Volatility Portfolio up 53% in 2017
When I started my Volatility Portfolio back in January 2017, I really didn’t have much more in mind than a conviction that in this market traders and investors and traders could score market beating returns from taking advantage of market and economic volatility. I didn’t narrow my approach to volatility to one or two aspects or markets, but instead followed a wide menu approach to volatility as a characteristic stretching across markets from real estate to bonds to education to stocks. That menu as based on the research I’d done for my February 2016 book Juggling with Knives: Smart Investing in the Coming Age of Volatility. Certainly the return on this portfolio for its first year of operation confirm this wide-menu approach. The portfolio showed a total return of 53.06%–assuming equal initial weightings in each position–as of December 31, 2017. That qualifies, I’d say, as beating the market in 2017. The total return on the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index was 21.64% in 2017. But in that first year of operation I found a more focused goal for the Volatility Portfolio too.
