LOL!'s Market Timing Newsletter

Clearly, I am getting killed today with that recent VEU (large-cap foreign) I bought. Thank goodness, I sold FSGDX at the same time as buying VEU.

My saving grace is that VNQ (REITs) has not tanked this week.

If VEU is down more than 2.5% near the market close today, I will exchange out of a GNMA fund into an international index fund. There is about an hour to go until the close and VEU is down only 2% right now.

Edit to add: Did not hit my trigger. In a way, I am relieved.
 
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I started my decluttering of interest rate sensitive stocks that I bought a few years ago. First to go was SO (Southern Company). It went ex-div yesterday and I collected that and sold my entire position today. I'm up 5% overall for about 400 shares purchased.

The CNBC Talking Heads and Dennis Gartman were touting "buy Europe" last night. I have to look into that strategy and see if it makes sense to slide some funds into an ETF that covers that landscape.
 
Just submitted two exchange orders, FSGDX -> fixed income; fixed income -> VTIAX. These exchanges were done in different tax-advantaged accounts as noted previously.

This doesn't change my asset allocation, but unloads all remaining shares of FSGDX.

And despite bad market timing this month, the performance of this 60/40 portfolio is running ahead of the performance of the Vanguard LifeStrategy Moderate Growth fund with its 60/40 asset allocation. That's one of my benchmarks.
 
Today, I am closing out about 1/2 of my bearish bets, and pocket a bit more than $1K. Not a lot of money, in fact a tiny fraction of the amount I "lost" in other long-term holdings. However, as my stated goal with this kind of incremental short-term bet is to get some "free" fuel for my RV, the above gain gets me close to 3,000 miles with the gas-guzzler, which is about what my next trip is going to be. But, but but...

... I still have 1/2 of the bearish REIT bet, and the bearish biotech bet. Right now, I am ahead on the REIT, and still lose money on the biotech, with the two roughly cancel each other out.

If tomorrow both sectors recover, then together they may just wipe out the $1K gain above, leaving me empty handed.

Market timing is tough, no doubt about it. Even when one's guess is approximately right, an execution timing being off by a few days can wipe out all the gain. Such is the fun of playing the game of chicken with the market. :)

NW-Bound said:
As stated in a post on a recent thread about our expectations of market return in 2015, I believed the market will just bounce around +- 5% this year. So, I would try to do a bit of buy-low/sell-high trying to make a bit more money for RV fuel.

In that vein, over the last few days, I have bought some bear ETFs, which are analogous to shorting stocks. The sectors I targeted are the top hot ones recently: semiconductors, biotech, and REIT. The ones I bought are 2X and 3X leveraged, so the 1.2% of portfolio I committed are amplified to perhaps 3% of portfolio.

Note that this is not a hedge of my long positions as that would require a lot more money, and I am also not bearish to make such move. This is just a lark to put a bit of money to where my mouth is. The move is based on just pure technical reasons, that is these sectors have gone up so much that I am betting people will be booking their gains and sell, and I want to front run them.

So far, I have made only a few 100's bucks. It may just turn again me, and becomes an "anti-Wheee" to cause the market to go even higher. That's OK too, as I am 70% in equities.
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NW-Bound said:
Today, I am closing out about 1/2 of my bearish bets, and pocket a bit more than $1K.

[…]

Such is the fun of playing the game of chicken with the market. :)
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Looks like a wise move, indeed, with today's action towards the positive. I am still at a 0.5% loss overall in the REIT index VNQ, but it could've been worse.
 
I'm out of my VPU position as of today with a ~10% gain overall. I sense a rate hike in June will be a problem for the interest rate sensitive securities and ETFs. I am looking at C (Citibank) because of all the good news yesterday.

I normally don't trade much but have an itch for a little gambling. :D
 
Started to unload half of my VNQ today (the doubled-up part). So far some shares at $82.61, I've submitted a limit order to sell the rest at a slightly higher price while I go walk the dog.
 
Well, the dog walk didn't work out too well as VNQ didn't go any higher and I didn't sell any more shares. I am happy to have caught the high for the day on a few shares though.
 
It seems like a nice morning for another dog walk. I've submitted some limit orders to sell VNQ at different prices. VNQ is up 1% so far today, but I am being a little greedy here, so I don't expect all those orders to fill by the time I get back. Update later.
 
LOL! said:
It seems like a nice morning for another dog walk. I've submitted some limit orders to sell VNQ at different prices. VNQ is up 1% so far today, but I am being a little greedy here, so I don't expect all those orders to fill by the time I get back. Update later.
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Truly a working dog.
:cool:
 
Closed out all of my bearish bets today. Indeed, I was a couple of trading days late, and the market moving up wiped out most of the gain I had from earlier batch. I was left with a measly gain of a couple hundred bucks.

What's notable is that my bearish bet on biotech sector was never in the green, while the other bets made money. Biotech is so darn strong, it's invincible. Oh well, I'll wait and catch it another day.
 
Update: I read a couple of books about HFT and other algorithmic trading over the weekend. The stock market is clearly rigged. Based on what I read, I have decided to never submit an order for more than 100 shares. So today, I split up my orders accordingly and used limit orders of different prices.

So far I sold about 2% of my total portfolio value in VNQ and VTI. All in IRAs, so no short-term cap gains taxes. And all for no-commissions. Most of these orders were partially filled until the full 100 shares were sold. I like this because I think it means someone else crossed the spread to match my asking price.

I still have some orders outstanding, but the limits are above current highs for the day and I am in no mood to lower the limits. For instance, I have an ask price of $107.99 for VTI, so if you are looking at the order book, that order is mine. :)

I should take the cash raised and put it back in my VCSH, but I will probably wait until Wednesday afternoon after the FOMC meeting unless VCSH drops some beforehand.
 
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Not surprising, 107.98 is the high of day. Happened to me more than a few times.
 
A trade just went through at 107.9899 at 13:55:30, so my limit was not reached. I told you the market was rigged. :)

Ah, there we go. And even one of my orders at a higher price got executed. I am happy.
 
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Ha there you go. There must have been some buy stops at 108.xx.
 
I did end up buying shares of VCSH. You can easily guess what I paid for those shares. :)
 
I'm putting this post here because I think it was LOL! who made me aware of a real estate index fund (FSRVX) in Fidelity. The reason why I didn't know of it was because I had been focused on which funds were offered in our 403(b) plan and that wasn't one of them, but FRESX was so I went with that. But I rolled over a portion (the traditional part) of my 403(b) to an IRA, which does have the index available. I split the difference, exchanged all the FRESX to FSRVX in the rollover IRA and left FRESX in the Roth 403(b) account. Each account has about the same value. At first glance, the two funds appear about the same but the index version advertises a much lower expense ratio.

I like keeping the Roth 403(b) open as it offers institutional (K) class funds that I use. Some of those have pretty serious expense ratio advantages. But the 403(b) doesn't have the huge number of fund selection that an IRA does.

I am still expecting Fidelity to create an "FSHSX" (Fidelity Select Hot Sex Portfolio, holding only those companies that do well around Valentine's Day, you know, the companies with brands like Victoria's Secret, Dove Chocolates, Trojans, Pajama-Grams, Courvoisier, and Viagra).
 
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An excellent day in the market. I was away all day, but before I left the house, I submitted a limit order to use all the cash from recently selling some VNQ to buy VCSH. That order did execute in the first few hours before the pop.

The cash from selling some VTI just sat there. So clearly, I should have known what the Fed was doing and waited until today to sell. I am still overweight in equities and still have the VNQ I bought back in February (it is in the black now), so I may continue selling.

Portfolio is not up to where it was at the beginning of March yet, but it is close.

NW-bound must be happy those short positions are gone. :)

And thanks everybody for making this thread the most-viewed in the Stock Picking forum. I'm sure there will be even more views now with that SEO work of steelyman with the FSHSX fund.
 
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Yes, I am happy (and lucky too).

Still waiting for MFs to report, but my individual stocks clocked 1.54% today vs. 1.22% for the S&P.
 
LOL! said:
And thanks everybody for making this thread the most-viewed in the Stock Picking forum. I'm sure there will be even more views now with that SEO work of steelyman with the FSHSX fund.
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I am just a student, happy to serve. But you should wait to buy my fund until it seems ready to pop.
 
While waiting for FSHSX to open, may I suggest PEJ for your consideration?

It is "Powershares Dynamic Leisure and Entertainment ETF". Don't let the words Dynamic Leisure give you wild thoughts. ;)

The ETF holdings are mostly consumer cyclical stocks like airlines (think of the recently popular threads on Europe travel), Disney, cruise lines, hotels, restaurants, etc...

I bought it not that long ago and already had a nice gain. Thinking about getting more.
 
Today's pop back to new highs is too much for me, so I submitted an order to exchange shares of FUSVX (S&P500 index fund) into FSITX (US bond index fund) in my 401(k).

I am still overweighted by a couple of percent in equities, so this is consistent with my asset allocation. If the market pulls back by at least 0.5% tomorrow, I may rebuy something similar in an IRA. If the market charges forward from here, then I will feel bad and come back here for some sympathy.
 
On Thu 3/26, I went long on biotech and bought a bit as a lark. Earlier today, only 2 trading sessions later, I got out pocketing a few hundred bucks. Well, I sold too soon because it kept on rising until close. So, I now have to wait a bit, then look to short it again.

On Fri 3/27, I also sold USO, which I bought 10 days earlier, for a bit of gain. Will buy again if it gets down to 16.

Meanwhile, the rest of the portfolio rose 1.25%, a bit more than the S&P today.
 
I have too much fixed income in my portfolio to beat the S&P500 on an up day. But overall, the portfolio is beating Vanguard's S&P500 total return YTD.
 
On bad days, I often lose more than the index. So, it's all fair. :)

PS. YTD, I beat the S&P by a hair. :)
 
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