Carson Portfolio Review: 25 October 2023

Japanese Garden on a foggy morning.

This is a quick update of the Carson, the oldest Sector BPI portfolio tracked on the ITA blog.  Cash was available and two new sectors dropped into the oversold zone so it made sense to review the Carson.

Carson Manual Risk Adjustments

Under the Shares Required column readers will find the shares recommended to bring the portfolio in line with the recommended percentages.  VIS is well below the recommendation as extra cash is not available.

Carson Risk Ratios

Below is risk information.  I’m looking forward to the month when the Jensen slope moves into positive territory.

Carson Performance Data

After 22 months of operation the Carson continues to hold a sizable lead over the S&P 500 ETF, SPY.

Carson Portfolio Report

The following report shows how well a Sector BPI Plus portfolio would have performed if the manager used only sector ETFs, VTI and VOO.  Note that the sector ETFs performed much better than either VTI or VOO and it was only VDC that lost money.  This data supports the hypothesis behind the Sector BPI Plus logic.

Once a few more months of data are available I plan to include this Performance Report table with the newer Sector BPI portfolios.

The Carson does not have an IRR of 17.35% for this period as it held other ETFs during this 22 month period.  What I am showing is how well the portfolio would have performed, based on actual buy and sell transactions, if one used only the ETFs included in the table.

Something important to note.  The VTI in the upper portion of the table has a negative IRR of -29.7% while VTI in the lower portion is only negative -6.7%.  The -6.7% is the IRR return if no buying and selling occurred.  The -29.7% is the IRR that includes buying and selling.  This demonstrates that I did a poor job of market timing with VTI.