8/31/2016 Rabbit Trade (with a warning)

The Rabbit sold CTL and bought MFC with a favorable gap.

Fair Warning: I may re-combine the Rabbit and the Turtle into a single model of twenty positions by the end of the year.  The Turtle is outstripping the Rabbit quite nicely, and if that continues through the end of 2016 I'll declare the Turtle the victor (just as Aesop predicted).

But for now, we'll let the race run for another four months...

8/12/2016 Rabbit Trade

The Rabbit sold BGS and bought AVA with a positive gap before the close.

8/7/2016 The Turtle Marches On

Mouse	XLB	0.07%
Rabbit	Date	Return	Days
NVR	12/16/2015	3.09%	235
CASY	5/12/2016	16.80%	87
AVB	5/24/2016	2.13%	75
AEM	6/7/2016	15.24%	61
AMED	6/16/2016	-0.34%	52
FRO	6/27/2016	-0.50%	41
CTL	7/7/2016	1.29%	31
ASTE	7/12/2016	2.19%	26
BGS	7/27/2016	9.62%	11
BSET	8/3/2016	-0.59%	4
Turtle	Date	Return	Days
BT	8/11/2015	-25.15%	362
DY	10/30/2015	26.92%	282
TMK	11/23/2015	3.36%	258
UPLMQ	12/1/2015	-20.20%	250
OKE	1/20/2016	128.73%	200
CMP	2/19/2016	2.68%	170
NVR	2/22/2016	7.44%	167
ENOC	3/15/2016	-23.63%	145
AMWD	3/17/2016	10.02%	143
ESRX	6/13/2016	0.62%	55
	Since 5/31/2011	Annualized
S&P	62.27%	9.78%
Mouse	123.21%	16.74%
Rabbit	70.32%	10.81%
Turtle	92.78%	13.49%
	Previous	YTD
S&P	51.94%	6.80%
Mouse	77.79%	25.55%
Rabbit	57.21%	8.34%
Turtle	58.35%	21.74%

Mouse chart:

The Turtle continues to outperform the Rabbit.

That’s an extremely good development for every possible reason:

The 1800 day holding period reduces the effective annualized tax rate on capital gains to 4.36%.  That’s what the maximum possible capital gains rate of 23.8% becomes on a per year basis over the course of a 5 year holding period.

The exceptionally long holding period is also infinitely scalable in both directions.  The small time investor isn’t eaten alive by trading costs.  The large investor can creep into and out of a position without distorting the price of the stock.

Most important – the long term nature of the model makes it something that can easily be tracked on a blog.

If this keeps up I’ll ramp up the Turtle to twenty positions and retire the Rabbit. That will just leave the sector trades on the Mouse and long term positions that would only generate one trade per quarter.

But for now, we’ll give the Rabbit some more time to get back into the race.

We continue in defensive sectors in general, but the Mouse is showing the potential for short term optimism in materials with the XLB trade.

Tim

8/5/2016 Mouse Trade

The Mouse sold XLE and bought XLB before the close.

8/2/2016 Rabbit Trade

The Rabbit sold CVS and bought BSET with a 7% favorable gap.

8/1/2016 Mouse Whipsaw

The Mouse sold XLV and returned to XLE with a 2% favorable gap.