After a rough start on Monday, U.S. Equities bounced strongly for the rest of the week to again close at all-time highs: The weekly range was also a little unusual in that it was greater than the Expected Move as calculated from the Implied Volatility of Option prices. The weekly returns of ETFs in the […]
Constructing a “Core” Investment Portfolio : Part 3 – Risk Parity and Volatility Targeting
In the first two parts of this series on portfolio construction I have focused on simplicity in terms of the number of assets that might be included in the portfolio and the level of management effort required to monitor and maintain the portfolio so as to generate acceptable returns. I have addressed risk at the […]
Dirac Portfolio Review – 28 May 2021
I am presently in the process of moving funds around a bit – and I also have to make mandatory withdrawals from some of my retirement accounts – so this is one portfolio that gets affected. Although the Dirac portfolio was last year’s best performing portfolio (on a percent gain basis) it has disappointed a […]
Constructing a “Core” Investment Portfolio : Part 2 – Buy And Hold with Periodic Adjustments
In Part 1 of this series of posts (https://itawealth.com/constructing-a-core-investment-portfolio-part-1-buy-and-hold/) I described how a new investor (or an investor wishing to change their current portfolio structure) might set up a simple Buy-And-Hold portfolio of ETFs that requires little or no management. The portfolio consisted of only four ETFs that were equally weighted and could be considered […]
Rutherford Portfolio Review (Tranche 5) – 21 May 2021
After a brief scare on Wednesday, U.S. equity markets recovered to close down only ~0.4% from last weeks close and continue to trade just below the $4200 resistance area in the S&P Index: Implied Volatility remains slightly elevated but nothing too extreme. As we can see from the performance graph: the Rutherford portfolio followed the […]
How Risky is Your Portfolio? – Another Perspective
Last week, Lowell posted a blog asking the question “How Risky is Your Portfolio?” and reminded us that portfolio returns are a function of the expected returns from the assets in our “quiver” and the risk associated with these assets as represented by their volatility. I thought I would try to provide another perspective on […]
GLD Inflation Play with Options
Unfortunately we lost the series of posts recording the progress of the GLD Option positions used as a possible inflation hedge when we “cleaned up” the site a few weeks ago. This position was opened about a year ago, when GLD was trading at ~$153: Since then GLD moved up to a high of ~$194 […]
Rutherford Portfolio Review (Tranche 5) – 12 March 2021
It was a bullish week in the US Equity markets with the S&P 500 closing the week ~2.6% higher than last week’s close and at all-time highs: The closes on the last 2 days were also outside the Expected Move (EM) for the week and volatility has dropped. We will now wait to see whether […]