S.T.A.Y. Plus™ current position for Active portion of portfolio:  "BUY" (CAUTION!)

Over the past week the market has been moving mostly sideways with a few upward attempts. Although it hasn't fully made up it's mind, it would appear that it's leaning towards a breakout to the up-side. Earlier today, it barely eclipsed the previous all-time from a few days ago. 

Currently, our "Active" model is roughly 50% in cash, but we will deploy that cash if this upward momentum builds. Our "Core" model continues to march forward delivering a steady, modest return as expected. We will continue to keep a close eye on the market and respond accordingly.

​S.T.A.Y. Plus™ current position for Active portion of portfolio:  "BUY" (CAUTION!)

The market remains in a somewhat fragile state. Today, in particular, the market has been exerting some significant downward pressure, however, it remains to be seen if this is the beginning of a down-trend, or a short-term adjustment that will blow over. Until the market makes up it's mind, we will remain conservative with 40-50% of our models in cash, which has been working well for the past several days. 

​Rest assured, we are focused on what's happening and will adjust accordingly as the market dictates.

S.T.A.Y. Plus™ current position for Active portion of portfolio:  "BUY" (CAUTION!)

The market activity in the last week has demonstrated that things are fragile. Due to pull-backs, we have eliminated roughly half of our positions in both our "Active" and our "Core" models. Currently, we are not replacing those positions- choosing to keep roughly half of both models in cash until the market stabilizes a bit more. All remaining positions are continuing to add value. Our market strength indicators are still showing a "BUY" signal, however, it has weakened substantially and could easily turn to a "SELL" with another small nudge downward. In the event of a "Sell" signal, we will move our "Active" model to more defensive holdings, similar to our "Core" model's holdings.

It's hard to say where the market will go next, but you can be assured that we are paying very close attention and will take decisive action as things unfold. 

S.T.A.Y. Plus™ current position for Active portion of portfolio:  "BUY" 

Last week the "Active" model from our S.T.A.Y. strategy began to pull away from from the S&P 500, which was very gratifying. This week, the S&P may end up on top, but regardless, we continue to operate our strategy with much greater efficiency and sophistication resulting in better overall performance.  Our ability to easily spread the risk out over a diverse group of securities that can easily be monitored has been a game-changer. We are also scanning the universe of investable securities daily to determine if there are new securities emerging that are more attractive than the ones we currently hold. All of the security selection is accomplished through technical analysis methods. This means that we are using mathematics (technical indicators) to project the trajectory of the market and individual securities. Please let us know if you have questions or would like to hear more about the specifics of how we are implementing leading technology to make the S.T.A.Y. strategy better.

S.T.A.Y. Plus™ current position for Active portion of portfolio:  "BUY" 

The market has been stretching it's wings a bit over the last few weeks and we are soaring right along with it, as you can see in the graph below. Our "Active" model has been neck and neck with the S&P. Earlier in the year, our model (which wasn't deployed for most of you, due to the transitions from Goldman Sachs) was also soaring, however, we had not fine-tuned our "stop/loss" mechanism, so we gave back some of those gains when the market sank. Now, however, we are hitting our stride both in security selection, and entry / exit timing. In the past several weeks we've had many examples of our securities "stopping out" before doing much, if any damage at all. These securities are then replaced by new ones that meet our proprietary mix of criteria, which we have developed for identifying securities that are in an uptrend, but haven't yet reached their likely potential.  

We are very pleased with our new platform at Axos because of how it has allowed us to develop more sophistication within the STAY strategy. 

By way of review, we offer 6 portfolios: 
Aggressive (100% "Active", 0% "Core")
Moderate Aggressive (80% "Active", 20% "Core")
Growth (60% "Active", 40% "Core")
Balanced (50% "Active", 50% "Core")
Moderate Conservative (40% "Active", 60% "Core")
Conservative (20% "Active", 80% "Core")

If you would like to review your portfolio, please give us a call!

S.T.A.Y. Plus™ current position for Active portion of portfolio:  "BUY" 

We are still invested in the market and swapped out some securities in the Active portfolio earlier today. Our goal in the active portfolio is to identify securities that are poised to move up, but also share characteristics of securities that are less likely to have a drawdown. As you can imagine, this is a tall order, but with our new platform at Axos and the software that we are using for analysis, it is remarkable what can be done. It has also been helpful to have greater diversification across 10-12 securities, so that one bad apple doesn't spoil the entire basket. In addition, the bad apples can easily be identified and replaced before the entire bucket is impacted. 

The objective of the Core portfolio is to be a stabilizing factor. We definitely want some return from it, but it's priority is to never have significant drawdowns (less than 2%). Although it's hard to tell on the graph below, in the last couple of weeks the Core portfolio had had about .5% return (10-12% annually). This is excellent for the Core portfolio. 

As you know, all of our clients share a mix both portfolios that coincides with their risk tolerance. We feel that we are well positioned for whatever 2025 throws at us- Bull or Bear!

​Monthly S&P 500 Chart (with all-time high shown)

S.T.A.Y. Plus™ current position for Active portion of portfolio:  "BUY" 

As you can see from the graph below, we transitioned from "limited equity exposure" in our "Active" portfolio to a "BUY" on May 12th. You will also notice that we are out-performing the S&P. 

2025 has been a ground breaking year for AFS. We are continuing to use the same "S.T.A.Y. Plus" methodology, however, we have improved our implementation of that methodology. Rather than going into the four major indexes when we are "in the market", we have implemented a sophisticated system that dynamically selects 10-12 securities that currently have a favorable risk/reward profile. This provides us with excellent diversification and the opportunity to out perform the market. In January and February we were operating with our first implementation of this modification. We have since further refined our implementation and now have stop-loss measures in place for securities that are not moving up as expected. As you can see from the graph below, we are still avoiding major market drawdowns and participating in market gains, coming in slightly higher than the S&P 500 YTD in our "Active" portfolio (4.5% v 3.02%). Most of our clients have a mix our "Active" and "Core" portfolios, based on their risk tolerance. We are continuing to look for opportunities to improve our "Core" portfolio performance without increasing volatility. 

Year to Date Performance through 5-27-2025 (Active, Core and S&P 500)

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​Monthly S&P 500 Chart (with all-time high shown)