We don't trade our portfolios on FOMC Day. If we had traded, the Portfolio 51 would have been down -$4,700. This does not count towards a drawdown entry alert since FOMC Day trades are "zeroed" out in the Portfolio Calculator.
We did get setup to trade the FOMC Trader. Our live trade on the day was -$1,025 today. The FOMC Trader was profitable but my automation error set us back. (Too many late nights putting together the latest portfolios). The hypothetical signals for the FOMC Trader was +$1,000 on the day.
It's been a frustrating month to see the straight line trends and the VIX hitting 11. We anticipated this up move but anticipated a little more "wiggle room" to get in. An automation error on a day like to day adds to the frustration.
There are cycles of time when traders are out of sync with their trading system portfolios. There are also cycles of time when day trade algorithms will struggle to beat the massive buy and hold runups that occur on news events and in the overnight session with gap ups.
Keeping perspective, we are up about $7,127 on the quarter after today's trade in the 250K Portfolio for our live trading and we dodged a huge drawdown by exiting the Stock Index Portfolio 34 when we did. We have missed a 14K runup lately but missed a 70K drawdown with our portfolio transitioning.
Our target returns are much higher than where we are so far this quarter and I anticipate more steady state cycles in 2024 instead of the faster volatility shifts we have seen lately. Either way, the current portfolios are signaling the current and past market patterns very well. I'm anxious to trade again. We will wait for the right entry point to reduce volatility in the account equity instead of starting at equity peaks in the portfolio and market.
Post FOMC could be sloppy enough to generate a drawdown entry alert by Monday or Tuesday to potentially give us the opportunity to enter a move before the end of the year.
The move we have seen in the stock market is the best performance between Fed meetings since 2009 (when QE started).
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