Portfolios: situation as of 01.05.2025

"We're going to make America great again, greater than it's ever been (...). The market is going to explode" (Trump at the White House, April 2, 2025 = "Liberation Day")

We'll wait and see. For now, he's mostly riding a roller coaster, depending on the posts published on the Social Kit. To say the market is manipulated is an understatement. "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY," the cowboy said just before pausing his prices, enriching his insider friends by billions in a matter of seconds. As if they still needed that.

I already had doubts five years ago, during Trump's first term, about his malicious and self-serving influence on the market. Today, this is becoming increasingly blatant. Especially since he has once again set his sights on cryptocurrencies, which are by nature even more opaque and prone to malfeasance.

Trump may give Americans the illusion that he limited the damage in April, despite all the chaos he caused. Indeed, the S&P 500 lost just under 1% in dollar terms. However, this is to forget that the dollar has fallen drastically against other currencies during the same period. In other words, Americans are less wealthy now and will pay even more for imports, not to mention tariffs. Against the Swiss franc, the greenback lost nearly 6.5% in April. This is far from insignificant.

So, the S&P 500 actually posted another disastrous performance in April, with a loss of -7.5% (in CHF). This isn't exactly what you'd expect when you say the market is exploding. Unless Trump meant to say downwards.

Past month's performance (portfolios and benchmarks - in CHF)

THE Determinant portfolio concludes this month of February with a loss of -1.17% (in CHF). The PP 2.x suffered significantly more, with a loss of -4,42%. This difference is explained by the particularly resilient nature of the PFD, thanks to some of its strategies, as we will see later.

On the contrary, through the PP 2.x We see the limitations of "Buy & Hold" management. This is even more obvious when we look at the performance of our various benchmarks, which show rather miserable results. PP 2.x, even following this approach, nevertheless achieves a better score than Boglehead's 60/40, which is supposed to be defensive.

• Wallets :
  • Determinant portfolio : -1.17%
  • PP 2.x : -4.42%
• Benchmarks :
  • MSCI Switzerland: -2.97%
  • S&P 500: -7.50%
  • VT : -6.17%
  • 60/40 "Boglehead : -5.91%

Key portfolio strategies (past month - in CHF)

• Blue Chips: 0%
• Micro Caps: -2.43%
• Trading Auto Signal: -0.71%
• Gold: -1.63%
• Bonds: 2.53%
• Real estate Swiss: -1.91%
• Long / Short: -2.8%

Like the market as a whole, most strategies lost money over the past month. However, the PFD held up relatively well compared to stock indices. Indeed, even though many of the approaches followed ended in the red, they all outperformed the benchmarks. This is especially true compared to the US market, the global market (VT), and even the 60/40 "Boglehead" strategy. As I mentioned above, this shows us the limitations of the Buy & Hold approach.

The other aspect that explains the PF's resilience is its current significant cash component, with nearly 40%. This allows it to weather the current storm more calmly and seize opportunities as they arise.

Determinant portfolio (year-to-date - in CHF)

Since the beginning of this year, the determining portfolio shows a barely negative result, with -0.05% in CHF. This is less good than the MSCI Switzerland (6.69%), which had performed well in January and February, thanks to a rebound, following a disappointing year in 2024. But it is significantly better than the S&P 500, which shows a loss of -13.68% in CHF since the beginning of the year.

Determinant portfolio (since launch - in CHF)

The key portfolio in in its new configuration since October 2024shows the following results (in Swiss francs):

• Annualized performance (%): 8.79 (MSCI Switzerland: 2.98)
• Max Drawdown (%): -6.62 (MSCI Switzerland: -15.16)
• Standard deviation (%): 8.05 (MSCI Switzerland: 15.01)
• Sharpe ratio: 1.59 (MSCI Switzerland: 1.03)
• Correlation with MSCI Switzerland: 0.15

As I write these lines, US futures are surging, thanks to the results of Microsoft and Meta. As a corollary, gold is crashing. But we must not forget that just yesterday, the American market fell 2 points following the publication of US GDP, before rebounding sharply at the end of the session. In short, as I said in the introduction, it's a roller coaster. It reminds me a little of 2020, but especially of 2008. So it's better to remain cautious, especially since we still have four years of Trump to go, minus 100 days.