BTAL
AGFiQ U.S. Market Neutral Anti-Beta Fund
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AGFiQ U.S. Market Neutral Anti-Beta Fund (BTAL) as a short?
BTAL - AGFiQ U.S. Market Neutral Anti-Beta Fund
AGFiQ US Market Neutral Anti-Beta ETF (BTAL) How is this not the number 1 short?
Thoughts on AGFiQ US Market Neutral Anti-Beta Fund (BTAL) as a long short?
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I think a lot people are missing the nuance of this post. No one can predict the future of the markets, but everyone has a need to de-risk at various times. The obvious solution is to sell positions and increase cash. However, with highly appreciated assets, that tax impact would be too great. The OP is offering one strategy (an inverted ETF) that hedges while minimizing capital gains. Others have offered alternative strategies (put options, collars, /MES futures (most capital efficient) or BTAL (less capital efficient but won't erode to zero medium-long-term)). Can someone comment on the relative efficacy, complexity and cost of these various hedging strategies?
I hedge my letfs with BTAL DBMF and gld
Daily rebalanced leveraged inverse ETFs have a lot of volatility drag, especially since volatility tends to be higher in bear markets. I would avoid those. When I feel bearish, I would hedge with /MES futures or BTAL, and diversify with gold and long treasurys.
Cash, Gold, anti-Beta fund like BTAL, maybe managed futures like KMLM or CTA
Kind of curious. What is the basis behind KMLM and ZROZ? FWIW, I tried a 1/3 TQQQ, 1/3 UPRO, 1/6 TLT, 1/6 BTAL leveraged ETF portfolio in my HSA and didn't see the same results as the backtest. Maybe I was really bad at executing, didn't sell in 2022, but chose to deleverage early this year. Don't regret doing that b/c I sleep better.
BTAL has been great for me as a hedge, 20% in my retirement portfolio.
So you have a couple options: 1. You can sit in a cash proxy like SGOV 2. You can model a portfolio with multiple hedges that balance out 3. You can incorporate funds like KMLM, BTAL, SJB, TAIL 4. You can mitigate risk by going into hedged or rebalancing ETFs like ALLW, HEGD, or Pacer Trendpilot.
The problem is timming, and the markets can stay irrational way longer than we can stay solvent. So I don't like to short anything. But hedging my portfolio with some BTAL is something I'm doing.
Yeah, Those high PE AI stocks are primed to get crushed when reality sets in. BTAL is a smart play if you don't want to pick individual losers. Been watching this space too and the hype definitely feels overcooked right now.
I tried a 3x leveraged portfolio with UPRO, TQQQ, and both TMF and BTAL as hedges based on several popular back tests. TMF got destroyed in 2022 as long duration bonds got fucked as the fed was raising rates. It never functioned well enough as a hedge (and I don’t think will in the future either). BTAL actually worked well. Glad it was in the portfolio. Backtests were skewed due to long periods of slow grind up post GFC. In fact, it’s the same period when the short vol trade (XIV) was very popular. I think it could work, but you have to have immense risk tolerance. I did not- deleveraged in Jan/Feb and just went into non leveraged indexes.
For medium volatility: SHCG, VTI, QQQM For high volatility (and higher reward): QLD, GOVZ, BTAL rebalanced every 1-3 months.
High-floor 2-month play right now is BTAL. Not sure about options but a good ETF to by shares in and hole for the next few months.
1. RSI tapping around 70 for both QQQ and SPY for the last few weeks. Results in pullback 90% of the time. Always drives up BTAL 5-15% in the short term (1-2 mos.) while most things fall with the market. 2. Increase in fear drives migration to lower beta stocks. This whole place is talking Iran lol. Even if we didn’t dip, you’ll see a shift that direction.
great time to play BTAL
Ballsy. I don’t play with triple leveraged short funds anymore, but I love playing BTAL to capitalize on the reversal
I think BTAL is reduced to 0.45%?
If you really thought that, you could grab some BTAL which could go up as markets drift down. That would help protect capital. But I wouldn’t own too much of it. Accumulating, I’d probably go 45% large cap growth or S&P500, 45% small cap value. The rest GLDM or BTAL. Actually I might skip or reduce the 500 bubble and go with something mid cap growthy like IMCG or IWP.
Sell a put, but can be a bit technical. A bunch of ETfs could help, either add BTAL to your portfolio (short high beta) or something like TAIL or CAOS ETF. The later two are designed to hedge and professionally managed.
There are always ways to make money in a consistent bear or bull market. SH, BTAL, SPD, SGOV, GLD (probably)....
Can someone look up BTAL? It’s about 15% of my port and I’m wondering if I should literally full port it right now.
Good port but this is a possibility. Stagflation. 2022 again on steroids when bonds do not turn green when stocks take a beating. Easy to add a small amount of gold futures, maybe managed futures trend ETF, tail etf like CAOS or anti beta BTAL. Or just commodity focused fund like COM or CTA. Or a combo of some of these.
Sold most of my VTI earlier this week and about BTAL and CTA. Bought 20 MSTR shares at around 240 and 253.
Nope. Most of my savings is in VTI/AVUV and then 10-15% in anti-beta hedges like CTA/KMLM/BTAL, then 120 MSTR shares.
To the person who told me about BTAL, thank you!
One last tidbit. BTAL has been -11% since its inception in 2011, which was the start of the tech bull run. Only down 15% in 14 years. This is fantastic for a hedge in my honest opinion. Some folks ran a simulation from 2000-2010 and it was up around 95% in that timeframe.
15% of my portfolio is actually in BTAL (anti-market) Up 11% last month, pretty good stuff.
BTAL doing good with all this chaos. It basically shorts high beta and goes lon low beta stocks.
SPHD is interesting. I'm in BTAL which may function similarly. 0.25 today is amazing, I'm down 1.1 today and already consider that a win compared to SPY/QQQ.
I’ve decided on the following: 1. TLT - Should maintain value or even increase if the economy worsens. Pays a dividend in the meantime. Also, the Trump admin has repeatedly said they want to get the 10 yr rate down. TLT would appreciate in this instance. 2. SPLV - Low volatility stocks appreciate in case we are still in a bull market and lose a lot less than SPY in a bear market. 3. ACWX - Most of the “overpriced” stocks are in the USA. Having exposure to equities is important to maintain purchasing power; buying stocks that are cheaper may help avoid a big crash. As well, individuals and institutions may want to diversify outside the USA b/c of this administration. 4. BTAL - Not really a long term hold. But can appreciate significantly in the event of a crash and not lose much or even gain in a continuing bull market. 5. CTA - Helps maintain purchasing power if commodities take off. 6. IYR - Helps maintain purchasing power by investing in real estate. Should do well if 10 yr yield comes down. 7. TSLQ - Who among us can resist shorting the world’s biggest most overpriced meme stock? Plan to take profits on BTAL/CTA/TSLQ as they come. These aren’t good long term holds.
I found during the 2022 downturn that BTAL was good to hold. I will look into QDSNX.
I stay away from options, I use products like UVXY and BTAL.
I’m thinking: 1. SPLV 2. BTAL 3. TLT 4. IYR 5. CTA 6. TSLQ 7. ACWX Decided against GLD b/c it is already overbought.
SPHB. It's not beta-weighted precisely, but... Wait, you want an inverse beta-weighted fund, not a beta weighted fund? There's a bet-against-beta factor. BTAL is a market neutral version, but you want market exposure. I thought there were more BAB but now that I look, they are mostly using the similar min-volatility factor, like USMV SPLV VFMV SPMV. But that should work for your purpose.
Also put options. Treasury etfs have a “slight” negative correlation. Checkout BTAL which is stocks of negative beta.
There are a lot of things to consider. Don't forget that you can also put in 50% or so, reducing both your volatility and returns by half. Another option is to do some hedging. You could put 80% or so in the market, and the rest in uncorrelated assets like BTAL, ZROZ, KMLM or even gold. But the math is against DCAing. It's a good idea if someone is starting out a strategy that they're not sure that they can stick with. However, its benefits are generally psychological.
50% RPAR 25% bonds 25% tips 25% commodity producers and gold 25% stocks. 50% BTAL
Yes, thats upro. Is 3x better than 2x long term? Thats really period dependent. Its certainly less stable. From a oure equities perspective the optimal leverage for gains + not getting obliterated is like 1.8-2x. You have to handle longer drawback periods (time to recovery from trough to former peak). 3x is only recommended with hedging, never alone, though tons of bozos will run around saying DCA DCA DCA DCA like thats a magic cure for having 95% unrealized losses, where you have to double your money then double it again then double it again and youre still not break even. 3x belongs with a hedge like TMF or KMLM or maybe even gold ive seen helps reduce max drawdown at the cost of lower CAGR, or a super volatile uncorrelated instrument like BTAL. Now, if the market really does crash 30-55% again, that certainly does sounds like a great generational buying opportunity, and DCA DCA DCA makes a lot of sense at that point, but being unhedged at the top of a soaring market just seems irresponsible and greedy.
The main point of the book is that the expected risk premia for stocks and bonds is very low right now which probably means that they won’t perform as well moving forward. You can react to this phenomenon in three ways: 1) taking more risk in stocks and hope for the best; 2) just endure it, or 3) diversify beyond a buy and hold equity/bond portfolio. He says that, market timing being really difficult, the best strategy is to have a portfolio that works during all scenarios, even when stocks and bond world badly. So he proposes investing in a buy and hold portfolio of stocks, fixed income, commodities, long/short market neutral risk premia, coupled with trend following and maybe tail risk protection. He also thinks that you should build a well diversified portfolio and then use leverage if you want to increase the risk/expected returns (that’s not an original argument, but a consequence of modern portfolio theory). The kind of portfolio that he proposes is hard to implement only with ETFs. Maybe you can use something like DBMF or KMLM for trend following, or RSST or RSBT if you want to use leverage. However it’s hard to find a properly leveraged long/short ETF because of regulations. BTAL is a risk neutral long/short fund, and RSSY and RSBY are leveraged funds that include a long/short carry factor strategy.
I'm 46.5 and 100% in equities. I plan to remain that way for a good period of time yet, even though I have medium-term retirement goals (<10 years). Once retired, I expect I will still keep a majority in equities but probably a strategy involving something like an anti-Beta ETF that I've mentioned here before (BTAL).
You can simulate possible outcomes using Portfolio Visualizer's Monte Carlo portolio sim tool (https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/monte-carlo-simulation). I use it all the time, and it gives me a lot of confidence that I'm on the right path for my investment strategy and age. Adding in BTAL at the percentage suggested (approx 37%) reduced my safe retirement withdrawals by only 1%, but decreased my 10th percentile drawdown from a bit over 50% to only 26.7%. You can do similar simulations by adding in bonds to portfolio visualizer and seeing how they affect your outcomes. For me, the supposed benefits of bonds don't warrant the lack of growth. You may decide otherwise.
It depends on your retirement horizon, but 41 seems very early to be putting such a large percentage into bonds. I'm five years older than you, and still 100% in equities. Something I'm looking into to reduce drawdown risk is BTAL, which is a market neutral anti-beta ETF. There's an interesting article about it here: https://www.thestreet.com/etffocus/blog/investing-strategy-using-btal-derisk-your-equity-portfolio-generate-better-risk-adjusted-returns.
I ran a portfoliovisualizer backtest with a triple leveraged portfolio (UPRO, TQQQ, and TMF or BTAL) and decided to implement it in my HSA since 2019. It performs very well but only in low volatility regimes- which is essentially post GFC to pre-COVID19. It's not a set it and forget it strategy. I was hedged with BTAL (an anti-correlationfund) in 2022 when my portfolio took a bath and BTAL helped a lot. Kind of fun to play around with but in the end just demonstrates underperformance compared to SPY/QQQ buy and hold due to volatility. In a low volatility environment it may be good but who can say that with certainty.
BTAL was a good hold for me to reduce beta. Kind of exotic though
Alot of people will tell you to pick value stocks to balance out the growth. However, from looking at value stocks during big market wide crashes ( 2008 & 2022 ), value took big -30% hits when tech was taking -60-70% hits. My picks now for defense/hedging are in “Anti-Market” ETFs, short term US treasuries/debt securities, stable currencies, HYSA’s, and Gold: BTAL, SHY, MINT, FXF, UUP, & GLD. These performed significantly better than Value stocks - Check the stats yourself on Yahoo Finance etc. to fact check me.
The best hedge holding I’ve found is BTAL. It’s like the anti-market stock.
REITs are traded like any other stock so as volume pours into the market, REITs rise like other stocks. Also, interest rates tend to have a similar impact on REITs as they do on other sectors where companies borrow money (like tech). In terms of reducing beta, you can add an anti-beta fund like $BTAL into the mix. Another option is using hedging instruments like $UVXY or buying specific low-beta tickers like $PG, $NVO, and $LLY.
yes exactly that are also my thoughts, too bad that BTAL is only available to backtest from 2011. maybe i find a way to do the backtest manually since they short high beta and long low beta stocks in the SPY.
OP check out BTAL. It shorts high beta stocks and longs low beta stocks. It’s a great rebalancing hedge with VTI and even leveraged funds.
I just replaced my GLD with BTAL, stronger negative correlation for rebalancing purposes.
You could have him buy around 20% of his portfolio into BTAL to add some protection or some short term Treasuries. As long as it's a basket of 20 stocks or more, it will act pretty much like any stock fund. Do that because long term treasuries are now correlated with stock so they offer no protection in the current environment.
Managed futures, KMLM, DBMF, RSBT, Market Neutral, BTAL, LBAY, hedge fund replication HFND.
Trsrys + BTAL +GLDM + Managed futures
Cash. Take a look at the prospectis of BTAL. Perhaps the managers have other funds.
Equities go up and down, that's just what they do. Many people will tell you VT/VTI are your best bet in any market. If you're front loading I guess you won't have the benefit of DCA to smooth it out, so if the volatility frightens you, there are some other options. - Low volatility ETFs consisting of value stocks, which are going to be less volatile than the big growth stocks, e.g. USMV. - Diversify with uncorrelated and less volatile assets. Obviously bonds are an option, but also consider a managed futures (KMLM) or long/short equities "beta neutral" (BTAL) strategy, but be aware these types of funds cost more. - If you're really uncertain, just throw everything into a tbill ladder and call it a day.
TIPS have positive real yields recently so they would be okay. And if real yields fall, they will appreciate in price. My out-of-market position is a combination of treasurys (futures in my case or you could use TLH or similar funds) plus a medium quality bond fund plus a managed futures fund plus BTAL (market neutral in dollar terms but the factor is bet-against-beta so it has net negative market beta overall) plus a little gold.
When my gut tells me treasuries will go down and are a bad Idea to hold when the fed says they're going to raise rates. I should have found alternatives faster and sold out of treasuries. Would have been down only 4% this year if I had found BTAL (anti beta neutral fund) It does the same thing in a portfolio as long term Treasuries but is unaffected by interest rates. But I found that too late in the year and now I'm down 14%. So I should have listened to my gut and got out of treasuries a lot sooner.
I bonds, they pay out inflation rate and can't loss face value. Basically you want a very diversified portfolio as it is going to be very hard to guess and trade through this turbulence in the market. Gold, stocks, anti beta neutral fund (BTAL) and maybe treasuries. Cash isn't a bad option either, war looks possible and that could make the markets shut down. And of course if everything else is going down faster than the dollar the dollar starts looking pretty good.
I had a look. Not at all what I was looking for. I was looking for a safe haven. BTAL isn't that.
LoL. What’s amateur is you missing the point about BTAL performance as a hedge. Perhaps you are the shit :)
>BTAL up 12% YTD, cash down YTD because of inflation You don't get to remove inflation from a cash position but not a fund's performance. That's some amateur shit.
BTAL went down since June because stocks went up since June. BTAL up 12% YTD, cash down YTD because of inflation and foreign exchange. LoL
>BTAL DOWN since June. Cash performed better.
BTAL is a much safer option as can hold long-term with low risk when stocks down.
BTAL - best hedge when stocks down.
if you still want a risk reduction asset BTAL is a good bond replacement and requires less to get the same result compared to TLT (20 year plus treasuries etf). MVIX is another option but not as good as it goes down a lot over time. VTI and VOO are basically the exact same fund. Extremely high correlation. You would benefit more from picking some of these for equities. VOE (mid cap value) and VBR (small cap value), "VTV or VOO or VTI" ((large caps) pick one)), VDC ( consumer Staples ( best sector with lowest risk of the last 50 years)) and maybe pick an emerging markets fund. I recommend AIA and XSOE for emerging market.
Tinfoil hat time. This means I have zero proof. Don't take any of this as given or true... This drop feels orchestrated The purposeful destruction of that tether, with that initial drop at the perfect time (when it was supposed to prove itself as a hedge) along with bots that all have a similar message in their subreddit It all aligns at the same time and destroys people's confidence in it This could all be a coincidence. These things can happen (see Chernobyl). But there's enough there to wonder about Again, no proof. I don't own any and don't care outside of a general distaste for injustice Here are some tickers (so maybe this one gets through) : QQQ, TLT, HDGE, BTAL, SQQQ, USD
If you are going to reduce your exposure to the market, do it with a clear plan of how you will get back in. There will most likely come a point where the market starts going higher than you think it should, and getting stuck waiting for another dip that never comes is worse than losing some money in the short term. My safe haven sub-portfolio is treasuries, BTAL, GLDM, managed commodity futures. I generally don't need a direct hedge because I mostly invest in indexes, but if I were to use one, I would go with TAIL (puts) or short SPX rather than VIX funds.
I just did a very silly backtest on [https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/](https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/) BTAL launched in 2012. If you had bought $10,000 and held it all the way to April 1 2020 you would have actually made.... $186. Doing the same by holding the inverse S&P 500 (SH) ETF would've lost you about $7,000. If on February 1 2020 you had the prescients to know COVID was going to destroy the market, holding BTAL or SH would've had almost exactly the same effect had you sold on April 1 2020. In other words, its a much safer hedge than just holding an inverse ETF.
My taxable account at IBKR is: 30% BTAL 40% USMV 30% MTUM. BTAL has worked pretty well as a hedge this last week. BTAL didn't work earlier this year because high-beta stocks just went ballistic. So it would be best as a hedge to MTUM, the high beta fund. But back testing shows a mix of USMV gets a much lower drawdown at a higher sortino ratio. If the market goes down it should work as a hedge, kind of like long term bonds... but I suspect long term bonds are a guaranteed money loser whereas BTAL isn't a guaranteed money looser. If the market kinda trades sideways it should do OK, if we go to the moon then it will lose some money. <shrug> its all theoretical
Worked until it didn't: https://www.barchart.com/etfs-funds/quotes/BTAL/interactive-chart/fullscreen
Treasuries (VGIT/VGLT) and broad market bonds (AGG) are still good. The ten year is at 1.29%, thirty year is 1.90%, and agg is 1.38%. On one hand those numbers are low compared to past decades. On the other hand, they can still improve a portfolio at that yield through diversification as long as yields don't start consistently rising, and our yields are higher than in most other highly developed countries. You can also buy some I-bonds, limited to 10k per year per person. They are tied to inflation like TIPS but they also have a real yield component that isn't negative (0% vs -1.03 for 10yr TIPS). You can dip down in credit a bit with multisector bond funds for higher yield, though that additional return will be fairly correlated with stocks. If you're looking to branch out from there, there's TIPS (SCHP), gold, managed commodity futures (usually have quite high fees though), market neutral strategies like bet against beta (BTAL) or dynamic equity momentum (PTLC) (several of these funds have closed like DYLS, you can also implement it yourself with stop losses or monitoring a momentum indicator like 200 day moving average vs 50 day). These alts variously have low/unreliable returns, unreliable correlation to equities, high vol, and/or high fees, so I wouldn't just allocate to them in your portfolio without examination. Lastly there's direct hedges like buying protective puts or equivalently replacing your stocks with an equivalent notional amount of long calls (TAIL and SWAN do this in fund form). Direct hedging tends to be expensive long term because
When you say you tried bonds, were they treasury bonds like TLT? Treasury bonds are less positively (sometimes negatively) correlated to stocks than corporate bonds. For example, TLT was up a bunch in march 2020. In terms of non-negative-ish expected return indirect hedges, I have some BTAL and a managed futures fund. But CAPM will tell you that a reliable market hedge should have a negative If you want a reliable hedge, you can short the market with options/futures, or an ETF that does it for you like SH or TAIL, or short selling an ETF. You could also short credit, though I'm not sure what the most efficient way to do that is.
Quality: QUAL IQLT, VFQY, BTAL Equity Momentum: MTUM, IMTM, VFMO Futures Momentum: CSAAX, PQTAX, AHLPX
Even beta risk isn’t holding up. I’m invested in an anti-Beta ETF (BTAL) and it hit an all time low today.