November was a relatively quiet month for the leveraged permanent portfolio (at least on a relative basis). It was a tremendous month for equities, and the portfolio will tend to lag the equity markets when they rally sharply. There will need to be a rebalance this month as gold is a bit underweight after November’s moves.
After running this strategy for a little over a year, in pretty varied market conditions, I am going to make a change and abandon the 12% volatility threshold for triggering moves to cash. This has always been an arbitrary threshold, and it is only intended to safeguard against one specific risk: panic liquidation that sends all correlations to one.
We got a taste of this in March at the nadir of the Covid drawdown. But the volatility threshold didn’t help much. It only triggered adjustments after the fact. In the future I may manage this risk on a discretionary basis instead. TBD.
Updated allocation:
30% S&P 500
20% Laddered Treasury Futures
34% Gold
30% ex-US equity
~114% notional exposure
Again, on a relative basis, overall performance has lost ground to US equities recently. Nonetheless, it remains plenty attractive on an absolute basis. Since late 2018, a static allocation version of this strategy has handily outpaced SPY, with a 60/40-like drawdown and volatility profile. As I’ve written many times, I would not necessarily expect the strategy to outpace a 100% equity portfolio over very long time periods. But I think it will remain competitive. On a risk-adjusted basis, on the other hand, I don’t think there will be any comparison. The leveraged permanent portfolio will dominate 100% equity portfolios on a risk-adjusted basis.
