How the Market Direction Model has performed since our August 11, 2010 launch
Short Only, Long/Short Equity, ETF investing, Long Only
Seeking Alpha Analyst Since 2010
Our VIX Volatility Model was up as much as +177.03% in 2016. After further debugging and improvements to the algo, it is up almost +15% in 2017 as of 1-13-17
Go here for results: https://www.virtueofselfishinvesting.com/market-timing-results/dr-k-vix-volatility-model/0
In 1995, Dr. Kacher operated one of the first Internet-based stock advisory services. He then went on to generate triple digit percentage returns for six years in a row during the 1995-2000 period before moving to cash for most of the 2000-2002 bear market, one of the worst in history. From 1996-2001, Dr. Kacher served as chief research analyst for William O'Neil + Company, the New York Stock Exchange member firm, institutional research provider, and publisher of Investor's Business Daily newspaper. During this period, William O'Neil hand-picked Dr. Kacher to manage a portion of the firm's proprietary capital, whereupon Dr. Kacher became a top internal portfolio manager at the company. Dr. Kacher received his B.S. in Chemistry and Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from University of California at Berkeley, where he co-discovered Element 110 on the Periodic Table of Elements and confirmed the existence of Element 106 for which his team named Seaborgium after Dr. Glenn Seaborg, the inventor of plutonium, who supervised Dr. Kacher's work as a doctoral student at UC Berkeley. Musically gifted, Dr. Kacher was classically trained on the piano beginning at age 3, composing his first song at age 5 which he called "Night Fog," and performing as a concert pianist from ages 5 to 12 in high-profile cities in the US and Japan. He released his debut CD comprised of 21 original piano compositions in 2009. He, together with Gil Morales, recently co-authored a number of books including the bestseller "Trade Like An O'Neil Disciple: How We Made 18,000% in the Stock Market", published by John Wiley & Sons.
In the 1996 to 2002 period, Dr. Kacher achieved in his personal account a total return in excess of 18,000%, as verified by KPMG, the Big Four auditor here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/vosi/download/chris-kacher-kpmg-verification-letter.pdf
Dr. Kacher is also currently a principal and Managing Director of MoKa Investors, LLC and Virtue of Selfish Investing, LLC, www.virtueofselfishinvesting.com. He has been a frequent guest and commentator on MarketWatch.com, TownHall.com, CBS host Andy Giersher's Portfolio Doctor, and CNN News Radio's Wall Street Shuffle, among other venues.
Mr. Morales began his investment career in 1991 as a stockbroker in the Beverly Hills branch of Merrill Lynch. In 1994 he joined PaineWebber, Inc. where he quickly achieved Chairman's Club status as a top producer. In 1997, William O'Neil personally recruited Mr. Morales to join William O'Neil + Company, Inc. where he spent the next eight years as a Vice-President, internal Portfolio Manager responsible for managing a portion of the firm's proprietary assets, and Manager of the O'Neil Institutional Services group responsible for advising over 500 of the largest and most successful institutional investors in the world, including mutual fund, pension fund, and hedge fund clients. Mr. Morales also co-authored with William J. O'Neil a book on short-selling, "How to Make Money Selling Stocks Short," published by John Wiley & Sons in 2004. In 2004, Mr. Morales was appointed Chief Market Strategist for William O'Neil + Company, Inc. He, together with Chris Kacher, recently co-authored the book, "Trade Like An O'Neil Disciple: How We Made 18,000% in the Stock Market", published by John Wiley & Sons in 2010. He also contributed to the book, "Wiley Trading Guide, Volume II", published in 2011. In the period from January 1, 1998 to December 31, 2005, Mr. Morales achieved in his personal account a total return of 10,904.25% as audited by Rothstein Kass & Company, a hedge fund auditing firm . Applying a standard hedge fund 2%/20% fee structure to this return would yield a pro forma return of 5,572.04%, net of fees. Mr. Morales received his B.A. in economics from Stanford University. Mr. Morales is also currently a principal and Managing Director of MoKa Investors, LLC and Virtue of Selfish Investing, LLC, www.virtueofselfishinvesting.com. He has been a frequent guest and commentator on Fox Business News, MarketWatch.com, and CNN News Radio's Wall Street Shuffle and Opening Bell shows, among other venues. In 2010, Mr. Morales published "Trade Like an O'Neil Disciple - How We Made 18,000% in the Stock Market" (John Wiley & Sons) with his colleague and former O'Neil internal portfolio manager Dr. Chris Kacher.
Hot off the press:
Using NASDAQ Composite as the benchmark with NO leverage, the returns since the first live signal on August 11, 2010 when Virtue of Selfish Investing was launched have been:
+32.4%, or +52.3% on an annualized basis, using 3-times ETF TNA with NO leverage, 100% long TNA on a buy signal, 100% short TNA (TZA is the inverse) on a sell signal, 100% cash on a neutral signal.
Using the NASDAQ Composite (1-times ETF QQQ would make a good proxy), the returns have been:
+11.1%, or +17.9% on an annualized basis, 100% long NASDAQ Composite (QQQ is a good approximation) on a buy signal, 100% short NASDAQ Composite (PSQ is a good approximation) on a sell signal, 100% cash on a neutral signal.
Keep in mind that we are in an entirely unique quantitative easing (QE) driven environment, making it favor the buy-and-hold method, where you sit in an index and just hold, since QE1 and currently QE2 have prevented the general markets from selling off more than -10% since March 2009, with May 2010 being the exception when QE1 ended. But buy-and-hold only works during uptrending markets, and we all know that markets do not go up in a straight line.
Case in point, had you bought and held most any major index or mutual fund from January 1, 2010 to September 30, 2010, you would have made almost nothing, and had you become disgusted with the markets and sold in August 2010, you would have lost money. Meanwhile, our Market Direction Model scored +28.0% over this same timeframe [Jan 1, 2010 to Sept 30, 2010] using NO leverage (NASDAQ Composite as benchmark), and 3-times ETF TNA scored a whopping +119.9%.
The model's track record is shown here: https://www.virtueofselfishinvesting.com/results
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