Two strong months in a row. Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Or is that an oncoming train? No predictions, but for now, we breathe. The Levered Butterfly was the winner this month, with the RPC Stability still in first overall. Good month for RP portfolios compared to traditional ones.
It was a very strong month for assets and portfolios alike, and following a strong October, some of 2022’s bitterness has been washed down a bit. Not enough yet to bring us to even, of course, but two months in a row of good performance have things looking not as bleak as they once did. This doesn’t mean the declines won’t return or that we’ll be back to breakeven any time soon, of course. I’ve given up on the prediction game and am just reporting the ups and downs. This month, the jumps seemed to come with general optimism that inflation might be receding. The inflation print was 7.7%, the first month in the sevens since February, though I’m the last one to say if this is signal or noise.
For individual ETFs, TMF, the 3X Leveraged Long-term Treasury ETF was up 21.4%, performing as advertised to triple the performance of Long-Term Treasuries, which were up 6.5% (VGLT). DRN and UPRO also had great months, up 17.7 and 14.4% respectively, followed by international equity funds VXUS and DFAX. Worst performers for the month were managed futures in the form of DBMF (down 8.8%) and cryptocurrency, down 31%. A stock down 90%, remember, is one down 80% that then gets cut in half yet again, and that’s what GDLC is feeling like.
All portfolios finished November in positive territory, with even the “worst” still finishing up 3.3% (the RPC Stability). The winner was the Leveraged Butterfly, up 6.15%, with the 100% Equity portfolio very close behind (6.13%). Interestingly, the RPC Growth portfolio had lots of the successful assets for the month, but the inclusion of crypto dragged it down, and it finished eighth. Overall, the RPC Stability continues to perform the best, which is to say, it has been the least bad since July 2021. Its gap over the others is shrinking, though, as other assets and portfolios improve faster than this more inert asset collection.
Risk Parity portfolios had a pretty good month, edging out traditional portfolios in the different categories. The most notable performance was the RPC Income portfolio, which finished up 6.02%, placing it in shouting distance of the 100% Equities portfolio that has a more volatile profile.
As for the rebalancing portfolios introduced last month, both hit a rebalancing trigger. In the Rebalancing RPC Income portfolio, I sold off gold shares to buy TNA, the 3X Leveraged Small-Cap ETF. That’s definitely a move I was happy to see, as I used the relative strength of gold to get more shares of TNA at a relative discount (for me). In the Rebalancing Growth portfolio, I had to execute a not so welcome rebalancing: selling off some GLDM and DRN to buy more shares of GDLC. I had to swallow hard on this one, but that’s what the numbers dictate I should do.
In general, rebalancing did make a positive impact this month, as both rebalancing portfolios beat the control portfolios. When applied to the Income portfolio, rebalancing at the end of October resulted in .54% of better performance in November. I’m thinking of applying the rebalancing rules to all portfolios, so this is some evidence in that direction.
One (small) portfolio change for this month: I will be switching out VUG for IWY in the RPC Stability portfolio following my blog post where I squared the two against each other in the contest for preferred asset for Large-cap Growth. IWY tested out as the better fund, so I’ll make the change effective December 1st though you won’t see it in this month’s spreadsheet.
Monthly Results:
Cumulative Results:
Asset Performance:
