You can see Keppler’s Developed Country Strategy here: www.kamny.com/wp-content/uploads/DM_Update_2023-05-31-1.pdf
You can see Keppler’s Emerging Country Strategy here: www.kamny.com/wp-content/uploads/EM_Update_2023-05-31-2.pdf
The portfolio has not been the best performer during this time compared with the NASDAQ or S&P Idicies, but has achieved the important goals below for me (and I hope has helped you).
#1: None of the funds are down over the period. I have not suffered any long term loss. That’s a big plus as there have been many events in that time that have sucked investors into losing chunks of their capital.
#2: My management costs have been minimal so the profits that have been made stay with me, not my fund manager.
#3: The process has been extremely hands off and easy. I spend maybe a couple of hours, at most, per month. As the year’s progress and we all have less of this key asset, time, this value grows.
I can spend more time meditating, being with friends and enjoying life, instead of working numbers and news (that maybe is increasingly unreliable) to understand the unknowable.
#4: During these eight years of deeper turmoil, the strategy has protected me from thinking that I know what’s going on in the world. The growing political turmoil, increased geopolitical tension, loss of nature’s dependability and increased pace of life mean that there is more and more we do not know, cannot anticipate and should not depend upon.
The strategy is a very easy, simple use of a most basic economic tenant (that markets will gravitate to value in the long term). Pi handily cuts through our most complicated changes in this troubled, and changing world. The more everything becomes complicated, the simpler and more basic our strategies must be.
#5: The strategy is still loaded with profit potential!
Keppler writes this month: The Developed Markets Top Value Portfolio is now undervalued by 53 % compared to the MSCI World Index, by 63 % compared to the MSCI USA Index and by 75 % compared with the MSCI World Growth Index. This extreme undervaluation is not justified by the underlying fundamentals. We therefore expect the Top Value Model Portfolio to mean-revert and resume its outperformance from 2022.
#6: The Pi strategy (and my holdings of gold) has also provided insurance against a falling US dollar. As with the S&P the dollar has been a leading currency so this has not been a profit generator, but like the upside potential that will come, the extra stability is there.
#7: Pi protects against bear markets.
The chart below from Longtermtrends.net shows how US Growth shares have compared to US value shares.
The ratio in the chart above divides the Wilshire US Large-Cap Growth Index by the Wilshire US Large-Cap Value Index. by the Wilshire US Large-Cap Value Index. When the ratio rises, growth stocks outperform value stocks – and when it falls, value stocks outperform growth stocks. The ratio peaked in 2000, during the dot-com mania.
This chart shows how the Pi strategy helped stabilize the portfolio during the gloom of market drops in 2000 and 2020.
Until next month, Keep it simple, remember that everything is in perfect order and do what makes your heart sing.
Gary
