% and 75% respectively. More details in the SEASONALITY section.

Fall 2015 Q&A

SYNOPSIS

Last Week… Last week marks the fifth straight week of gains among the major US indexes. The gains were much smaller last week, but net positive all the same. The Canadian indexes took a tumble, however, with 3%+ losses for the S&P/TSX Composite Index and S&P/TSX Small Cap Index and a 1.7% decline for the S&P/TSX Venture Index. All Canadian index trends are now negative again, while the US majors are still positive.

ProfiTrend Portfolio… As you know we’ve been raising cash since about May. We were already 50% in cash in mid-August before the sharpest part of the 12% correction began. We continued to sell through that decline and even during the first bounce at the end of August. The trend values of our holdings simply expired, and we were hard pressed to find very many prospects for new purchases (to the upside anyway). Eventually we had sold everything and were 100% in cash. Now we’re a week and a bit into adding stocks to the portfolio again. It should come as no surprise then, that our annualized gain/loss might be low for a while. After all some of our purchases have only had a holding time of 8-9 trading hours. A tiny shift to the downside can become quite large when annualized.
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The S&P/TSX Composite Index AGR dropped to zero from 32% a week earlier. The S&P 500 AGR dropped back to 26% from 32% the previous week. In spite of the -57% AGR for PTP, the entire portfolio right now is only down 0.7%.

To remind you of more typical times, we’ve averaged the AGRs over the past 4 years or so (226 weeks to be specific). Here’s what we get.

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We look forward to returning to these average results (or better) over the next few months, assuming market conditions continue to improve.

PTA Perspective… Fall 2015 Q&A

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A number of questions have come in from several readers recently, and we have some that have accumulated over the past few months. Since the answers may be of interest to other subscribers as well, we’re publishing a Q&A this week. Topics range from more on portfolio management to intra-week tips & tricks, to web site recommendations for stock market data and tracking.

State Street Investor Confidence Index… The data from October are in!
The summary was in the last Synopsis, and the detailed breakdown appears again in the main body of the newsletter. The “smart money” still prefers stocks over less-risky assets (except in Europe).