The GOLD scream room

[mathjak107]

i used a combo of the insight growth and income model and income model starting in 2007 , growth model prior .

today i use a mix of the 3 as i can fine tune the time frames better than with just 2 of the models ..

the growth model runs from 90-100% equities , the growth and income model varies from 60-70% equities , the income model has holdings vary , right now equities 23% .

these are the model results
of course 2000 to 2015 were pretty crappy stock years but the models still did okay considering . in fact you didn't need stocks at all in hind site , the 30 year bond would have beaten them ,.

growth model

2000 minus 10.80
2001 minus 6.40
2002 minus 17.1
2003 +46.10
2004 +12.4
2005 +11.20
2006 15.70
2007 +7.30
2008 minus 42.7
2009 +31.80
2010 +17.7
2011 minus 1.70
2012 +16
2013 +26.50
2014 +9.70
2015 +1
2016 +6.70..

growth and income returns

2000 +2.7
2001 +1.3
2002 minus 6.4
2003 +33
2004 +11.50
2005 +8.20
2006 +13.7
2007 +6.1
2008 minus 33
2009 +28.1
2010 + 12.28
2011 +.30
2012 +13.40
2013 +20.30
2014 +9.30
2015 +1
2016 +8.20
income model

2000 +.30
2001 +1.30
2002 +5.40
2003 +8.40
2004 +4.20
2005 +3.60
2006 + 6.90
2007 +4.00
2008 minus 18
2009 +20
2010 +12.29
2011 +6.30
2012 +10.70
2013 +2.90
2014+7.10
2015+ .1
2016 +6.70

2 years cash

[Cortopassi]

i bought back today what i sold at a good couple of thousand dollar difference a few weeks ago . .

wash and repeat .

Bought too soon....

[mathjak107]

a little bit but i sold quite a bit so much higher . i only bought a fraction of the position so if we go over a 1% drop i will add back another piece .

i missed it this morning when i was at the gym .

it is crazy how much i made in gold since nov just buying it , never capturing the peak of course , selling it and rebuying again lower and repeating .

[Libertarian666]

a little bit but i sold quite a bit so much higher . i only bought a fraction of the position so if we go over a 1% drop i will add back another piece .

i missed it this morning when i was at the gym .

it is crazy how much i made in gold since nov just buying it , never capturing the peak of course , selling it and rebuying again lower and repeating .

I'm sure you'll let us know when you start to make big losses. Right?

[mathjak107]

you will know .... we all watch the same investments . if gold falls from here , what i own is down . if it goes up and i sell it i will tell ya .

[Libertarian666]

you will know .... we all watch the same investments . if gold falls from here , what i own is down . if it goes up and i sell it i will tell ya .

But if it goes down you won't sell it, so you won't have lost anything.

Why didn't I think of this plan? It seems foolproof!

[mathjak107]

you are correct ! i will just hold it until i can sell it and repeat . .

been doing this for years with gold off and on.

[Cortopassi]

But not with stocks -- those are buy and hold...right?...or tweaked into different models...all the time...

I like your thoughts mj, but you are obviously much more of an active trader than most people here want to be.

[mathjak107]

i am only active with the variable portion of my portfolio . the fun part as i call it . the main models i use have stuck to the plan for 30 years ,.sure the funds may change here and there over time but the plan is still the plan .

as i mentioned a few times , i am not happy being average at anything . so at heart i am a tinkerer , a dirty lil trader . so i use the newsletter to keep me from myself and it has worked very well that way .

i don't have to plan or even think about the bulk of our investments , i just follow the script . but i keep a little money to feed my addiction on the side . but over the years i have been very lucky at my fun trading but nothing i would consider doing with my serious money ..

[dualstow]

i am not happy being average at anything

Sigh, the standard slur of the active investor & the paid advisor.

[Smith1776]

i am not happy being average at anything

Sigh, the standard slur of the active investor & the paid advisor.

It is indeed counterintuitive, but totally true in investing, that being average is actually quite excellent.

[dualstow]

i am not happy being average at anything

Sigh, the standard slur of the active investor & the paid advisor.

It is indeed counterintuitive, but totally true in investing, that being average is actually quite excellent.

Right!

And mathjak, no offense, but did you notice Medium Tex would always call his shots on the same day that he made them? He would post, "I bought some Intel today." Don't you think it's a bit tacky saying, after the alleged fact oh, I made so much money on trading gold because I'm so damn clever ? If you call in advance it might be fun to watch, I'll concede that.

[mathjak107]

well last gold buy was wed and then some more yesterday so i will tell you when i sell again . holding 125k with 100k on wed and 25k yesterday .

still down a bit .

letting it ride until the next rise . i usually try to capture a few hundred each trade in and out . i sell , it drops a few thousand and i buy and repeat .

if it goes up instead , i will wait for the first sizable drop and buy and repeat . been doing this for years now .



.

[dualstow]

well last gold buy was wed and then some more yesterday so i will tell you when i sell again .

.

sounds good, and good luck to you.

[stuper1]

Mathjak,

Just curious, do you have a separate core pot of gold, maybe physical, that you essentially never sell? Or when you say that you sell, do you mean that you sell all of your gold at that time?

I could actually see doing what you're doing by keeping one portion of gold in my PP, which would rarely get bought or sold, and another portion of gold in my VP, that could get traded frequently.

[mathjak107]

a little bit but i sold quite a bit so much higher . i only bought a fraction of the position so if we go over a 1% drop i will add back another piece .

i missed it this morning when i was at the gym .

it is crazy how much i made in gold since nov just buying it , never capturing the peak of course , selling it and rebuying again lower and repeating .

I'm sure you'll let us know when you start to make big losses. Right?

technovilist , if you want to see the losses , i will disclose them right here with an actual copy of my statement so we can put that to bed if you think i am only telling half a story .

to answer stupor , the gold portion i keep 100% variable . after dealing with gold for 30 years i learned grab your gains when you can and in little steps . if you don't they will typically be gone in short order . gold to me is like that fair weather friend unlike the rest of my portfolio investments which have only gone up over my lifetime and are simply about time in the markets . gold to me is always about timing the markets ..

i consider the gold portion like i do my fun trading , it has never been where i do my "serious investing" which is the insight models . i will dabble more with gold than keep it a core asset . never needed it it for insurance and hopefully never will . . cash, bonds and real estate are all i ever needed .for the black swans which are temporary events through our history here .

sure one day things can be different , but so far waiting for that day decreased your balance enough that you gave up more than any dip took away in the temporary event unless you did it to yourself with poor investor behavior .


in the interest of this group i will post my my ytd trading statement for those who suspect i am not disclosing my losses , here is my actual fidelity statement showing my closed positions since jan 1st . this is the darting in and out i have done since january .

the only dabble i have open at this time is 125k in gld .

gains locked in after subtracting out any losses were 71,130.00 on just what was sold the last 4 months . gold sold since january accounted for 26,000 in gains of the 71,130.00 . i count 27 times gold was bought and sold as i captured each roll back and took advantage of each gain ..

that nice big long green line below is gold .

to be fair though the bulk of the gold profits were actually gold bought in nov and december after it fell so we are actually looking at buys and sells the last 5 months or so ..

all were held and sold at different times and the same money recycled . hold times and amount invested was variable .

losses , which are already included in the 71,130.00 were 603.00 bucks , they are the 3 little red lines below .:

150.00 in ibm , got out of that just in time as it plunged after , about 10 bucks in vxf and 678.00 less a 235.00 dividend in verizon . you can see losses are kept very tight and low . if i guessed wrong after a dip on the stock i sell it fast .

top earners in what were sold were :

gold 26,000

ivv 11,842.00

vanguard VIG 10,200.00

slyv small cap value 9653.00

hyg high yield 9030.00



the scan can be hard to read so here is the rest of what it shows .

chevron +332.00
cisco + 285.00
coke +268.00
pimco mint +279.00
pfizer + 172.00
shy + 303.00
tlt +3476.00

those stocks represent the dogs of the dow . they were quick trades where the stocks dipped a bit after i bought them , they recovered the next day but lacked the interest in them i hoped to see so they were sold at a small profit and the money put in something else . .




so now you can see that i am not hiding anything . and only talk about the successes .

as far as the insight models this year :

my growth model is up 9.22% , my growth and income model is up 6.86% and the income model up 2.36% . the income model attempts to be a proxy for bonds and cash but with the ability to do better with its 23% stake in an equity dividend fund but with almost 70% less volatility than the s&p 500.

so there you have my full disclosure .

this is what works well for me , you all need to do what works best for you and what meets your goals .

as far as devoted time , i put 30 seconds a week in to the insight models . the trading time varies but it really does not take long to see what fell and may be worth betting on a small recovery .

the key i find to this dabbling is don't go for the home run . gain a few hundred each time if you have to and get out . things always drop a bit and recover a bit . i got lucky and bought gold as it sold off after the election and planned to hold it a few months until the election smoke cleared . it recovered nicely and it was a shame not to pick the low hanging fruit and take those big gains and wait for a roll back . which things did .

even if something is in a downturn the volatility lets you capture it as it dips and rises on the way down .

the danger is sticking around for more than that and getting caught in a down trend on it . something i can say i rarely let happen as you see .

both verizon and ibm got smashed after i sold it .

but as i said , as good as this darting in and out can be , it is not what i will do with my serious money . basically the insight models have pretty much been my "permanent potfolio's " and the dabbling my variable .

i just may increase the income model at times of high valuations and increase the growth model at times of low valuations or i might even hang out in the butterfly for really uncertain times like the elections were but pretty much i am in at least 2 of the 3 at any given time , the proportions and amounts may just vary ..

i have been through crashes , financial collapses , the booms and the recessions the last 35 years and the portfolio's did just fine .

we all have our idea's of what is the right mix and strategy for us . but we have to realize that we will always think that those more aggressive than us are being risky and careless and those less aggressive are leaving the low hanging fruit to die on the vine when it was there for the taking ..

[dualstow]

to answer stup(e)r , the gold portion i keep 100% variable

100%? I was sure that you had a core 20% in gold for the golden butterfly. So, you're not really running a g.b. portfolio?

Btw, I don't know how it appears to others, but for me the smugmug image is illegible. I tried every which way to load it and blow it up, to no avail.

[mathjak107]

the golden butterfly as i mentioned was a bridge through the elections . most of that was sold off when small caps faltered . i was up like 25k in small caps and 15k evaporated so gold and tlt had a nice run back so i started moving the money back in to the insight models as the gb served its purpose .
i realized that with this kind of volatility in the individual components if i don't take the gains when they are there they evaporate all to quickly .

i took the remaining 10k profit left in small caps and started moving back to the insight models ..

i was going to put the money back in to the gb as assets came lower and hold a certain percentage in the gb but after thinking about it i saw no reason to going forward . . the components make great trading vehicles for the fun money so i decided to keep it that way . the insight models stay as is and the gb is the variable fun part as i always trade TLT AND GLD anyway .

except for GLD i have no other fun money in as of now .

[mathjak107]

lets see if this is better . i figured out how to scan it as a jpg instead of pdf so i redid it .

from the looks of it it is a lot better . i can upload full resolution photos to our photography website so the jpg worked much better .

[Cortopassi]

mj,

That you try to time gold, which to me is one of the most unpredictable assets, is so far removed from most thinking on this forum!

I want to ask for your historical analysis of what you did in 2011-13. Not to try and corner you into saying, yeah, I still am holding GLD from the 1900 peak, I just haven't realized the loss, but more so if you are actually able to time in's and out's profitably, I am interested in how you approach it. NOT that I will ever do it again.

There are so many sharp peaks and valleys during those years, esp. 2011, that I just cannot imagine you winning all the time, and either getting stuck or stopped out. Do you use stop losses for when you pick the direction wrong? 2013 overall was down the entire year. Did you just not trade?

For example, did you do anything during the peaks I circled, which spanned $200-300 over the course of 2 months?

[mathjak107]

i dabbled a bit in 2011-2013 . basically stayed in just the models . i did nothing special in gld . i had no reason to go outside . gains in the models were double digits . this year was my biggest gains in gold ever .

we had sold two co-ops in 2008 so the money got in close to the lows in the insight models and was doing very well since then . we still had a big real estate holding i was more involved in over those years .

it is when markets are flat i attempted to goose things along , and when markets are flat tlt and gld are good canditates .

i just take more interest in gld and tlt at times more than other times .

it sure would have been nice to ride the gold wave fully up back then but not something i did . but my portfolio's did very well so i can't complain .

i find gold easy to time if you go for quick hits .

every time something causes gold to go up just a percent or 2 it always rolls back even if a day . as my record shows i found 27 opportunies to do that since jan . i don't worry about buying gold like i did the other day . there will always be some event that will spike it and i can sell . it may be an hour , it may be a day , but there always seems to be a moment you can profit .

it is when you hang in their longer that things get very random and that gain can evaporate in a day . you can ride a nice gain up and back in days . in fact that 26k gain is now down about 16k since i sold .

[dualstow]

It's legible now, thanks.

[mathjak107]

last year i found oil stocks easy to do these quick hits on . kmi was my favorite . it traded in and out of that and exxon so many times . but since last year the volatility in kmi is gone and the fear that every oil company was going under vanished . i found high yield the low hanging friut last year too racking up 16% gains .

the markets priced high yield like 1/2 the companies were failing . it was really low hanging fruit .

so not all times can you get the opportunity to hit and run on the same stocks . but it satisfies the tinkerer in me ..

[dualstow]

It's funny, I hold many of the stocks in your list: KO, CVX, VZ; used to hold PFE & SPHIX. I usually don't sell, period, unless I have a very compelling reason. It's like a homemade Wellesley fund.

[mathjak107]

i tried taking a quick hit with the puppies of the dow. the 5 highest yielding dogs . they started to falter so they spiked and i got out quick . glad i did , it fell thousands today .

sphix was just left over from last year . i never got around to selling a tiny piece . high yield was hot , i used sphix and hyg