IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jjrfmx/v16y2023i5p275-d1149208.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Surviving Black Swans III: Timing US Sector Funds

Author

Listed:
  • Pankaj Topiwala

    (FastVDO LLC, 3097 Cortona Dr., Melbourne, FL 32940, USA)

Abstract

The typical small investor makes on average about 5% a year in investment gains, just half of what the market does. Moreover, most investment funds also underperform compared to the broader market. In two previous papers, we explored how a specific and simple approach to algorithmic trading can help both types of investors achieve strong results. For concreteness, we focused attention on investing in a single variable, in our case, a major US-based index such as SPX and IXIC, individually. For illustrative purposes, we also considered some highly traded tech stock examples. In this paper, we extend our work to study the US sector funds, and for the first time in our series, we also consider trading multiple variables at a time to see how that may differ from our single-variable investment strategy. To simplify matters, we consider an initial equal weighted portfolio of several sector funds, selected randomly without any analysis, and assume that each is traded independently. To simplify further, we do no rebalancing in our study, though that is an essential part of money management according to modern portfolio theory. We nevertheless obtain interesting and informative results. We can typically improve on the performance of most sector funds compared to buy-and-hold (hereafter referred to as BnH). Moreover, as an example of portfolio growth, a portfolio of five equal weighted sector funds in BnH achieves 6.5× growth over 20 years (ending in March 2023), whereas our approach achieves 12.4× growth—nearly 2× better, at roughly half the maximum drawdown. That is a strong win for both professional and home investors.

Suggested Citation

  • Pankaj Topiwala, 2023. "Surviving Black Swans III: Timing US Sector Funds," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 16(5), pages 1-18, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jjrfmx:v:16:y:2023:i:5:p:275-:d:1149208
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/16/5/275/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/16/5/275/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pankaj Topiwala, 2023. "Surviving Black Swans II: Timing the 2020–2022 Roller Coaster," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 16(2), pages 1-26, February.
    2. Pankaj Topiwala & Wei Dai, 2022. "Surviving Black Swans: The Challenge of Market Timing Systems," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-25, June.
    3. Chen, Yong & Liang, Bing, 2007. "Do Market Timing Hedge Funds Time the Market?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(4), pages 827-856, December.
    4. Merton, Robert C, 1981. "On Market Timing and Investment Performance. I. An Equilibrium Theory of Value for Market Forecasts," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(3), pages 363-406, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pankaj Topiwala, 2023. "Surviving Black Swans II: Timing the 2020–2022 Roller Coaster," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 16(2), pages 1-26, February.
    2. Zheng, Yao & Osmer, Eric & Zhang, Ruiyi, 2018. "Sentiment hedging: How hedge funds adjust their exposure to market sentiment," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 147-160.
    3. Pankaj Topiwala & Wei Dai, 2022. "Surviving Black Swans: The Challenge of Market Timing Systems," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-25, June.
    4. Aiken, Adam L. & Kilic, Osman & Reid, Sean, 2016. "Can hedge funds time global equity markets? Evidence from emerging markets," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 2-11.
    5. Yao Zheng & Eric Osmer & Liancun Zheng, 2020. "Can mutual funds time investor sentiment?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 54(4), pages 1449-1486, May.
    6. Siegmann, Arjen & Stefanova, Denitsa, 2017. "The evolving beta-liquidity relationship of hedge funds," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 286-303.
    7. Ma, Tianyi & Li, Baibing & Tee, Kai-Hong, 2022. "Mispricing chasing and hedge fund returns," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 34-49.
    8. Andrew W. Lo & Mila Getmansky & Peter A. Lee, 2015. "Hedge Funds: A Dynamic Industry in Transition," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 483-577, December.
    9. Jung‐Soon Shin & Minki Kim & Dongjun Oh & Tong Suk Kim, 2019. "Do hedge funds time market tail risk? Evidence from option‐implied tail risk," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(2), pages 205-237, February.
    10. Ludwig Chincarini, 2014. "The Impact of Quantitative Methods on Hedge Fund Performance," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 20(5), pages 857-890, November.
    11. Peláez, Rolando F., 2015. "Market-timing the business cycle," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 55-64.
    12. Luo, Ji & Tee, Kai-Hong & Li, Baibing, 2017. "Timing liquidity in the foreign exchange market: Did hedge funds do it?," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 47-62.
    13. Rolando F. Peláez, 2015. "Market‐timing the business cycle," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(1), pages 55-64, September.
    14. Gert Elaut & Michael Frömmel & Alexander Mende, 2017. "Duration Dependence, Behavioral Restrictions, and the Market Timing Ability of Commodity Trading Advisors," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 17(3), pages 427-450, September.
    15. Sebastian Bunnenberg & Martin Rohleder & Hendrik Scholz & Marco Wilkens, 2019. "Jensen's alpha and the market‐timing puzzle," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(2), pages 234-255, April.
    16. Adam L. Aiken & Osman Kilic & Sean Reid, 2016. "Can hedge funds time global equity markets? Evidence from emerging markets," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(1), pages 2-11, April.
    17. Chen, Yong & Kelly, Bryan & Wu, Wei, 2020. "Sophisticated investors and market efficiency: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(2), pages 316-341.
    18. Bespalova, Olga, 2018. "Forecast Evaluation in Macroeconomics and International Finance. Ph.D. thesis, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA," MPRA Paper 117706, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Lahiri, Kajal & Yang, Liu, 2013. "Forecasting Binary Outcomes," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1025-1106, Elsevier.
    20. Tae-Hwan Kim & Paul Mizen & Thanaset Chevapatrakul, 2008. "Forecasting changes in UK interest rates," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 53-74.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jjrfmx:v:16:y:2023:i:5:p:275-:d:1149208. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.