Performance Update (April 2020)
April was a sharp rebound from the March selloff. The Titan composite rose +15% during the month for Aggressive clients (vs. S&P 500 +13%).
Year to date through April, Titan clients are down between -5% and -6% after fees (beating the S&P -9% and other platforms -13% to -17%).
Despite April's rally, we're still shorting the market for you via your personalized hedge, so you generate some profits when the market goes down.
See disclosures.
Key Drivers
We saw three main drivers of your outsized returns: Fed stimulus at the macro level, stabilizing fundamental for some companies in April, and investor FOMO seeping back in.
1) The Fed willing to do whatever it takes. The central bank took unprecedented actions to try to "build a bridge" for financial markets through the COVID-19 crisis, including buying bond ETFs to keep credit flowing through the system.
2) Stabilizing trends in April, showing potential light at end of tunnel. Numerous companies reported weak Q1 earnings and gave weak/no Q2 guidance, but saw stabilizing trends in late April ("better than feared").
3) Investor FOMO chasing stocks. We saw investor sentiment improve materially from the mid-March lows, inciting a large wave of FOMO as investors worried they missed the bottom.
Some are calling it a "bear market rally," saying we're destined for a retest of the mid-March lows as the economy reopens. Others think the worst is behind us given the Fed's unprecedented stimulus and the nation's progress on social distancing and testing to mitigate the COVID-19 crisis.
We have no idea where markets are headed near-term, but the risks still seem balanced in terms of the upside vs. downside "skew." Our technical indicators suggest we're not fully out of the woods yet. That's why we continue to short the market to generate profits against your 20 Titan longs. We've prepared your portfolio for another potential pullback.
April Movers
Gainers:
PayPal (PYPL) +28%
Amazon (AMZN) +27%
Twilio (TWLO) +25%
Detractors:
Visa (V) +11%
Booking (BKNG) +10%
Uber (UBER) +8%
See disclosures.
