A 5+ year report card of our asset allocation Trend Model

For years, I have been publishing the readings of my Trend Model on a weekly basis. As a reminder, the Trend Model is a composite model of trend following models as applied to global stock prices around the world, as well as commodity prices.

The model has three signals:

• Bullish: When there is a clear upwards, or reflationary, global trend
• Bearish: When there is a clear downwards, or deflationary, global trend
• Neutral: When the trend signals are not discernible

The first derivative of the Trend Model, i.e. whether the signal is getting stronger or weaker, and combined with some overbought/oversold indicators, has performed admirably as a high turnover trading model (see My Inner Trader and this ungated version for non-subscribers). However, I have never produced a full report card for the Trend Model. While the actual signal dates were always available on the website, I never got around to compiling the performance record because I was always tied up on other projects, and the task never got to the top of the pile.

After several repeated requests from readers, here is the report card of the Trend Model. I want to make clear that this study represents the real-time track record of actual out-of-sample signals. These are not backtested. The results were solid, and the analysis was also revealing about what an investor should expect when using this model for asset allocation.

The full post can be found here.