June 22, 2020: Industry Sector Rotation With Composite Momentum

Re-balance Cycle Reminder All MyPlanIQ’s newsletters are archived here.

Regular AAC (Asset Allocation Composite), SAA and TAA portfolios are always rebalanced on the first trading day of a month. the next re-balance will be on Wednesday July 1, 2020.

Please note: As of March 1, 2020, we officially phased out our old rebalance calendar for both SAA and TAA. They are now always rebalanced on the first trading day of a month.

As a reminder to expert users: advanced portfolios are still re-balanced based on their original re-balance schedules and they are not the same as those used in Strategic and Tactical Asset Allocation (SAA and TAA) portfolios of a plan.

Industry Sector Rotation With Composite Momentum

We have tracked and regularly reviewed how a momentum strategy works at various levels (see, for example, August 20, 2018: How Momentum Investing Stacks Up? and April 30, 2018: Momentum Investing Review). In this newsletter, we will take a closer look at how our composite momentum strategy has performed at industry sector level.

Composite momentum on fidelity select mutual funds

Perhaps one of the biggest and uinique advantages to have a Fidelity brokerage account is to access Fidelity’s famous select mutual funds. These mutual funds have names starting with ‘Fidelity Select’. For example, Fidelity Select Software & IT Services (FSCSX) invests in software and IT companies such as Microsoft, Google and Mastercard while Fidelity Select Gold Stocks (FSAGX) holds gold mining stocks such as Newmont Corp (NEM) and Barrick Gold (GOLD). Even though in the past 20 years, more and more industry sector focused ETFs have been introduced, Fidelity select funds still offer more industry comprehensive, let alone they have existed for a long time.

Investing in industry group focused funds with highest momentum has been a popular strategy every now and then, depending on how these portfolios had performed. Let’s first take a look at P Composite Momentum Scoring Fidelity Select Funds, a portfolio listed on Advanced Strategies page. The portfolio selects top two Fidelity select funds that have the highest momentum scores each month to invest. However, the portfolio also applies a composite momentum score on general market conditions and it can invests in an intermediate term Treasury bond fund when it deems that broad markets are in a downtrend using our composite momentum score.

Portfolio Performance Comparison (as of 6/19/2020):

Ticker/Portfolio Name	YTD Return**	1Yr AR	3Yr AR	5Yr AR	10Yr AR	15Yr AR	AR since 12/31/96
P Composite Momentum Scoring Fidelity Select Funds	-1.2%	6.2%	6.5%	7.4%	12.8%	14.7%	16.8%
P Sector Rotation Fidelity Select Funds Top 2 Monthly Adjust with Cash	-7.5%	-1.0%	1.9%	5.0%	9.9%	10.8%	13%
VFINX (Vanguard 500 Index Investor)	-3.3%	7.8%	10.1%	10.1%	12.9%	8.5%	8.2%

To appreciate the power of compounding, one can see that $1 invested on 12/31/1996 grows to about $40 today, compared with $6.4 if it were invested in VFINX (Vanguard S&P 500 index fund), a 6.3 times difference.

On the risk side, the following table shows the maximum drawdown:

Ticker/Portfolio Name	Max Drawdown 2020 (YTD)	Max Drawdown Since 2003	Max Drawdown Since 1997
P Composite Momentum Scoring Fidelity Select Funds	13%	31%	44%
P Sector Rotation Fidelity Select Funds Top 2 Monthly Adjust with Cash	30%	39%	53%
VFINX (Vanguard 500 Index Investor)	34%	55%	55%

See detailed comparison here>>

In the above table, we also compare with P Sector Rotation Fidelity Select Funds Top 2 Monthly Adjust with Cash. This portfolio uses our TAA momentum strategy that will switch to CASH if all select funds’ momentum scores are less than CASH’s. Normally, it also invests in the top two select funds every month.

Observations:

Returns: the composite momentum portfolio has outperformed the other one by some big margin: 3.9% annually for the past 15 years. Of course, it has beaten VFINX by even bigger margin: 6.2% annually for the past 15 years.
Fidelity select fund rotation momentum strategy, represented by P Sector Rotation Fidelity Select Funds Top 2 Monthly Adjust with Cash (we didn’t have enough data for our composite momentum one), had an outstanding performance from 12/31/1990 to 12/31/1999, the decade before the technology bubble bursted in 2000-2003. In fact, it had annualized return 33.5% in that period!! No wonder at that time, this strategy was so popular. See the following chart that compares with VFINX:

Maximum drawdown (MaxDD) or maximum loss from a peak to its subsequent troughs: the strategy is well known to be highly volatile. However, since 2003, the composite momentum portfolio has a reasonable 31% MaxDD that was incurred in 2008-2009. Year to date, it avoided the large loss, only had 13% maximum drawdown, unlike VFINX that had about 34% steep loss at one time.

Bubble and diversification

One of the frustrations we often heard from our subscribers is that major asset allocation based portfolios such as our SAA, AAC or TAA portfolios can’t effectively capture some of long running parabolic returns in hot sectors. For example, the technology sector for the past 5 years or the recent gold mining stocks that have risen strongly amid investors’ concern on loose central banks’ monetary polices. The comprehensive coverage of industries by Fidelity select funds makes this more possible. For example, right before it switched to intermediate Treasury fund in the beginning of March, P Composite Momentum Scoring Fidelity Select Funds held Sofware & IT select fund (FSCSX) and Gold stock select fund (FSAGX), two funds that have had some strong upward momentum.

In addition, Fidelity select funds also cover banking, insurance, various industrial sectors (aerospace, transportation), many technology industries, health care industries such as biotech, medical equipments, pharmaceuticals and health services, gold and natural resources (direct anti inflation). They do offer some good diverse selection to take advantage of a bubble in industry stocks.

To summarize, the composite momentum based Fidelity select fund rotation portfolio has a reasonable volatility. Experienced investors can consider to allocate some portion of capital to it. However, this portfolio is still a lot more volatile than a broad base stock index such as S&P 500 (VFINX) in any period. So tread it carefully.

In a follow up newsletter, we will look at an industry ETFs based portfolio. With ETFs, investors in other brokerages can also participate in industry momentum.

Market overview

We see the current strength of the stock market (and other risk assets) is mostly supported or caused by the unprecedented central banks’ monetary policies. In terms of the underlying economies, we believe they are only slowly crawling back in an uneven pace. The recent rise of Covid-19 cases in several states is alarming but not unexpected: as stated before, we will see such ups and downs regularly until either an effective vaccine has been deployed or gradually the virus disappears because of various reasons. At the moment, we are still seeing many hot spots in the world and we are definitely not in a robust recovery environment yet.

Short term, we are seeing stocks are taking a breather in an overbought and extended condition. Long term, stocks are highly valued. We call for caution and emphasize the following:

For strategic allocation (buy and hold) investors, ignore the current market behavior. Remember, as what we have emphasized numerous times, when you choose and commit to a strategic portfolio, you essentially know and commit that your investment horizon (or the time you need to utilize this capital) is 20 years or longer. As we pointed out, if your investments are those diversified (index) funds such as an S&P 500 index fund (VFINX, for example), you know your money is in some solid ‘business’ that eventually (20 years later) will deliver some reasonable returns. As long as you are comfortable with this thesis, you should sit tight and forget about the current gyration.
For tactical investors, again, you have to ignore the current market noise. Furthermore, you should follow your strategy rigorously, especially in a time like this. Human emotion, both optimistic and pessimistic, and human desire, both greedy and fearful, are your worst enemies. This has been shown to be true time and time again.

For more detailed current market trends, please refer to 360° Market Overview.

In terms of investments, stocks are somewhat cheaper. Investors should not be swayed by the current market volatility and economic distress, instead, they should stand ready to take advantage of the opportunities. For most Americans, we offer the following Winston Churchill’s remark made in the darkest days of World War II: “The Americans will always do the right thing, but only after they have tried everything else.” As a country, the US (and the rest of the world) will get over this, as always, even after stumbles. The past development has been very supportive to our optimistic long term view so far.

We again would like to stress for any new investor and new money, the best way to step into this kind of markets is through dollar cost average (DCA), i.e. invest and/or follow a model portfolio in several phases (such as 2 or 3 months) instead of the whole sum at one shot.

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