Before we start, a quick follow up on Bitcoin. Mike Novogratz of Galaxy Digital said the following.
At $500,000 we would have a nice gain of course but that price level solves absolutely none of the world's problems.
On to today's post. We have a lot of fun here with portfolio theory. The conversation sometimes looks at some pretty extreme ideas with thought process being not to adopt extreme ideas to actually use but what can we learn and should the extreme have a little influence over how the portfolio is actually constructed an managed. For example, we look at how 20 and even 30% allocations to managed futures could effect long term performance, correlations and volatility and it's instructive and leads me to allocate a little to managed futures but nothing like 20-30%. For my preferences, those huge weightings are extreme.
I wanted to apply this topic to how our (my wife and me) retirement accounts are allocated. I've touched on this some over the years but I came to the conclusion that advisors are very leveraged to the stock market's ups and downs before putting any money to work into equites. This is something Meb Faber has discussed a few times too. I figured this out for myself long before I saw anyone else write about it. Not claiming originality, just that this seemed obvious when I first got into this part of my career a little over 20 years ago.
When someone hires an advisor, they probably don't want their advisor spending all their time actively trading their own account or being in a position where they (the advisor) are having an emotional reaction to market events that would lead to panic selling or some other behavioral mistake.
Because of all of that, I've always been very heavy in cash or cash proxies. The current cash/cash proxy allocation is 54%. Our equity exposure is currently 22%, comprised of very simple beta. So that's 76% in very simple exposure, cash and plain vanilla equities. We have 8.6% in Standpoint Multi-Asset (BLNDX) which is more than clients typically have. Our exposure to alts is just over 9% split among four funds, a couple of which I'm test driving for possible across the board client use. For this conversation, I'm putting BTAL in it's own category as a first responder at 1.8%. That's a little low, I think it is low as a percentage because we contribute to these accounts. Our last sleeve is asymmetry which is Bitcoin and a smaller position in Ethereum which totals 4.3% these days. We also have more Bitcoin outside of our retirement accounts. For this exercise I excluded our joint account which is also in cash/cash proxies plus the Bitcoin I just mentioned.
The Bitcoin has gone up in value since I bought it six years ago but we've made many contributions to these accounts over that time and even though the equity percentage has always been small, that sleeve has gone up quite a bit too. So while I did start the Bitcoin at about 1% back then, it's not as big of a weighting if I hadn't been making contributions every year.
It's difficult to get an accurate backtest due to lumpy contributions and I added to other holdings at various but sporadic points along the way so if there is any utility to the back test it would be more about portfolio stats and maybe what to expect the next time the equity market goes down a lot.
I set it to not rebalance, I'm a believer in ergodicity. It's not that I made no changes but I am closer to not rebalancing than rebalancing. Portfolio 2, the red line is closer to the reality of the last few years. It certainly looks nothing like the stock market in terms of CAGR or volatility but it's a pretty smooth ride. The Calmar Ratio is 0.65 which is not so hot but the Kurtosis looks very good at -0.57.
Portfolio 1, the blue line that started at 4.3% in Bitcoin might help create some understanding of what Portfolio 2 will look like from here in terms of volatility and other portfolio stats. For Portfolio 1 the Calmar was worse than Portfolio 2 at 0.28 while the Kurtosis of Portfolio 1 comes in at 0.26.
The backtest shows Portfolio 2 going down 6.06% in 2022. I have no idea if it was actually down 6.06% or more than that or less, the portfolio is constructed in such a way that I don't sweat declines. Of course that means it lagged far behind in 2023 and this year. Portfolio 1 was down 15% in 2022 because Bitcoin was down 64% that year. From here then, if Bitcoin grows to a bigger part of the portfolio than it is now, the next time Bitcoin goes down a lot after that, I would expect the portfolio to feel that impact. That's the bargain you strike with asymmetry.
In a couple of recent posts, we've kicked around some huge numbers in trying to explore the reality and utility of what Bitcoin might become. At 4% of our retirement accounts if it goes up 5x from and everything else stayed the same then Bitcoin would be a little over 20% of our accounts. Then let's say it hovered at that level for a bit and I got used to our accounts being that size and then it cut in half, that might be a little painful of course. The huge gain of the last couple of weeks doesn't feel real yet. Again, that is the bargain you strike with asymmetry.
Closing out, I try to keep things as simple as possible, but there is some complexity bundled in, I would say just with the alts and maybe BLNDX but some might view BTAL and Bitcoin as being complex too. My priority is getting a real return without getting to the point of sweating the market's volatility to the point of succumbing to emotion. Fortunately it's a line I've never gotten anywhere close to.
The information, analysis and opinions expressed herein reflect our judgment and opinions as of the date of writing and are subject to change at any time without notice. They are not intended to constitute legal, tax, securities or investment advice or a recommended course of action in any given situation.
No comments:
Post a Comment