Darwin Portfolio Review: 7 November 2025

Chinese New Year 2023 (Year of the Rabbit) at Gardens-on-the-Bay, Singapore

US equities lost a little ground this week with the SPX (S&P 500 Index) closing ~2% lower than last week’s close:

We have also closed below the lower boundary of the bullish trend channel that started in April and the separation between the Moving Average (MA) lines is narrowing – although, to date, we do not see any crosses of the shorter term EMAs below the longer term EMA lines. Also, prices are still sitting above the 55 and 89-period EMAs that might provide support. However we do have negative signals on both the shorter-term MACD and RSI indicators – so caution is called for.

In terms of relative strength, US equities (as represented by SPYM) fell into the lower half of the major asset class quiver:

with Real Estate topping the list and Crypto falling to the bottom.

In the Darwin Portfolio I sold holdings in TMF (Bonds) on Monday but did not buy the benchmark AOA Fund as it was not showing strength:

This leaves me only ~50% invested with 50% in Cash.

Performance to date looks like this:

with the 5-week returns being virtually the same as for the benchmark fund.

Current rankings and recommendations look like this:

suggesting no adjustments – other than to possibly add a position in the benchmark fund on signs of strength. However, the current trend signal is negative (green line below the red line in the chart below), so I will need to see a reversal before entering:

I am still working on the Rotation algorithm and the allocation plan for this portfolio. When comparing to a benchmark fund, that is totally invested, it is difficult to keep pace without the being fully invested – at least in bullish markets, although in bearish markets we may do better. This is why I prefer to compare the risk adjusted returns, as measured by the Sharpe Ratio, rather than to focus directly on total returns. I am therefore working on a plan to increase allocation levels – although this will inevitably increase volatility/risk. It will also involve more “trading” if allocations are to be balanced in terms of risk.

When the workbook is (more or less) finalized I will start the portfolios again – with essentially the same assets. This will make tracking easier now that SPLG has been re-named SPYM (since Yahoo data has missing SPLG data and is difficult to combine with SPYM). I am also considering adding an Inverse ETF (SH) to the portfolio since I know that few, if any, readers of this blog are comfortable trading Options as a hedge. I still have to perform a few back-tests before I decide whether this is a good idea. I am not totally comfortable trading inverse ETFs except, perhaps, for short time periods – so I’ll be taking a look at how this might work out through back-tests.

So, right now, no big plans to make adjustments and I will be busy finalizing the model algorithm and back-testing.