iBankCoin
18 years in Wall Street, left after finding out it was all horseshit. Founder/ Master and Commander: iBankCoin, finance news and commentary from the future.
Joined Nov 10, 2007
23,433 Blog Posts

Exodus Quant Strategy for Q1 Crushed Market — But Now It’s Time to Die

So many things happening today. Let me start with the easy stuff for those of you keeping score.

For Q1 2018, my Quant strategy in Exodus netted ~+3%. For the month of March, it gained ~0.5%, beating the SPY by 200bps. For the quarter, the gains were similar vs the SPY: 200bps. However, due to today’s extreme FUCKERY, I shed nearly 1%, which will be applied to net quarter’s returns. As of now, I am only in TLT and GLD, due to defensive measures set in the strategy and will be purchases the rest of my positions for the month soon.

Also, the SPY purchases for the Oversold signal was sold at a slight loss today.

Over in my tactical account (aka retardo trading), I cleaned house and took HARROWING losses in LABU, SOXL and a sundry of low browed stocks. Although I had gains in a few, the losses far outstripped the good ones and now I am left with two illiquid small cappers and ERY — betting that oil plunges lower, helping me recover some of my drawdowns.

I’m basically all cash and ERY now.

Markets are getting hit for one very specific reason: Trump.

He’s a doubled edged sword. His retardation makes the good times better and the bad times so much worse. The China trade war spat deepened today with China affixing tariffs on another $3 billion in products. This, as you know, is absolutely nothing. But they’re doing this methodically, just to fuck with our media, and they should be bombed for this.

Also, his nonsensical tweets about Jeff Bezos and Amazon has a socialist feel to it, overtly anti-capitalist. While his point about Amazon taking advantage of the post office might be true, it serves no good by tweeting about it — like an absolute creamsicle ape.

Trump has single handedly destroyed the FAANG trade — which is off by another 2% this morning. It’s worth noting that mega caps underperformed in a big way in March, thanks to FANNG destruction. The juxtaposition between small caps and large were great last month, with 1% gains in smalls and 1% losses in large. As such, I will re-allocate the quant account into small caps for April.

For the quarter, just about all quintiles performed poorly — especially mega cap — which posted a loss of 1.75%. The best performers were found in the mid-large caps, ranging in cap from $10-50b. All in all, I am please with the systematic strategy — but woefully angered by the fucking moronic trades I just closed out.

Nothing like a clean slate to switch things up.

If you enjoy the content at iBankCoin, please follow us on Twitter

9 comments

  1. acehood

    How is his point about the post office valid? There wouldn’t be a post office anymore sans Amazon’s defacto subsidy to them. They should be thanking God everyday that Amazon exists.

    • 1
    • 0
    • 2 Deem this to be "Fake News"
    • roundwego

      Amazon does not own Internet commerse. Usps has a monopoly of postal work cus, congress controls them. If Congress controlled amazon by making it a utility out of internet commerse, like postal service. Then that be fine.

      • 0
      • 0
      • 1 Deem this to be "Fake News"
      • acehood

        Amazon benefits from subsidized USPS infrastructure, but that cost would exist with or without Amazon. Having Amazon as a paying customer REDUCES the net subsidy born by the government.

        • 1
        • 0
        • 0 Deem this to be "Fake News"
    • sarcrilege

      Trump’s point re USPS does not need to be valid. Bezos-owned Washington Post is a marxist rag that sided with communists and actively goes after Trump. Now it’s Trump’s turn to retaliate. Payback is a bitch.

      • 0
      • 0
      • 3 Deem this to be "Fake News"
    • numbersgame

      The USPS/Amazon relation ship is tricky. If Amazon and other E-commerce businesses (eBAy vendors, etc.) were not providing so much demand, the USPS would ahve to shrink down. So the USPS is losing money on Amazon, services, but may well do worse without them. It is simililar to the way many factoires operate in business downtruns: it is a question of operating at a loss or closign altogther.

      However, while USPS receives adavntages (business volume) and disadvantages ($) for Amazon,. Amoazon receives nothing but positive benefits form the USPS. If USP rasied prices by say 10%, Amzon would have no choic alternative but to pay it. I nfact, even FedEx and UPS often use USPS for remote locations or last-mile deliveries.

      There is very little downside risk to the USPS for a small price hike(ie, one in which they woudl still be losing money on amny routes)

      • 1
      • 0
      • 0 Deem this to be "Fake News"
  2. roundwego

    Time to die.

    https://youtu.be/_JjJzMBGUwo

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 Deem this to be "Fake News"
  3. joyous__ending

    The more cash the better. Market is breaking down, like late 2000, early 2001.

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 Deem this to be "Fake News"
  4. numbersgame

    I went further short on AMZN (and still holidng NFLX short), and long TSLA as hedge, which are all workign out well.

    MU is still performing quite poorly, despite having a PE ratio in the **single digits.** I think the large appreciation this year has scared people, but even is net income falls to levels see 2 years ago, the PE would be under 20. It has one of the lowest forward PEs of any S&P 500 stock: https://www.finviz.com/map.ashx?t=sec&st=fpe

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 Deem this to be "Fake News"
  5. numbersgame

    “…1% gains in smalls and 1% losses in large. As such, I will re-allocate the quant account into small caps for April.”

    Fly, this is momentum/trend following taken to the level of the retail investor. In your backtesting, how has Exodus performed in volatile markets (2007-2009)?

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 Deem this to be "Fake News"