Caught off guard. Actively Managed vs Passively Managed

During this summer, we were experimenting with moving away from Actively Managed (daily/weekly) to a relatively less Actively Managed (Monthly), and were caught off guard by the market turbulence in the last couple of weeks!  That does mean anything yet, with just one data-point, while we may continue to experiment another time.  While it is well known that Actively Managed is the way to beat the market and top benchmarks, our goal was/is still to find that Optimal balanced "Routine" of methodical monitoring and management.

In our future post, we will post our Daily and Weekly Routines.  We haven't come to any distinction or specific routine for Monthly and/or Quarterly (however, there is the watching-out for Quarterly Earnings dates for current-positions/holders, which of course is different times/dates for each of the positions).

Looking back at recent turbulence:

If we were to be actively monitoring/managing, we see that August 1st was the clear first indicator and August 2nd was a clear sign to start very closely monitoring and possible even pulling out weakening stocks especially those with little/no profit-cushion.

It was simply by fluke that we got back on the wheels 2 weeks later, only to see Market seemingly sprung back up and down again, within 2 weeks!  We did shed a couple of holdings and added more of those holding up well.

TIP: Those shocks showing resilience against a market down-turn could potentially be big winners when market finally starts a real new uptrend (actually the corollary is more true than this.  Any big winners would have shown resilience against a market turbulence!).

Looking back, we probably would have moved to at least 75%-50% cash, too quick, it so happened that most of our current holdings may not be directly exposed to international economical and Geo-political uncertainties.  Most of the holding simply happen to be "US/Canada domestic", except the couple holding that we shed in the last 2 weeks.

Recent SELLs (during last week+):

SFIX   (3x times usual allowed loss of 1x)
ANTX  (held through earnings due to residual 3x profit cushion that evaporated to 0%)
TTGT  (before earnings due to low profit cushion)
CGNZ  (experimental buy gone bad; wrong/bad buy decision)
WPRT  (a genuinely failed good-breakout within 2 days!)
CRSP   (bagged a handsome profit of 1 quarter, before before recent earnings).

Current holdings: (in the order of position size/equity: Big, Med, Small):

DHI   (increased holdings to double, due to resilience to current market condition)

TREX (increased holdings to double, due to resilience to current market condition)

CSIQ    (new buy, after recent earnings)

ZS    (added to existing residual position, during the recent dip; majority profit taken out last quarter).

CVNA  (new buy, after recent earnings)

USAT  (new buy; experimental; not confirmed, under microscope)

NVAX (new buy; experimental; confirmed/worked-out)

ACHN  (new buy; experimental; not confirmed, under microscope)
RUHN  (new buy; experimental; not confirmed, under microscope, high-risk, small position)

In the RADAR for new buys:

New buy opportunities see to have dried up.  There are hardly any that are screaming to be bought.

Here are a handful in our watchlist:

SONO  (may take more time to be prime-time buy; potential ground-floor entry point at first stage).

EB  (same as above)

KPTI   (confirmed; missed first opportunity; but possible next-stage opportunity).

QTS  (unusual and interesting find, while we did a curious experiment by scanning for vehicles that may be a good hedge against current market turbulence, that may be immune to international trade-wars; This one turned out to be a REIT.  Another worthy mention is a ETF called BTAL, which may be too late to get into now).