In our last post, we discussed the potential for adding a tactical trigger to execute a strategy. In this case, the strategy is investing in a large cap stock index that allows us achieve a compounded annual return of 7% and limits the yearly deviat...

Yield curve predictions are hitting the headlines again here, here, and here, though they’re not quite front page. The alarm bells are ringing since the probability of a recession appears to have increased meaningfully in the past few months. We look at the data to try to infer whether ...

Yield curve predictions are hitting the headlines again here, here, and here, though they’re not quite front page. The alarm bells are ringing since the probability of a recession appears to have increased meaningfully in the past few months. We loo...

In our last post, we defined the goal of an investment strategy, showed how comparing strategies may not be as straightforward as one would imagine, and outlined some critical questions that need to be answered when weighing competing strategies. In this post, we’ll look at what an investment strategy’...

In our last post, we defined the goal of an investment strategy, showed how comparing strategies may not be as straightforward as one would imagine, and outlined some critical questions that need to be answered when weighing competing strategies. In...

Motivation This string of posts is meant to help non-professional investors understand some of the complexities involved in choosing an investment strategy, suggest a logical framework on how to do just that, and offer different ways to analyze the data that motivate the strategies we’ll examine. Strategies for the ...

Motivation This string of posts is meant to help non-professional investors understand some of the complexities involved in choosing an investment strategy, suggest a logical framework on how to do just that, and offer different ways to analyze the data that motivate the strategies we’ll examine. Strategies for the ...

A recession a year from now? As we saw in the last post, when we run a model with a 6-month look forward, it does a fairly reasonable job in predicting a recession, assuming we use a threshold closer to recession base rate. In this post, we look at 12-month ...

A recession a year from now? As we saw in the last post, when we run a model with a 6-month look forward, it does a fairly reasonable job in predicting a recession, assuming we use a threshold closer to recession base rate. In this post, we look...

Where did we go wrong? Not another model! As we saw in the last post, one iteration of the yield curve – the spread between 10-year and 3-month Treasuries – doesn’t generate a great model of recession probabilities. Part of this is that recessions are not that common, so we’re ...

Where did we go wrong? Not another model! As we saw in the last post, one iteration of the yield curve – the spread between 10-year and 3-month Treasuries – doesn’t generate a great model of recession probabilities. Part of this is that recessio...

All models are wrong Build the model In the last post, we discussed the yield curve, why investors focus on it, and looked at one measure of the curve – the spread between 10-year and 3-month Treasury yields. In this post, we build a model th...

All models are wrong Build the model In the last post, we discussed the yield curve, why investors focus on it, and looked at one measure of the curve – the spread between 10-year and 3-month Treasury yields. In this post, we build a model that...

Introduction What is a yield curve? (Skip if you already know!) Show me the data! (Start here if don’t want the background) Investing pundits like to quote the yield curve as a nearly infallible indicator for the next recession. But what do th...

Introduction What is a yield curve? (Skip if you already know!) Show me the data! (Start here if don’t want the background) Investing pundits like to quote the yield curve as a nearly infallible indicator for the next recession. But what do the ...