Looking Bullish

The model state is almost identical with that on 10 January this year. That's presumably pretty bullish for the next week or so... Of course, anything could happen.

Backtesting and Hedged Portfolios

So, I backtested for all of 2017 using the latest model rules. The model makes money for the year, but there are several losing months, and the model underperforms the market. I could quite easily predict which months would be more profitable and which were more likely to be money losing by looking at their volatility. So, that idea works out of sample.

 

The graph shows the NASDAQ 100 index (close) for 2017 and the model return. The interesting thing is that a hedged portfolio of the market and the model, tracks the market quite closely. The hedging strategy would invest 75% of net worth in the QQQ ETF and use 25% of net worth to trade NQ futures with 3 times leverage according to the model. So it is 1.5 times leveraged with 50% of the total exposure long and 50% traded. Of course, you wouldn't really want all your portfolio into the the QQQ ETF. At least I wouldn't. But this is a step towards seeing what a realistic strategy with investment and trading would look like. Now if we look at 2018:

The hedged portfolio tracks the model, which vastly outperformed the market, closely instead now. It seems that you can get the best of both worlds with this strategy.

Soybeans

To try something different I tried a soybean daytrade. Made $107 in 17 minutes, so not bad :) But I only got the beginning of a much bigger move, so I need to be more patient in future trades i this commodity.

Volatility and Return

The graph shows the average true range (ATR) divided by the closing NQ futures price for all 14 day periods in 2018 so far and the average daily NDX model return over the same period. The correlation is very strong. The model tends to make lots of money when the market is volatile and potentially lose money when the markets are not volatile. This is why the model would have lost money in early 2017 for example and probably why the NASDAQ index produces better results than the S&P 500. Clearly, noise dominates signal when volatility is low. However, the correlation between recent volatility and future returns is quite weak. So, this isn't yet a useful tool for deciding when to trade and when not to trade on a daily or weekly basis. But if you were losing money for a while and volatility was low it would make sense to get out of that market and trade something else until volatility appeared to return.

I'm still holding the strategic long contract. It's up around $4k at the moment. I did a couple of tactical trades netting $215 and $980.