My thoughts on the TSPCalc Daily Strategies going forward...

[mhende2]

I really screwed up too. I started the year in 16198, after taking a beating down below -7%, beginning of April switched to 24592 which treated me good enough to reach position #004 on 12 Dec, up 11.38%. Then on 13 Dec, watched it all start to disappear finally giving up and going to G on 24 Dec when I was supposed to move to I and finished the year -2.24%, and position 428. I reset my Fantasy, and switched to 54085 for 2019. Hopeful to get above 15% and praying for 50%. Bubba, hold my beer and watch this...

[mjedlin66]

If you haven't yet played with the Seasonal Builder, and especially the Blind Tests, I highly recommend you do so before making any decisions.

The Blind Tests are a detailed effort to figure out what Seasonal Builder criteria make effective predictions. Some of the test cases clearly don't work very well, but some do look promising compared to the C, S, and I.

https://tspcalc.com/seasonalblindtests.php

[mhende2]

mjedlin66, I for one really appreciate your efforts and did a lot better in 2018 than if I'd been making my own decisions. Many of the professional advisors and pundits on the major investment sites and business TV shows did much worse than I did. For 2019, I've written myself a note to move to G whenever the month drops -2.5% below previous month as a stop loss for that month I'm in. Otherwise will follow the strategy. Being actively aware of global events and market condition changes will also be important this year. Thanks again for your many hours developing and continued work improving tspcalc.

[Scarfinger]

I want to be in all S come Jan...
So I tweaked a different strat..and I'm not scared of the F no more as it's settled way down... so..

https://tspcalc.com/seasonal.php?ID=57171&years=04-18

I am guessing an "S" fund 100% January may be premature. Is there any data on a "bad December" equals a "good January"?

Plus a bottom has not developed yet. "F" is seasonally a good place to be for January. So I am going to stay close to a seasonal/daily seasonal (55000?).

[sonofnthng]

I didn't start following a daily seasonal until halfway through 2018. And when I did, I followed 2 different plans which were closely related.. I made it to first place in early December.. And then of the 2, I chose to follow the plan that killed me in December....

Having said that, if I followed either plan to the tee, I'd still be up top with either 13 or 15%.

Having said that, I still beat the L2040 by quite a bit, so that is a win in my book.

[mmmmmbeer]

Well... that ended up working out.

So if my maths are right... the #57171's January = +11.63% if todays +0.87% holds true. Wooooowww... bestest month ever for me.

[cosmo]

Congrats mmmbeeer.
53384 has me at a whopping -0.27, this has been hard to watch.
I really want to be committed to this tspcalc strategy thing, but follow the
leaders is starting to call to me.

[Hoss2112]

I'm surprised that I don't see folks using strategies such as 55406:

https://tspcalc.com/seasonal.php?ID=554 ... sortby=avg.

Maybe I don't fully understand the tool. From what I've gathered, 55406 has the lowest standard deviation (2.49) of any strategy with a mean of 25 or more from 2004-2018. Wouldn't that translate into more stability and less volatility from year to year?

[jlozano042]

Well... that ended up working out.

So if my maths are right... the #57171's January = +11.63% if todays +0.87% holds true. Wooooowww... bestest month ever for me.

Congratz man.

[Octjan2]

Well... that ended up working out.

So if my maths are right... the #57171's January = +11.63% if todays +0.87% holds true. Wooooowww... bestest month ever for me.

Congrats on one heck of a month. Your strat has you staying in the S fund until late February. With the S fund going up 16% in a straight line since late December, are you tempted to deviate from the strat and take profits? It may continue to go up, but it could also give up most of those gains in a week. I would take profits, but with my track record that is probably a good contrarian indicator that you should stay put in the S fund. Am I the only one that feels like the market is a magnate that pulls in the opposite direction of where I am invested, lol?

[mmmmmbeer]

Well... that ended up working out.

So if my maths are right... the #57171's January = +11.63% if todays +0.87% holds true. Wooooowww... bestest month ever for me.

Congrats on one heck of a month. Your strat has you staying in the S fund until late February. With the S fund going up 16% in a straight line since late December, are you tempted to deviate from the strat and take profits? It may continue to go up, but it could also give up most of those gains in a week. I would take profits, but with my track record that is probably a good contrarian indicator that you should stay put in the S fund. Am I the only one that feels like the market is a magnate that pulls in the opposite direction of where I am invested, lol?

Temped? Sure... going to deviate this year? No way... as I said in the OP I really messed up last year chasing highs and lows on my gut. I'm going to stick with my strat this year.

[fordest]

I'm surprised that I don't see folks using strategies such as 55406:

https://tspcalc.com/seasonal.php?ID=554 ... sortby=avg.

Maybe I don't fully understand the tool. From what I've gathered, 55406 has the lowest standard deviation (2.49) of any strategy with a mean of 25 or more from 2004-2018. Wouldn't that translate into more stability and less volatility from year to year?

That's a great strategy. Just my style, and a lot of other people do follow strategies like that one. But the low standard deviation argument kinda went out the window in 2018. From a statistical point of view, one would think the odds of a strategy like that being negative to be very low.... I believe it was argued in 2017 that certain strategies had less of a chance of being negative than its user winning the LOTTO.

Take #31877 for example. Filter it for 2004-2017. Take a look at that and tell me if it was 12/31/2017 if you would follow it for 2018. You will see the standard deviation at that time was 1.5. ONLY 1.5!! The odds for it to go negative??? IDK, but it ended up -3.41.

I am not a statistician, and I admit that all the talk of deltas and sigmas and stuff confused me. But obviously there is more at work in this market than just statistics. It doesn't quite work that way.

[Hoss2112]

Take #31877 for example. Filter it for 2004-2017. Take a look at that and tell me if it was 12/31/2017 if you would follow it for 2018. You will see the standard deviation at that time was 1.5. ONLY 1.5!! The odds for it to go negative??? IDK, but it ended up -3.41.

I am not a statistician, and I admit that all the talk of deltas and sigmas and stuff confused me. But obviously there is more at work in this market than just statistics. It doesn't quite work that way.

That's a interesting point. I looked for the lowest SD with a mean in the 20's from your 2004-2017 example and found 37197 had a SD of 0.4 and a mean of 28.83. Once I added 2018 to the calculation, the SD jumped to 7.49 with a return of -2.16 in 2018.

[fordest]

Exactly. So the StD seems less important to a lot of people now. It's less discussed but I still tend to go toward the lower StDs. There's at least a couple of us on here that look for the Highest minimum year. For example. The lowest year on #54030 is 2006 with 20.86. #62255 has a low of 21.77 in 2012 (But it's too late for me to follow that one)

That's how I decide on a strategy to look at. If I like the rest of it, (% CSI, StD, Time in F/I) then I select it.

[Chindsey]

I think it’s much more important to find/create strategies that are in and out of the stock funds during months of the year when those individual funds have historically (dating back to 1988) performed better or more poorly, and have low standard deviations within each individual month rather than between the years (2004 - 2018).

Two strategies I’ve created and am currently using as guides are 62295 and 62296.