Tsunami
Well-known member
Thought I'd share some of what I worked on much of last weekend while watching football (Go Cougs!, finally a respectable win (over Rutgers)).
I've been looking at different ways to modify my "seasonal strategy", including looking at using carefully selected ETFs to try to beat the TSP fund returns (for that I did it for 2014 only and the TSP funds actually beat the ETFs but just a bit (14.21% versus 13.54%), which surprised me), and using the crazy lunatic trading system https://lunatictrader.wordpress.com/performance/ modified with the seasonal strategy (i.e., for the 2-week trades into stocks, use the S fund for Dec/Jan/Feb, C fund for March, I fund for April, C fund for May/June, I fund for July, C fund for Aug/Sept/Oct, then back to the S fund starting in late November per the current seasonal patterns for small-cap stocks shown on equityclock.com).
The results were quite interesting. For 2015 so far, through yesterday (and I should add that the lunatic system would have had you get out of stocks yesterday, which to me is uncanny since it just produced a great two-week return using the C fund then has you safely in the G fund starting today) the lunatic system has returned 16.28%, which would put anyone following it in 2nd place in the tracker right on the heels of Macdaddy.
Overall though, the best system I came up with (and I back tested this clear back through 2004, and also looked at using just the G fund or just the F fund...I had 22 tabs of data, each tab with 3 different systems!) was a simpler system (just eight trades per year, no more, no less) that uses the basic seasonal strategy above, but for the trades in/out of stocks and into/out of the G or F funds, rather than doing it blindly on the last day of the month it uses the lunar turn dates. Holy cow, that strategy produced an amazing 14.64% on average annually since 2014 if you used only the G fund, and an even better 15.58% annual using the F fund.
Another thing I like about all of these systems (and every one of them beat the S&P 500s return by the way, which has averaged 6.83% from 2004 through 2014) is that the strict lunar system produces these stellar returns while you are safely out of stocks 50% of the time, so it's almost like having a conservative portfolio that's 50% stocks and 50% bonds...for my "enhanced" seasonal strategy system your out of stocks about one-third of the year. These systems are also totally mechanical, you can set the dates to do your trades clear out to the year 2100 in a spreadsheet if you pay the $130 to by the lunatic trading software to get the dates out that far (I downloaded the software for free for the 30-day trial, but it only gives you the exact dates one month into the future (but for decades into the past, so I was able to complete my spreadsheets going back to 2004 with exact lunar data).
Anyway, thought I'd share that. It's kind of shaken up my plans for what to do with the TSP upon retirement since now I see with this simple trading system I could easily cut the stress of investing about 99%, and spend a lot more time sipping lemonade by the pool. As for today's prediction, the lunar system said to get out yesterday, and the Elliott waves are agreeing that a top is very near, maybe with a pop higher initially after the Fed announcement. So I have to believe that by Monday the market will be heading down pretty hard.
For next year I'm planning on updating the status of the system I end up choosing to use here in my blog, and I'm curious/hopeful that I can end finishing consistently in the top 100 or so in the tracker every year with it. No more guesswork, that would be nice.... we'll see.
I've been looking at different ways to modify my "seasonal strategy", including looking at using carefully selected ETFs to try to beat the TSP fund returns (for that I did it for 2014 only and the TSP funds actually beat the ETFs but just a bit (14.21% versus 13.54%), which surprised me), and using the crazy lunatic trading system https://lunatictrader.wordpress.com/performance/ modified with the seasonal strategy (i.e., for the 2-week trades into stocks, use the S fund for Dec/Jan/Feb, C fund for March, I fund for April, C fund for May/June, I fund for July, C fund for Aug/Sept/Oct, then back to the S fund starting in late November per the current seasonal patterns for small-cap stocks shown on equityclock.com).
The results were quite interesting. For 2015 so far, through yesterday (and I should add that the lunatic system would have had you get out of stocks yesterday, which to me is uncanny since it just produced a great two-week return using the C fund then has you safely in the G fund starting today) the lunatic system has returned 16.28%, which would put anyone following it in 2nd place in the tracker right on the heels of Macdaddy.
Overall though, the best system I came up with (and I back tested this clear back through 2004, and also looked at using just the G fund or just the F fund...I had 22 tabs of data, each tab with 3 different systems!) was a simpler system (just eight trades per year, no more, no less) that uses the basic seasonal strategy above, but for the trades in/out of stocks and into/out of the G or F funds, rather than doing it blindly on the last day of the month it uses the lunar turn dates. Holy cow, that strategy produced an amazing 14.64% on average annually since 2014 if you used only the G fund, and an even better 15.58% annual using the F fund.
Another thing I like about all of these systems (and every one of them beat the S&P 500s return by the way, which has averaged 6.83% from 2004 through 2014) is that the strict lunar system produces these stellar returns while you are safely out of stocks 50% of the time, so it's almost like having a conservative portfolio that's 50% stocks and 50% bonds...for my "enhanced" seasonal strategy system your out of stocks about one-third of the year. These systems are also totally mechanical, you can set the dates to do your trades clear out to the year 2100 in a spreadsheet if you pay the $130 to by the lunatic trading software to get the dates out that far (I downloaded the software for free for the 30-day trial, but it only gives you the exact dates one month into the future (but for decades into the past, so I was able to complete my spreadsheets going back to 2004 with exact lunar data).
Anyway, thought I'd share that. It's kind of shaken up my plans for what to do with the TSP upon retirement since now I see with this simple trading system I could easily cut the stress of investing about 99%, and spend a lot more time sipping lemonade by the pool. As for today's prediction, the lunar system said to get out yesterday, and the Elliott waves are agreeing that a top is very near, maybe with a pop higher initially after the Fed announcement. So I have to believe that by Monday the market will be heading down pretty hard.
For next year I'm planning on updating the status of the system I end up choosing to use here in my blog, and I'm curious/hopeful that I can end finishing consistently in the top 100 or so in the tracker every year with it. No more guesswork, that would be nice.... we'll see.
