Month: October 2016

My Fund Somewhat better than DUCKS is 1 year old: a festive but fair review

My wikifolio ("Somewhat better than DUCKS", ISIN: DE000LS9HDK3) is investable from 28.10.2016. It surely beats the DAX (main German stock index) both on absolute and risk-adjusted performance. Though I am very proud of my performance, I provide a closer look at it and show that sometimes I had just luck and sometimes I could have done better. I always preach for the rigorous and cold-blooded performance analysis and the best sermon is to demonstrate it by the example of myself.

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Big Data and Deep Learning, a technology revolution in trading or yet another hype?

Summary:

  • BigData and DeepLearning are popular buzz words nowadays. But the number of the genuine success stories is relatively small.
  • In trading the BigData technology is mostly associated with automatic analysis of the news and sentiment in social networks. But unless you are Google or Reuters, you will never be the one who gets the news first. Additionally, a market reaction both to news and sentiment is often vague and amorph.
  • Large deep neural networks closely resemble a human brain, which also has a lot of neurons, interconnected in many layers. But it doesn't mean a breakthrough to a real artificial intelligence: all is not gold that glitters.
  • a positive side: trading is only a part of the financial world. Likely, BigData + DeepLearing has a high potential in adjacent areas like risk profiling and credibility analysis.

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The Maximum Drawdown succinctly explained in 3 minutes

The maximum drawdown (MDD) is likely the most important measure of risk in practice. We explain how to calculate it and why you should keep it under control.  Remember, if the MMD reaches -50% the portfolio have to grow +100% in order just to compensate the previous loss!


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A simple scenario simulator for Vanguard optimal portfolio

Vanguard optimal portfolio - 100 scenarios - sample simulationThere is yet another Roboadvisor from Vanguard Group. As any RoboAdvisor, its recommendations are far from perfection. However, I like it (at least more than others) because the Vanguard guys managed to make it simple. On the other hand I am quite disappointed that they do not show how a suggested portfolio may evolve (and I am quite sure that legendary John Bogle would be disappointed too). That's why I made a simple scenario simulator on my own. It is based on sample with replacement.
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Update (12.10.2016) to K+S, Lufthansa, Osram and WTI

Recently I wrote about K+S and Lufthansa, Osram and WTI Oil.
Let us review this opportunities:
1) K+S: as I expected, it grows. I reduced (with small profit) my position to 2% of portfolio and (so far) will be keeping it.
2) Lufthansa: I emphasized that though I, myself, bought a little bit, I don't recommend others to do it because the LHA stock is dubious. Further the stock fell about -8% and I sold it by stop-loss. Currenly it grew about 9% from its local minimum and I recommend to sell: Lufthansa might soon "fly out" of DAX.
3) Osram: as I expected, it falls. I watch it but IMO it is still prematurely to buy.
4) WTI Oil: as Putin announced that Russia supports OPEC, oil prices jumped 3% on 10.10.2016. I halved my position with a small loss. Currently oil gradually falls again and I keep the rest of my position. However, the risks are high.

Einstein – a star trader on Wikifolio, who can beat the market

Summary: In our previous post we reviewed Wikifolio.com, a FinTech project that lets everybody build a proven track record. Today we review the performance of Einstein's portfolio "Platintrader 1000% Leidenschaft" and explain why his performance is a matter of trading mastership, not of just luck.

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Wikifolio – a genuinely social trading and investment FinTech project

Update 30.07.2017: Unfortunately, Wikifolio turned out to be not a genuinely social FinTech but rather yet another attempt to make quick money at costs of retail investors. Here we explain why (in German). But we keep the original post below for historical purposes.

Wikifolio and LS - photo for letYourMoneyGrow.com

Summary of advantages:

  • Wikifolio allows everyone to build a proven track record. If a portfolio meets some simple requirements, an ETF on it can be issued. Technically such ETFs are issued like certificates by Lang & Schwarz and are traded by L&S directly and on the Stuttgart Exchange.
  • Wikifolio adheres to maximum disclosure policy: in particular, for every portfolio they provide complete trading history in real time.
  • Wikifolio is very suitable for the strategies that imply frequent trading since there is no costs per trade (only bid-ask spread and all-in fee of 0.95% p.a.)
  • Wikifolio liberates portfolio management from regulatory cram and lets investors meet the portfolio managers directly (without expensive and dubious middlemen). At the same time the investors do not need to transfer their money directly to portfolio managers, so there is virtually no scam risk.
  • Last but not least, numerous successful traders on Wikifolio clearly disprove the mantra that "nobody can beat the market".

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Calling an R-script from PHP: pitfall with loading R-packages

We continue developing letYourMoneyGrow.com and soon will make the first tool from the promised portfolio optimization toolset publicly available. And so far a small technical report. We implement the core business logic in R and wrap-up it with PHP. Calling Rscript from PHP via exec("Rscript ...")  seems to be easy ... as far as you don't use any libraries. And if you do, you will get an error message like Error in library(RMySQL) : there is no package called 'RMySQL'. Fortunately, there is a solution. However, note that a loaded package may depend on other packages. For instance, RMySQL depends on DBI. Thus you should explicitly resolve this dependency in your R-code like this:

library(DBI, lib.loc = c("/home/<yourUsername>/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/<yourRVersion>", "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library", "/usr/lib/R/library"))
library(RMySQL, lib.loc = c("/home/<yourUsername>/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/<yourRVersion>", "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library", "/usr/lib/R/library"))

Osram (DE000LED4000) jumps 11% – acquisition offer from China – I sold the stock

osram_led400_filamentlampvsled
According to the news a Chinese company San'an Optoelectronics has offered about €70 per share and the acquisition is "in all likelyhood". Osram provides no comments.

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Gold down -3%, silver -5% – an opportunity to buy?

Well, if you have no position, then likely yes (as usual, start gradually, with 1% or 2% of your trading capital). I bought today, unfortunately a little bit prematurely. If tomorrow the prices recoil, I will halve my position. But I don't regret the purchase, anyway, it is a good diversification for my stock portfolio.