Category: Your Money

Monthly Recap: Carnage

world.2015-12-31.2016-01-29

Equities

Major
DAX(DEU) -8.80%
CAC(FRA) -4.75%
UKX(GBR) -2.54%
NKY(JPN) -7.96%
SPX(USA) -5.60%
MINTs
JCI(IDN) +0.48%
INMEX(MEX) +0.57%
NGSEINDX(NGA) -16.50%
XU030(TUR) +2.99%
BRICS
IBOV(BRA) -6.79%
SHCOMP(CHN) -22.65%
NIFTY(IND) -4.82%
INDEXCF(RUS) +1.34%
TOP40(ZAF) -3.78%

Commodities

Energy
Heating Oil -3.91%
Natural Gas -1.66%
RBOB Gasoline -11.16%
WTI Crude Oil -10.10%
Brent Crude Oil -4.76%
Ethanol +1.79%
Metals
Palladium -11.05%
Silver 5000oz +3.62%
Copper -3.29%
Gold 100oz +5.37%
Platinum +0.33%

Currencies

USDEUR:+0.42% USDJPY:+0.79%

MINTs
USDIDR(IDN) -0.07%
USDMXN(MEX) +5.13%
USDNGN(NGA) -0.17%
USDTRY(TUR) +1.33%
BRICS
USDBRL(BRA) +0.98%
USDCNY(CHN) +1.27%
USDINR(IND) +2.48%
USDRUB(RUS) +3.59%
USDZAR(ZAF) +2.66%
Agricultural
Cotton -3.97%
Soybeans +1.23%
Wheat +1.75%
Coffee (Arabica) -7.87%
Lean Hogs +10.06%
Cocoa -11.17%
Coffee (Robusta) -6.98%
Corn +3.70%
Soybean Meal +2.84%
White Sugar -3.72%
Cattle -0.74%
Feeder Cattle -6.28%
Lumber -6.05%
Orange Juice -5.13%
Sugar #11 -13.48%

Credit Indices

Index Change
Markit CDX EM -0.81%
Markit CDX NA HY -2.26%
Markit CDX NA IG +16.56%
Markit iTraxx Asia ex-Japan IG +19.42%
Markit iTraxx Australia +17.89%
Markit iTraxx Europe +14.77%
Markit iTraxx Europe Crossover +51.56%
Markit iTraxx Japan +15.56%
Markit MCDX (Municipal CDS) +6.25%
A fresh bout of volatility hit the markets in January. EM currencies crashed, China capital outflows accelerated and Japan announced negative interest rates. The first half of February will see companies announce their quarterly results, adding a fresh dose of fuel to the volatility fire…

International ETFs (USD)

global.etf.performance.2015-12-31.2016-01-29

Nifty Heatmap

NIFTY 50.2015-12-31.2016-01-29

Index Returns

For a deeper dive into indices, check out our weekly Index Update.
index.performance.2015-12-31.2016-01-29

Market Cap Decile Performance

Decile Mkt. Cap. Adv/Decl
1 (micro) -17.03% 69/71
2 -9.17% 65/74
3 -15.39% 52/87
4 -16.38% 45/95
5 -18.88% 41/98
6 -14.42% 45/94
7 -15.34% 51/89
8 -15.24% 56/83
9 -16.29% 55/84
10 (mega) -7.84% 67/73
Mid- and small-caps bore the brunt of the selloff…

Top Winners and Losers

TITAN +4.77%
INFY +5.38%
SUNPHARMA +6.44%
RCOM -29.58%
IDEA -28.19%
PNB -21.09%
Whats the difference between a Brutality and Fatality?

ETF Performance

GOLDBEES +6.32%
NIFTYBEES -5.07%
CPSEETF -6.19%
JUNIORBEES -8.02%
BANKBEES -8.28%
INFRABEES -12.00%
PSUBNKBEES -20.00%
Gold saw a bid on the back of Rupee collapse…

Yield Curve

yieldCurve.2015-12-31.2016-01-29

Bond Indices

Sub Index Change in YTM Total Return(%)
0 5 -0.13 +0.99%
5 10 -0.06 +0.96%
10 15 -0.02 +0.86%
15 20 +0.06 -0.04%
20 30 +0.11 -0.48%
Bonds proved their worth during the turmoil – diversification FTW!

Investment Theme Performance

Momentum saw the worst drawdown among all strategies. But the last few days have seen a dramatic recovery…

Equity Mutual Funds

Bond Mutual Funds

Thought to sum up the month

Here’s what happens when you make short-term decisions with long-term capital:

  • You constantly change your strategy and chase past performance.
  • You ignore any semblance of a long-term plan.
  • You end up being reactive instead of pro-active with your decisions.
  • You incur higher fees from increased trading, due diligence and switching costs.
  • You lose sight of your actual goals and time horizon.
  • You end up with a portfolio that’s built to withstand the last war, not the next one.
  • You lose out on much of the long-term benefits that come from diversification, rebalancing and mean reversion.

Source: Short-Term Thinking With Long-Term Capital

Index Update 30.01.2016

MOMENTUM

We run our proprietary momentum scoring algorithm on indices just like we do on stocks. You can use the momentum scores of sub-indices to get a sense for which sectors have the wind on their backs and those that are facing headwinds.

Traders can pick their longs in sectors with high short-term momentum and their shorts in sectors with low momentum. Investors can use the longer lookback scores to position themselves using our re-factored index Themes.

You can see how the momentum algorithm has performed on individual stocks here.

Here are the best and the worst sub-indices:

index momentum best 365 2016-01-29 png

index momentum best 50 2016-01-29 png

index momentum worst 365 2016-01-29 png

index momentum worst 50 2016-01-29 png

Relative Strength Spread

NIFTY_500 relative-spread-index 50 2016-01-29 png

Refactored Index Performance

50-day performance, from November 18, 2015 through January 29, 2016:

Trend Model Summary

Index Signal % From Peak Day of Peak
NIFTY AUTO SHORT
16.42
2015-Jan-27
NIFTY BANK SHORT
24.48
2015-Jan-27
NIFTY COMMODITIES LONG
37.22
2008-Jan-04
NIFTY CONSUMPTION SHORT
10.38
2015-Aug-05
NIFTY ENERGY LONG
29.10
2008-Jan-14
NIFTY FIN SERVICE SHORT
21.30
2015-Jan-28
NIFTY FMCG SHORT
14.18
2015-Feb-25
NIFTY INFRA SHORT
61.28
2008-Jan-09
NIFTY IT LONG
88.23
2000-Feb-21
NIFTY MEDIA LONG
16.13
2008-Jan-04
NIFTY METAL LONG
69.81
2008-Jan-04
NIFTY MNC LONG
17.75
2015-Aug-10
NIFTY PHARMA LONG
15.00
2015-Apr-08
NIFTY PSE LONG
36.55
2008-Jan-04
NIFTY PSU BANK SHORT
57.35
2010-Nov-05
NIFTY REALTY LONG
91.83
2008-Jan-14
NIFTY SERV SECTOR SHORT
16.69
2015-Mar-03
Pharma seems to be clawing its way back up the momentum charts…

Market-Cap Deciles, Part II

We had introduced the concept of dividing the universe of stocks by market-cap deciles a while ago (StockViz.) Here are some observations.

Returns

The last year has been spectacular for small- and mid-cap stocks.

From August-2014 to Now:
decile all

For 2015:
decile 2015

So far in 2016:
decile 2016-JAN
Note: Deciles go from 1 (micro-cap) to 10 (mega-cap)

In 2015:

  1. If you had blindly invested in an equal-weight portfolio of ~145 micro-cap stocks, you would have been up ~70%
  2. Every other decile out-performed the mega-caps (decile #1)
  3. Note how the standard-deviation of returns compress as you walk up the cap

Migrations

migrations 2015
Free-float market-cap is a volatile measure in itself – when you use that to classify stocks, you end up with quite a bit of movement between deciles. Something to keep in mind while using deciles for analysis.

Market breadth indicator

The mega-cap decile (decile #1) can be used as a crude market-timing indicator. If you track the number of stocks in the decile that went up vs. the number that went down, you end up with a proxy for breadth.

long-short-nifty

Even though technically it beat the buy-and-hold NIFTY 50, the indicator produces too many trades and it doesn’t offer a large enough margin of out-performance to be useful in live trading.

Next steps

We will continue to poke around and share what we find!

Definition: Drawdown

Drawdown, of an investment, is the peak-to-trough decline during a specific period.

It is not uncommon for stock indices to drawdown 30% in a year. Here’s how we see it.

Nifty 50 Drawdowns

drawdowns.nifty50

Nifty Midcap 100 Drawdowns

drawdowns.midcap100

Explainer

Drawdowns take their time to form and can be identified into three distinct points:

  1. The day from which the investment started going down. ‘From’ in the above images.
  2. The day on which the investment stopped going down. ‘Trough’ in the above images.
  3. The day on which the investment recouped all its losses from (1). ‘To’ in the above images.

The number of days the whole processes took is the ‘Length’ of the drawdown. ‘Recovery’ shows the number of days it took to get back to it initial value.

Path dependency

The yearly breakup shown above doesn’t give the real picture of how the investment actually performed during the entire stretch of time. For example, here’s NIFTY 50 vs. MIDCAP 100:

Between 2004-01-01 and 2016-01-20, NIFTY 50 has returned a cumulative 282.24% with an IRR of 11.76% vs. NIFTY MIDCAP 100's cumulative return of 394.05% and an IRR of 14.16%.

Depending on where your starting point is, you end up with different drawdown and return profiles. You can fool around with that here: svz.bz

Take-away

Returns go hand-in-hand with drawdowns. Seasoned investors wait for it (in bond funds) to enter, most long-term investors learn to ignore them and continue their dollar cost averaging (aka SIP.)

Index Update 16.01.2016

MOMENTUM

We run our proprietary momentum scoring algorithm on indices just like we do on stocks. You can use the momentum scores of sub-indices to get a sense for which sectors have the wind on their backs and those that are facing headwinds.

Traders can pick their longs in sectors with high short-term momentum and their shorts in sectors with low momentum. Investors can use the longer lookback scores to position themselves using our re-factored index Themes.

You can see how the momentum algorithm has performed on individual stocks here.

Here are the best and the worst sub-indices:

index momentum best 365 2016-01-15 png

index momentum best 50 2016-01-15 png

index momentum worst 365 2016-01-15 png

index momentum worst 50 2016-01-15 png

Relative Strength Spread

NIFTY_500 relative-spread-index 50 2016-01-15 png

Refactored Index Performance

50-day performance, from November 03, 2015 through January 15, 2016:

Trend Model Summary

Index Signal % From Peak Day of Peak
NIFTY AUTO LONG
17.09
2015-Jan-27
NIFTY BANK LONG
26.02
2015-Jan-27
NIFTY COMMODITIES SHORT
37.60
2008-Jan-04
NIFTY CONSUMPTION LONG
10.19
2015-Aug-05
NIFTY ENERGY SHORT
28.34
2008-Jan-14
NIFTY FIN SERVICE LONG
22.84
2015-Jan-28
NIFTY FMCG LONG
14.35
2015-Feb-25
NIFTY INFRA LONG
60.96
2008-Jan-09
NIFTY IT SHORT
88.49
2000-Feb-21
NIFTY MEDIA LONG
18.33
2008-Jan-04
NIFTY METAL LONG
70.43
2008-Jan-04
NIFTY MNC LONG
15.76
2015-Aug-10
NIFTY PHARMA LONG
18.59
2015-Apr-08
NIFTY PSE SHORT
36.99
2008-Jan-04
NIFTY PSU BANK LONG
56.98
2010-Nov-05
NIFTY REALTY LONG
91.74
2008-Jan-14
NIFTY SERV SECTOR LONG
18.49
2015-Mar-03
Pretty much every sub-index has a negative 50-day return…