What, me worry? ROAR Score rises to 30.
Our weekly ETF charting education focus
Before we get to the latest updates: in response to lots of fantastic subscriber feedback, you’ll start to notice some adjustments and enhancements to our Tuesday and Thursday publications, as described below. Further down in this letter, you’ll also see an exciting announcement about our new “institutional” subscription, our most comprehensive level of investment research and model signals including direct access to the YARP dividend stock process recently highlighted on Seeking Alpha and Forbes.com.
Free subscription
Reformulated and shortened into a high level summary, for those who want brief insight, and macro takes, not security analysis and model portfolio signals.
Premium subscription
We’ve moved some formerly free features to the Premium section, added 2 new ROAR Scores (revised monthly and quarterly, to help position longer-term portfolios), and added my proprietary MOFO market factors indicator. We are more focused on delivering my bottom-line technical analysis, which many subscribers say is the thing we do that is hardest for them to do on their own.
We’ve removed the 4-ETF portfolio, since the more specific 7-ETF model covers that ground and more. Next Tuesday, we’ll debut what I think is a pretty neat way to visualize that 7-ETF model so it is more intuitive for subscribers.
And we’ve streamlined my weekly analysis of ETF charts. Generally, we aim to deliver more action-oriented content, that can be consumed in less time.
Today’s ROAR Score Increase
As discussed in the past, while our bottom-line market exposure measure, the ROAR Score (Reward Opportunity and Risk) is typically reported/updated for subscribers every Tuesday. For the second time in our publication’s 6-month history, I am changing the ROAR Score on a non-Tuesday. Today, it moves from 10 to 30.
Why did the ROAR score go up?
Since this is the day I use charts to educate, here’s one:
That’s RSP, the equal-weighted S&P 500. That is, same S&P 500 we hear about every day, but in this case, the biggest stocks don’t have any more influence than the smaller ones among the 500. The weekly chart also looks fairly encouraging, as does the picture for EQAL, which is the 1,000 largest stocks, equally-weighted. This ROAR Score increase is not about one index or ETF, but that chart above is symbolic of a lot of potential shifts that were enough to get us off of the very low 10 mark for the ROAR Score.
Bottom line
RSP has finally recovered in price to its early 2022 high. 27 months of nothing, as I say. But there is enough buying pressure versus selling pressure in the broad stock market for me to conclude that 10% in SPY and 90% in BIL, the 2-ETF portfolio I have a chunk of my own money in to track the ROAR Score’s success, is too low. So I’m still defensive (30% SPY and 70% BIL), but less so than before.
Could this change quickly? Yes, in either direction. Not by leaps and bounds, but at this point in the market cycle, the lessons of the Dot-Com Bubble are still fresh in my mind. But hey, the stock market is flying higher, so as the old Mad Magazine character Alfred E. Newman wrote, “what, me worry?”
As a result, the 7-ETF Model portfolio we run for premium subscribers has some trade signals today, which are already reflected in the premium research deck. A summary of them is below in the premium section of this message, along with my expanded observations about the ROAR Score change and what I’m seeing right now.
Now, some big news from Sungarden Investment Publishing
SIRG Institutional model signal service
A NEW publishing subscription service offering direct access to a set of institutional-level investment portfolios. What I’m doing across nearly all of my own semi-retirement portfolio.
How this service came to be
Based on many conversations with subscribers and industry friends about what “gaps” we can fill in today’s manic and confusing investment publishing industry, here’s our summary of the type of sentiments and concerns we’ve heard:
“I’m a do-it-myself investor…but I can’t do what someone with 30+ years of professional investing acumen can do. And even if what I do works for a while, I want more than one model portfolio. I want to see the whole portfolio picture, then decide for myself what to mimic and what to use as research. Otherwise, I might only be as good as a strong market allows me to be.”
What this service provides
Direct access to a portfolio separated into 6 “buckets” which combined account for what I do with the vast majority of my liquid assets.
This is a research or “model signal” service, NOT personalized advice, so subscribers can customize it themselves, deciding what to use and how, or just “steal” my fully-allocated portfolio (I don’t mind!).
This is totally focused on practicing solid investment “hygiene” to try to avoid major losses, earn competitive portfolio income, and grow capital patiently.
This includes the 6 separate portfolio “buckets” shown below, including the YARP dividend portfolio, ETF Arbitrage, a pair of “ETF rotation” buckets, and selective use of put/call option purchases to protect/enhance potential returns.
Here’s a “mockup” of what this more comprehensive portfolio looks like:
The fully-invested total portfolio typically owns about 40 stocks and 20 ETFs, with specific objectives for each bucket.
Together they represent my “very best thinking” across global markets.
The SIRG Institutional model signal service will be available starting next week.
We’ll have more details and visuals of this next-level service in the coming days. We welcome your questions about this and the rest of our investment publishing work!
Premium users can now check the shared research deck for these updated tactical chart-based views:
Macro depth chart: ranked list of 10 ETFs representing broad stock/bond segments
“Tactical 5”: 5 ETFs from our watchlist I find most interesting right now (for different reasons, as explained in note form)