It was one of the few down weeks of the year for recommendations, and easily the must frustrating week of the year for the method, so I think it would be remiss of me to say scaling down the site and not address this. Starting last week basic portfolio looked something like this, if saying 20 units is 100% exposure and allowing 5 or so units for margin positions.
8 DIA longs various entries 2/12-3/11
2 SOXX longs 3/1
1 EEM long, as early as 2/16 or if in and out then March
1-ish oil or oil related runner unit longs EWZ RSX entries 2/12+
2 GLD/GDX late January longs, just reduced down from 5 total prior week
2 EWJ / NKY shorts, entry 4/1 though NKY really triggered 3/31 close below all pivots
2 TLT longs, entry 4/1, above all pivots
If putting free capital to work you might have been long 1-2 QQQ units per bullish scenario of prior week although i didn't spell that out in advance for 19-20.
Larger note: I am trying to keep balance of portfolio roughly in line with larger structural issues of the big pivots. If all stock indexes were above YPs and TLT and GLD both below it would be foolish to have safe havens, and better to be 100-125% long stocks especially leaders. But that isn't what is happening this year - instead NKY and DAX below all pivots, USA mostly bullish but still mixed with RTY and NYA below YPs, and safe havens still quite strong.
This week I got fooled by 4/6 as I am sure many others did too. In all the usual ways it seemed quite fine, ie bullish response to mild pullback, VIX vehicles confirming, volume OK, etc. But any bullish adjustments based on 4/6 were quickly wrong. Sometimes this happens and like I wrote up in other SPY daily columns just try to go with the flow and think about risk/reward.
For this week ideas were to hold runner units above CL Q2P. This was a very right idea, but I used wrong vehicle CL K contract broke on 4/4, lower on 4/5, then turned around and recovered the level and exploded higher on Friday. CL1 continuous contract was perfect hold of Q2P right on the low. Unfortunately by looking at CL K, i cut the runner oil (let's call it 1.5 that remained of oil plus EWZ / RSX) and shorted small only to cut and then add back oil & XLE as longs the next day. Frustrating chop, lost a bit on it, could have been avoided just by emphasizing CL1. Getting out of world indexes EWZ / RSX and replacing with XLE cost some gains. But glad to say back in oil on long side because that really helped things on Friday, and put up direct XLE rec on the site on Wednesday too.
EEM looked like pivot rejection on 4/5 with negative action on 1HP, AprP and confirmation with ACWI and VXEEM. Thought worth cut. The very next day all those bearish conditions reversed, again including VXEEM, and ACWI seemed more bullish although heading into resistance again, and thought back in long. Slammed again next day. That is chop!
DAX short right idea but vehicle is issue. DAX clearly below all pivots 4/5 and EWG similar. DAX stayed under all pivots 4/6 but EWG jumped and I went with that on a cover only to see it go lower again the next day. Right idea, wrong index to watch.
NKY short also "right idea" but somehow USDJPY crashing, NKY still lower low on 4/8 Japan session yet EWJ huge jump Friday USA. I don't really get that.
On Thursday I also saw PIN (India ETF) below all pivots and with bearish scenario more likely thought that was good enough to try; slightly against on Friday, back above Q2P but still under AprP.
Lastly after reducing adds on GLD/GDX due to YR1 selling they did exactly what I did not want to see, ie, jump above levels. I did say get back in on GDX Thursday and that helped balance out the losses of the above listed frustrations along with the oil pop and XLE pop.
So, EEM was really a pure chop scenario but in case of oil, DAX/EWG, and NKY/EWJ, it seems to be more a base index vs vehicle issue. Of course you could skip the headache and just keep to USA indexes, TLT and GLD, although the global emerging market indexes have been providing better percentage moves than USA indexes for a quite a while now (think 2015 first half with USA indexes going nowhere and China huge rally then EEM & China massive drop). Of course Japan and Germany had huge rallies 2015 first half but you were better off with currency hedged ETFs. So this is a matter of personal choice but if using global ETFs just allow for extra volatility and use smaller position sizing.
From here I definitely won't be doing this kind of detailed strategy, and am thinking about the core of the site that I would like to maintain. SPY daily and USA main indexes weekly posts are the first two choices; then perhaps quick posts on valuation once a week, a sentiment post only if there is something glaring; and given markets these days I would also like to track bonds, gold and oil. We'll see if there is time.