After 6 Good Years…
Today is the final day for the Daily Battle Plan. After 6 good years, we’ll finish 2014 with the ETF model portfolio in all cash.
When I started the Daily Battle Plan, the world was very different than it was today. It was the 4th quarter of 2008 and the market was living through one of its largest sell-offs in decades. The market remained in a bear market until March 2009 and then began what is now a 5 ½ year rally. Few saw it coming. In fact in 2009 and 2010, many professionals and economists thought the market would collapse. In fact, it did the opposite.
From 2008-2014, there were government bailouts, bank closures, wars, US credit ratings downgraded, the crisis in Greece (and much of Europe), along with dozens of other major events that moved markets. As you can see though, through all this economic and geopolitical upheaval, the Daily Battle Plan applied a very simple systematic approach. Buy up-trending ETFs, especially country fund ETFs, which have pulled back. And short down-trending ETFs, especially country fund ETFs, which have rallied during their longer term declines.
This simple approach, scaling into up-trending ETFs when they pullback, and shorting into down-trending ETFs when they rally, produced winning trades 80.8% of the time since October 2008 (148 winning trades of 183 signals). And with leveraged ETFs it was 93.3% correct (14 winning trades out of 15 signals). It’s a trading concept we have taught for many years. As you can see from the results in the model portfolio, it’s a concept that continues to hold true through today.
As planned, I’ll now be devoting my time to my asset management firm. I greatly appreciate being with you each morning for the past 6+ years.