ajtj99's Market Pulse

[SteveO]

I do partially agree with you. It is hard to imagine why he did not see favorable market action a couple of times such as Novemebr 2004 and November, 2005. He also never got into any junk even when there was such favorable market action in junk.
However, it is not really fair to judge a system that is geared for long time horizons on the basis of short ones. You can also not expect an investment that is made for those looking for low beta to have a high beta when the stock market is bullish. I think that judging him by his usefulness to your own investment style is not really fair to him. He is much more flexible than "hedged until 2016". He is looking at a LT horizon and the best strategy for LT returns. He will miss some rallies. I think that it is easy to knock him when his returns are subpar and that he would argue that the subpar returns over the last couple of years will be dwarfed by his system's success over long time horizons. His returns YTD are actually good and exactly what you would expect when investing in a fund like his. He has a nice steady return in the high single digits on a full-year basis with very little beta and a fairly high alpha.
The question is whether he is successful at doing what he has set out to do. I think that for the most part, he is.