How is 2018 Going So Far?

April 4th, 2018

We’re a quarter of the way through 2018. It’s a good time to examine what’s happened so far.

As you know, I’m obsessed with beating the market, so that’s where we’ll start.

Remember, the experts want us “regular folk” to only buy index funds (I follow Vanguard’s VFINX).

We’re not smart enough to trade on our own, and, even if we were, we couldn’t beat the market in a million years.

That’s why the only way to do it is to invest in “the market” long-term, and that means owning an index fund and contributing to it regularly.

Fine.

How would we be doing, then, if we owned index funds?

We’d be down 0.79% for the year.

Not terrible, I guess, but not making any money either.

Well, what about some of the best traders in the world? How are they doing in 2018?

• The world leader in bonds, Pimco, is down 1.27% for the year.
• Dunn Capital Management (one of the best trend followers of all time) is down 11.05%.
• Winton Capital (one of the most consistent funds in the world) is down 1.97%.
• The Magic Formula portfolio (a wildly successful value investing methodology that I track) is also down 1.28%.

Down, down, down, down.

On the bright side:

• The Barclays Hedge Fund Index is up 0.49% for the year.
• Chesapeake Capital (run by one of the original Turtles) is up 1.08%.

In other words, most of the best traders in the world are down for the year.

And the best result we see from elite traders is +1.08% for three months.

This is the benchmark. If you’re beating these numbers, you’re amazing, and I’d love to hear about it.

Personally, I believe regular people can beat the market. I don’t think it’s impossible.

So I’ve spent several years working on strategies that a normal person can use to beat the market consistently.

How are those strategies doing?

As I tweeted out a few days ago, my robots are doing okay. As I write this, here are my 2018 real-life results*:

• The USDJPY Hornet is up 7.80% for the year.*
• The Breakout robots (EURUSD/USDJPY) are up 6.05%.*
• The GBPUSD Heron is up 3.62%.*
• And the Fair Value portfolio is up 3.71% (on a hypothetical $6k account).*

[* – these numbers are accurate as of this writing, but they may have changed. To get updated numbers, go here: https://www.scottwelsh.me/performance-tracking/]

Obviously, it’s still early and a lot can happen between now and December 31st.

But so far, so good.

Let me know how you’re doing and what you’re trading.

Hearing about results that beat the market always makes me smile.

See you next week.