The Billion Dollar Club

Objective

I have developed what I believe is a valid and profitable model for trading US equities. This journal will be a repository of real-time (as opposed to hind-sight) output from my model.

The last five years have been particularly good for the US stock market. It is very tempting to mistake a bull market for brains in such favourable conditions. I hope to demonstrate that my model consistently out-performs the SP500, and also generates annual returns in excess of 20% in all market conditions – good, bad and everything in between.

I live in London, and have been a keen student of the Stock Market for several years. I have two degrees in Engineering. I have also stretched my self-taught Investment savvy with the post-graduate Certificate in Quantitative Finance (Wilmott CQF).

I have been involved in the technology side of the Investment industry for almost ten years. I believe the time is ripe for me to get involved in the billion-dollar business of professional Fund/Portfolio Management.

I hope that the stellar returns I demonstrate in this journal will attract the attention of potential employers or partners who would like to leverage my skills for the benefit of their business.

In other words, I am putting myself on trial before the Court of T2W .

Let me start by saying that I classify every person who invests money in the Capital Markets as a Fund/Portfolio Manager. Henceforth, I will use the term ‘Portfolio Manager’ generically.

I believe that the job of a Portfolio Manager is akin to that of a Football (Soccer) Team Manager. Only the very naïve manager thinks that he can build a winning team by simply assembling the best players available. Real Madrid tried that with the galacticos, and we all know what happened to them. Conversely, it is foolhardy to believe that even the best playing system in the world can turn a group of mediocre players into an outstanding team. The very best football managers appreciate that sustainable success depends on selecting the best players available for their team, and then devising a playing strategy that exploits their players’ strengths to best effect. In fact, I would expect that the same principle applies to all team sports e.g. basketball, American football, hockey etc.

It is my opinion that this principle also applies to Portfolio Management. Individual stocks are the players, and collectively they form a portfolio (team). Excellent returns are achieved when Fundamental Analysis (player selection) is combined with Technical/Quantitative Analysis (playing strategy). Using just one approach to the exclusion of the other does not cut it, for me.

This is my philosophy. I certainly do not expect everybody to agree with me. Neither am I elevating my philosophy above anybody else’s. I just wanted to give a brief preview of my approach, and may revisit it in more detail later.

I have called my model the FAB TEAM.

F – Fundamental Screening
A – Additional Screening
B – Bias (Long/Short; Trend/Countertrend etc)

T – Timing Entry
E – Establishing Entry Price
A – Allocating Assets (Position Sizing)
M – Managing Position/Portfolio/Self

I will be simulating a $100,000 margin (50% margin) account, simply because it's much easier to calculate percentages (e.g 2% risk, 23.7% drawdown, 17.6% return on investment etc) on 100,000 than say 25,000 or 1 million. So my buying power will be $200,000, which I may or may not use depending on what the Asset Allocation module dictates for each position.

There will be times when FAB TEAM will not allow new positions to be taken in all the stock that qualify. To reflect this fact, I will have a squad (stocks that qualify) from which I will select a team (stocks that I will take positions in).

I belive FAB TEAM is scalable to at least $1m, and will higlight stocks in the Squad that have good liquidity (average of over 900,000 shares daily). However, other criteria (not liquidity) will dictate which stock get into the team, so I might not positions in less liquid stock.

What follows will be real-time exhibits from FAB TEAM. I believe they will convince even the most sceptical juror that my case is an authentic one .

Sounds interesting - good luck.

Are you confident that your strategy is replicable in scale, ie at the sort of size a fund manager would actually be working at?

Hi Jack,

You beat me to it. I was just going to add that info to my last post. I will be simulating a $100,000 account. However, I believe that FAB TEAM is scalable to at least $1m, possibly much higher, but I don't want to be too bullish.

ET?