Dashboard

How the dashboard works

View the most recent performance update here

Obscure funds you should know about

Equity and ETF Momentum Rankings is a list of the highest momentum stocks and ETFs based on a unique algorithm. Not a buy signal, trade at your own discretion. See historical performance here.

Common Questions

What time do the signals go out?
Typically by 9am PST / 12pm EST on the last trading day of the month.

When do I trade?
At or near the market close (usually 4:00pm Eastern) on the last trading day of the month. Just place a “market-on-close” order some time during the trading day and your order will fill at the end of the day. Buying before the close or waiting until the next day is fine but official performance stats are measured using monthly closing values.

If it’s the middle of the month, should I wait for a new signal or jump in?
We recommend waiting until the end of the month just for simplicity’s sake and to avoid potentially having to trade into a new position a short time later if the signal changes.

Do you use stop losses?
No. We’re trying to capture broad trends and sometimes they take time to play out. While backtesting this, we experimented with multiple stop loss levels and rules and each one decreased overall performance. With a max drawdown of -15% over 20 years, we’re comfortable using this in a small part of our portfolio without stop losses. Apply a safety factor of 2 to the max drawdown (so -30%) to be conservative and scale positions according to your risk tolerance.

Why do you sometimes use leveraged ETFs?
To enhance performance. Compare SPY and SSO from April 2021 through December 2021 when the Global Trend was allocated to SPY. Leveraged ETFs can be volatile if held with no plan for a long time but very profitable if held at the right time. Check out this fantastic article for a deeper dive. The algorithms are sensitive to market changes and if they’re bullish, it means there’s a very high probability of outperformance. The idea is to speed up when there’s a straight away and at the first sign of “traffic” ahead, the algorithm will step on the brakes.

Do I have to use leveraged ETFs?
No. Many subscribers follow along using regular, unlevered ETFs. You’ll still outperform buy-and-hold over the long run but the annualized return drops to 15% (still very good considering the S&P 500 averaged 5% over this time frame). The max drawdown also drops to only -9% (vs a whopping -55% for the S&P 500).

Can I use a similar ETF if it’s commission-free at my broker?
Absolutely. If you’re at Schwab for example, you may want to use SCHF instead of VEA to save on commissions.

Should I allocate to all the models?
There are really only 2 unique models: Momentum (Conservative/Aggressive/Max Aggressive) and Global Trend. The underlying logic is the same for all three Momentum models - the only difference is position sizing and which asset classes are leveraged. Global Trend has completely different rules/logic so allocating to it plus one of the momentum models would make sense if you wanted to diversify across unique systems.