It's a Dada, Dada World (portfolio update)

So. The Dada-nightmare world keeps Dada-ing, though if you look closely enough you can see ‘plans within plans within plans’ of the Trump administration’s central themes at least. Which wouldn’t be Dada and is less a nightmare than what many have convinced themselves. Far from any paradise but much less vomitous than what preceded - at least to this still early date and overall, not the many Dada farts also ongoing - which sets the bar very low. Very, very low.

The bar of the practice portfolio begun one week ago would be the performance of S&P 500 ETF, ‘SPY’ its ticker symbol. Still, the statement of this market game expression can be summarized as ‘capital growth with low downside volatility’, which wouldn’t quite correspond to the S&P index. A different mission statement phrase could be ‘playing the Dada, avoiding the farts, long term growth,’ but there isn’t an accepted bar-benchmark for such things. That I know of anyway.

After these first 7 days my little 100k allowance is up 4.6 percent as of the NYSE close yesterday, Wednesday April 9th, vs the SPY, down .7 percent. The VXX, an ETF that mimics the VIX volatility index, has been used to very good fast result - though in the opposite of earlier recommendations. Shorting it rather than  buying, both Tuesday and Wednesday, (shorting means selling on credit something you don't have yet,) The selling of it came in the mornings while the covering  or buying shares already sold came later in the day, resulting in functional hedges and a little extra account cash. You can see that a bit below in the Wednesday results.

Other things are, yes, mostly ETFs, which are boring and simply don't do as well as researching yourself, learning and choosing what specific company or thing to buy. But…. they do take much less time and I’m not at all sure I want to spend more than x hours of the week merely practicing. The way I did things and likely would do things is very labor intensive. An AI agent might reduce it a little but… not really. Those etf’s present, looking at where they were bought, price, remain all valid for one reason or more and all had been recommended over the previous year (24), so Nuclear power, cancer, some emerging market, copper, gold.

…

When you have more money to work with you still use funds, etf and mutual but in a fund of funds format - something I did for my father waaay back in the late 80’s. There, you do the regression analysis and pay attention to beta, set absolute rules to avoid human pitfalls (both in quantity buying and how often you shift between extant positions.) Alongside you also buy investment grade bonds directly not via fund. Then you leave an appropriate amount for pure investment.

Here, only 2 companies so far, one in metals (mining) and one in oncology, the first ticker TECK, the second NUVB.  

Anyway. Till next Thursday….