Rutherford-Darwin Portfolio Review: 7 March 2025

Sally Lunn’s Bakery located in the oldest house in Bath (1482), England.

It was a volatile week in the US Equity markets with the SPX (S&P 500 Index) closing down ~3% on the week once the dust had settled on Friday:

Markets are looking a little weak here as we had been in a consolidation range between 5840 and 6160 for ~4 months and have now broken through the support area at ~5840. We also fell below the January pivot low and just touched the next support level at 5680 before rebounding a little on Friday. From here we might expect to see a re-test of the 5840 level, that now becomes resistance or, if there are more concerns over tariffs, a continuation of the pullback and, maybe, the start of a new bearish trend. 5680 looks like an area of strong support since this is a 50% pullback from the August pivot low and the February highs but, if we break through this, the next likely area of support might be at the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level around 5520. This would also be a 10% retracement from the February highs and generally recognized as a “correction”.

In terms of strength relative to other major asset classes US equities did not fare well:

with Silver and Developed Market equities topping the list with ~4.5% and 3.5% positive returns respectively over the past week. Bonds and Oil suffered the most , each with losses of ~6.7% . The spread between the strongest and weakest performing asset classes was much wider than we see in most weeks.

Checking on the performance of the Rutherford-Darwin Portfolio the $50,000 invested in BIL, the risk-free Treasury Bill ETF, continues to generate income with $394 contributed to date.

The Darwin portion of the portfolio, consisting of the 10 diversified assets shown in the above screenshot, and managed as a “Buy-And-Hold” portfolio with ~Quarterly adjustmens as necessary, so as to maintain risk parity between the ETFs, just about broke even on the week and is now contributing ~$195 to the portfolio:

The Rutherford portion of the portfolio, that is more actively managed using Options to provide leverage, is still lagging a little, but did have an ~$1,100 gain on the week:

I did make 2 adjustments during the week by

• Selling my Calls on SPLG (US Equities) – for a $750 loss, as I am no longer bullish on US equities.
• Rolling my Calls on ETA from the $78 strike to the $80 strike. This roll was executed for a 1.90 per contract credit, and has taken $380 of risk off the table.

Combining all sub-portfolios, the picture looks like this:

and looks rather nice (green line) with ~13.6% volatility.

I am now holding bullish (Call) positions in EFA, EEM and VNQ and a bearish (Put) position in USO. I am neutral on the remaining ETFs in the quiver and waiting for signs of the next directional trend.