Rutherford Portfolio Review (Tranche 1): 15 November 2024

York Minster Cathedral from the “Shambles”, York, England

It seemed to be a week of reflection and re-evaluation in the US markets following last week’s strong positive reaction to the US elections. The US Equity markets pulled back ~2% on the week:

This is normal stock price behaviour as we are still in the bullish uptrend channel so might expect prices to at least retest the 6000 level and maybe even reach the 6200 level by the end of the year if Santa brings his seasonal rally.

In terms of performance relative to other major asset classes US equities certainly suffered no worse than other assets as no classes showed positive returns on the week – so diversification wouldn’t compensate for overall market weakness.

Current holdings in the Rutherford Portfolio look like this:

Unfortunately I did not get around to selling my holdings in VNQ and (particularly) GLD as planned – and this hurt performance:

Checking the rotation graphs:

we see the obvious short-term weakness in GLD following the elections.

A look at rankings/recommendations from the Kipling workbook:

shows a pretty bleak picture with only a Hold recommendation for the benchmark AOR Fund. Consequently the plan next week will be to do what I had intended to do last week and sell out of VNQ and GLD in all tranches:

I will just be putting the proceeds of the sales into BIL until the portfolio is fully wound down and I decide how I will manage the portfolio going forward into 2025.