$2,121,342!
Not bad for the 4th Anniversary of our Primary Portfolios. We began this lesson on November 26th of 2013 and allocated $500,000 to our Long-Term Portfolio and $100,000 to our Short-Term Portfolio with the intention of demonstrating our balanced, paired portfolio tactics over time. Now, 4 years later, we're up $1,521,342 (253%), which is right at the top of our 40% annual compounded gains we can expect from this strategy when it goes very well.
You can't double up in a year playing a hedged strategy like this because we're constantly betting against ourselves but by "Being the House - NOT the Gambler", we are able to CONSISTENTLY make 20-40% returns and, in this non-stop bull market - it's been more like 40%. Well, a bit under 40% as $600,000 at 40% compounded for 3 years would be $2.3M but that's my fault, not the system's - as we got so close to goal back in October that I put the brakes on and shifted to a more neutral stance and, in our last review, we "only" made $14,565 for the month and, since last month, we've "only" made another $12,867 - it's like it's hardly worth getting up in the morning, right?
Really, I am sorry I've been so cautious but I could not, in good conscience, risk those spectacular gains into Q3 earnings and the Holidays. We have a lot of open positions and they'd be difficult to adjust quickly in a crash so I've been erroring on the side of caution but I promise to drink heavily over the holidays and come back all gung-ho bullish if this rally is still going in January.
This too, is part of the lesson though. Go over the last couple of reviews (archives here) and see how we went from very bullish in August, where we added $133,849 for the month, to lockdown mode in September and my reasons for being cautious were laid out in that review (9/29).
