Steven Van Metre

After putting in a strong performance for September, Portfolio Shield™ began hedging further downside risk into October. A late October stock rally and a further decline in bonds saw the strategy give back some of its hard-earned gains from the prior month. Early-stage Bear markets are very difficult for momentum strategies. Momentum strategies perform optimally … Read more

Looking back over the last month, Portfolio Shield™ performed very well relative to the broad market. The additional downside convexity in the Simplify ETFs added excess Alpha to the returns by reducing the downside move in the equity market. I recently spoke with Paul Kim, the CEO, and co-founder of Simplify to get an update … Read more

Looking back over the last month, Portfolio Shield™ correctly identified that momentum was on the side of equities and dropped its bond hedge for August. While both stocks and bonds were down the last month, stocks were down the least. The Bear market rally that started in mid-July appears to have ended in mid-August. When … Read more

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