One change this week as QID reverses. Please read this post to understand the new portfolio.
Changes to ETF Trading Portfolio
Been meaning to do this for awhile, but the New Year a good time to make a clean break. You can see from the correlation matrix below that there was a lot of overlap among the ETFs I followed, and many of them are now so illiquid that they are untrade-able, even on a weekly basis!
Click to enlarge
DUG and SCO are highly correlated with the more liquid ERY, so they both get the boot.
DXD and FAZ are highly correlated with the more liquid SDS, so those two get the boot.
MZZ is completely illiquid and highly correlated with TZA, so it gets the boot.
EPV, FXP, SMN, SRS, TYP, YCS, and ZSL are all illiquid -- all get the boot.
Even though QID is highly correlated with SDS, I'll keep it for now.
VXX is very liquid but I prefer to keep the inverse XIV instead.
So that leaves us with: DZZ (gold), EDZ (emerging markets), ERY (energy), EUO (Euro), QID (Nasdaq 100), SDS (large caps), TBT (long treasury bond), TZA (small caps), and XIV (inverse VIX).
This is how the post will look from now on:
Books Read -- Emil and the Detectives
I'm going to try to read a book a week in 2016, ok, round it down to 50 books. Emil and the Detectives was actually an Xmas gift to my ten-year-old son, but I read it first. It was charming. Did have some disturbing pre-visions of Nazi youth (book written in 1929 ... four short years to 1933). Favorite line: "Four million people lived in Berlin, and not one of them was interested in Emil Tischbein."
Specialists with Hands on Their Bald Heads
From today's USA Today, a variation on the classic Tumblr: THE BROKERS WITH HANDS ON THEIR FACES
Photograph: Richard Drew, AP
Shake Off Your Lowly-born Tags
From my Spotify Weekly Discover list ... people, places, things name-checked in this song: Marlene Dietrich, Zizi Jeanmaire, Balmain, St. Michel Boulevard, the Rolling Stones, Sacha Distel, the Sorbonne, Picasso, Juan-les-Pins, St. Moritz, Napoléon brandy, Aga Khan, Naples. Sarstedt bemoaning social mobility? Sung from vantage point of sibling who didn't make it?
Note white people rocking listlessly in foreground (1969).
Maybe I Could Sell Kisses
One of the several Camera Obscura songs that I like ... no good live version of it on Youtube so I must link to this:
ETF Trading Portfolio Update -- January 4, 2016
No changes this week.
ETF Trading Portfolio Update -- December 28, 2015
No changes this week.
Relegation Zone
The Arctic Monkeys are no longer kids ... I like a lot of their songs, even recent ones ... another lost love song ... you'd have a lot of them too if Alexa Chung were your ex ... the absurdity of the tractor pull is inspired.
New Sandbox Additions
Santa brought the kids some earth moving equipment and a sandbox. He placed the latter in the basement and filled it with 700 pounds of sand, which strained his old back.
The sacred rule of only buying automobiles from the Axis powers also applies to toys. I love the Siku 1:50 stuff. Daddy has his own corner of the sandbox and is known to make rumbling sounds while improving the site.