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Read more about the article eToro Post – Prediction versus Preparation and Why Diversification Matters

eToro Post – Prediction versus Preparation and Why Diversification Matters

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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.

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Read more about the article eToro Post – Outlook for Commodities from Q3 2022

eToro Post – Outlook for Commodities from Q3 2022

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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.

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Read more about the article eToro Post – Adding US Dollar Index (DXY) Exposure to an All Seasons Portfolio

eToro Post – Adding US Dollar Index (DXY) Exposure to an All Seasons Portfolio

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Interest rate risk and sentiment risk (periods of risk off behaviour) are two risks that are typically difficult to hedge. These risks have characterized the first nine months of 2022, so if we could find some asset that could help offset losses in stocks and bonds during these periods, that would be great.

Therefore, with this post, we look at an alternative investment that could provide at least some protection against rising rates, and one of them could be to go long the United States Dollar. In this article, we will be looking at an index giving broad exposure to the dollar, what benefits it adds to a diversified portfolio, and how a retail investor can add this exposure to a portfolio.

We review the UUP ETF (Invesco DB US Dollar Index Bullish Fund) and its underlying exposure to the US Dollar Index ("DXY"), what it is, and why it might be a good diversifier.

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Read more about the article Insights – Interest Rate Risk and Asset Correlations with Future Cash Rate Expectations

Insights – Interest Rate Risk and Asset Correlations with Future Cash Rate Expectations

"Is the All Seasons Portfolio strategy not working anymore?"

With an annual drawdown for such portfolios almost as bad as for the stock market YTD (S&P 500 currently being down 16% since 1 January, having briefly been below -20%), I am not surprised that I have been hearing this question more and more recently. Is this a bug or a feature?

The first seven months of 2022 can be illustrated by two major themes in terms of financial markets: a) significant underperformance of major asset classes such as stocks and bonds, and b) rising rates.

The latter constitutes one of two undiversifiable risks for investors, as when the cah rate rises, that impacts asset prices as returns of risky assets always compete with the return of cash.

In this article, we explore interest rate risk and how most major asset classes have correlated with the future cash rate expectations over the first seven months of 2022. We try to answer the question on if the All Seasons Portfolio strategy is broken, or if the playing field has been reset and that we can expect better performance ahead.

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Read more about the article eToro Post – How Strategic Rebalancing Helped Avoid a -35% Loss in Long Treasury Bonds

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

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.

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Read more about the article eToro Post – Delayed Planting Season in the U.S. Threatens Crop Yield

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

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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.

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