Steven Van Metre

The good news is all models rose in July. However, as I mentioned in last month’s note and prior month’s notes, should equities rally we would lag to the upside due to the strategy’s dual hedging. And we did. Due to the relative outperformance of equities in July and over the lookback period, the strategy … Read more

Last month I wrote that it appeared we were at the beginning stage of a big Bear market rally. Investors and money managers were extremely bullish, and money poured into stocks. After a brief move higher, stocks reversed direction and headed lower. Not even quarter-end rebalancing and a flood of corporate share buybacks before the … Read more

It appears the long-anticipated Bear market rally has finally arrived. This type of market rally is associated with periods when rapidly rising equity prices occur during the early stages of a Bear market. Most retail investors buy at the top of a Bull market. It’s no surprise then when stock prices begin to fall as … Read more

Last month I mentioned I felt Portfolio Shield™ was likely to reimplement its hedge within the next three months. By an overwhelming majority of the underlying signals in the formula, Portfolio Shield™ has decided to hedge again for May. The formulas were designed to hedge during periods of heightened volatility or severe equity market weakness, … Read more

Since January, we’ve all watched how volatile equities have been. Portfolio Shield™ is a long-equity strategy that hedges with long-term bonds during such volatile or Bear markets. Because equity volatility has now subsided, Portfolio Shield™ formulas removed the bond hedge (TYA) for April. Despite the bond hedge hurting returns, it is important to understand Portfolio … Read more

Portfolio Shield™ remains hedged for March. I am pleased to report the Simplify funds continue to reduce some the downside risks in the equity market and the long-term bond hedge has started mitigating some of the downside move in technology stocks. The underperformance in the portfolios with an allocation to AGG has largely been due … Read more

Portfolio Shield remains hedged for January. I am pleased to report the Simplify funds reduced some of the downside risks in the equity market. However, the long-term bond hedge remains a slight drag on returns. Several of you have expressed a valid concern about the ability of the hedging mechanism to hedge risk because it … Read more

Several people have reached out to me expressing concerns about the returns over the past couple of weeks as we have seen both stocks and bonds decline in value. For strategies such as Portfolio Shield™ which invests in both stocks and bonds, this hurts returns in the short run. I think it’s important to understand … Read more

Linked below are the latest Morningstar® Investment Detail Reports for the Portfolio Shield™ family. Portfolio Shield™ maintained the same percentage to its long-term bond hedge (TYA) for January. There were only very slight changes between the two equity positions (SPD & QQD) for the month. Due to the very slight change this month, you may … Read more

Linked below are the latest Morningstar® Investment Detail Reports for the Portfolio Shield™ family. Based on how the markets are performing, I anticipate Portfolio Shield™ will remain hedged into early next year, which I think is good. From a return perspective, the strategy hedging has been effective. With the additional downside protection through the use … Read more