Commodities – All Seasons Portfolio

eToro Post – Prediction versus Preparation and Why Diversification Matters

Post author:Nicholas
Post published:February 26, 2023
Post category:eToro
Post comments:0 Comments
Reading time:13 mins read

The legendary credit investor Howard Marks (founder of Oaktree Capital Management) wrote an investor memo titled "You Can't Predict. You Can Prepare." in 2001.

Although more than 20 years have passed since these words were written, the message is almost eternal for investors.

The probability of consistently succeeding as an investor in this endeavor and regularly making money over decades is vanishingly small. This is why, as a capital manager, I constantly come back to the title of Howard Marks' memo, even though the memo was written from the perspective of a credit investors. Still, the words ring at least as true for a diversified macro-oriented portfolio, such as the All Seasons Portfolio.

eToro Post – Outlook for Commodities from Q3 2022

Post author:Nicholas
Post published:October 16, 2022
Post category:eToro
Post comments:0 Comments
Reading time:15 mins read

A recent interview with Goldman Sachs global head of Commodities Research, Jeff Curie, on Meb Faber’s podcast (episode 445: https://mebfaber.com/2022/09/26/e445-jeff-currie/, available on most podcast apps) caught my interest with a summary of the commodities outlook and where we are in a commodity supercycle with current underinvestment in the supply side

The main take out from this interview is that this last year’s increase in commodity prices is not caused by Russia, but the underlying structural issues were caused by policy and underinvestment in the sector in the last decade, which Russia has taken advantage of.

In this brief article, we summarize the key message of the interview and what lies ahead for the energy sector and broad commodities for the next years. We are most likely set up for a new commodity supercycle, so prepare your portfolio accordingly.

eToro Post – How Strategic Rebalancing Helped Avoid a -35% Loss in Long Treasury Bonds

Post author:Nicholas
Post published:June 6, 2022
Post category:eToro Rebalancing
Post comments:0 Comments
Reading time:15 mins read

Since I joined eToro in April last year, I have been sharing insights and observations about investing with risk balanced strategies such as the All Seasons Portfolio (“ASP”) strategy I run here. As eToro is a social trading platform, I from time to time share content in my eToro feed, which I then share on the blog in posts like this.

As part of my All Seasons Portfolio, the asset classes have a set aimed allocation, which is based on their historical volatility and correlations and biases to different economic regimes. For rebalancing the portfolio, I apply rebalancing spans that allow assets to deviate from the aimed allocation with +/- 20%, unless it is in a trend.

Such rebalancing trigger occurred in March 2022 for Long-Term Treasury Bonds, as its weight had fallen by more than 20%, but as it was in a clear negative trend, rebalancing was postponed until May 2022.

By waiting with the rebalancing, I managed to avoid a loss of more than 35% on the position I would have taken in March (or -2.5% on a portfolio level).

In this post, we describe in a bit more detail the benefits of applying such strategic rebalancing rules.

eToro Post – Delayed Planting Season in the U.S. Threatens Crop Yield

Post author:Nicholas
Post published:May 28, 2022
Post category:eToro
Post comments:0 Comments
Reading time:15 mins read

The big news surrounding CBOT traders the past few weeks is the very wet and unusually cool weather this spring in the northern U.S. Plains, affecting farmers in North Dakota, northern Minnesota and parts of South Dakota.

For example, the planting progress for North Dakota corn reached 20% last week, compared to a 66% annual average at the same point in time in previous years, while spring wheat recorded 27% completion versus a 80% average.

The numbers are, in other words, far off from a typical year. The similar grim story is told for soybeans, albeit these are less delayed than wheat and corn on a nation-wide level, but with North Dakota (the fourth largest soy area in the U.S.) being again significantly behind.

The wet conditions have made it difficult to get the crops into the ground, with the U.S. corn planting running at the second-slowest pace in more than a quarter century, and spring wheat planting being THE slowest on record.

In this article, originally posted in my eToro feed, we take a quick look at what consequences can be expected from this late planting of vital crops.

eToro Post – Different Types of Inflation and Assets That Hedge Against Each

Post author:Nicholas
Post published:April 3, 2022
Post category:eToro
Post comments:2 Comments
Reading time:15 mins read

Surely you have not missed the talks about inflation the past year. Even from the Fed and Yellen, the sentiment about inflation has changed from “not a problem” to “transitory” to “longer than first expected” and now to “good for the economy”.

While the price of risk assets, such as stocks, may also inflate due to the rise in inflation, they are not rising as much in real terms.

Rising inflation, and especially inflation that is higher than expected, is harmful to most common portfolios that comprise of stocks, or a combination of the two like the 60/40 Portfolio. Both stock and bonds are assets that perform well in times of low or decreasing inflation, and will lag in times when inflation rises.

It is thus vital to have a portfolio which also includes inflation hedges to mitigate the risk of unexpected inflation prints.

In this post, we will be looking at different types of inflation - as inflation can manifest in different ways - and how you can protect your wealth against each of them with different assets.

eToro Post – Systematic Trading and Strategic Rebalancing of Commodities

Post author:Nicholas
Post published:March 14, 2022
Post category:eToro
Post comments:2 Comments
Reading time:14 mins read

This pot was originally shared on my eToro feed on 13 March 2022. Make sure to follow me there as well, and did you know that you can copy my trading there for free? Create an account today, copy my portfolio by searching for user "Allseasonsport" to automatically duplicate my All Seasons Portfolio strategy effortlessly.

The benefit of a systematic strategy - like the one I run here on eToro - rather than a discretionary strategy is that you don't get in your own way when following rules that are proven to work.

Hence, by taking a trader/person with cognitive biases out of the equation, you increase the probability of success by avoiding mistakes caused by limits of the human brain.

It is intuitively hard to buy assets that are trending, as it feels more expensive by the day when the price goes up, and you tell yourself you will "buy the dip".

The problem is that when that dip occurs, the trend may be broken and the asset is no longer an attractive buy. That is when our cognitive biases hinder us from success.

When we go against rules, we tend to make mistakes, as the rules were set in place for a reason.

Due to these rules, I will be strategically rebalancing Commodities and Long-Term Treasury Bonds in my eToro portfolio as they have exceeded their rebalancing spans. Read more about my reasoning here.

I use the low-cost broker DEGIRO - one of Europe's leading online brokers - for my All Seasons Portfolio. To build your own All Seasons Portfolio, on DEGIRO you can find a great variety of ETFs listed on for example Xetra, LSE, Euronext, and Borsa Italiana. This even includes a selection of 200 commission-free ETFs (conditions apply)! Open an account and familiarize yourself with the platform today!

What is the All Seasons Portfolio Strategy and how am I implementing it? In theory, this strategy allows you continuous capital gains but limits the downside and big losses. Click here to find out more and read about how I will actually implement the strategy in practice to achieve the profits but avoiding much of the drawdowns.