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The week's question
In March 2025, in the thread "Re: OT, out", Umm asked the members: "Do you think it is because America is made up of magical soil that makes businesses based in America magically profitable?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Investment Strategies / Mechanical Investing
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Author: mungofitch ✹✺ SILVER
SHREWD
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Number: of 6243 
Subject: Re: OT: so you want an index
Date: 07/04/24 11:57 AM
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Jim, any idea of drawdowns with this system?

Well, it's a long/long system, not long/cash. It only switches between "long the S&P cap weight" and "long the S&P equal weight", so the drawdowns will be extremely comparable to those.
S&P 500 nominal total return worst drawdown since 1960 = -54.85%
S&P 500 equal weight nominal total return worst drawdown since 1960 = -59.84%
Switch scheme -57.29%

As with any "long equities all the time", you'll lose half your money once in a while, on a mark-to-market basis. That's life.

Or worse.
The memento mori:
S&P 500 nominal total return worst drawdown since 1930 = -81.84%
S&P 500 equal weight nominal total return worst drawdown since 1930 = -82.87%

If you had a long/cash timing system you trusted, you could use this one to pick which thing to be long. Depending on how frequent your long/cash signals are, you might not even have to bother switching which ting you're long, just hold what you bought till the next bear signal, and it still might give you a few basis points of advantage over "only SPY when long" over the long run.

Jim
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This community has written 6,227 posts about Mechanical Investing. The article-length ones it recommended most:
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