A reader asked: “I found Investors FastTrack via a search last night. Do you know anything about them?”
Per the Investors FastTrack web site, the company offers: “dividend-adjusted, historical mutual fund, ETF, and stock data to thousands of investors worldwide; software and training to individual investors and money managers; low cost, daily updates; and, web pages, and custom applications to financial institutions.” Paul and Shirley Charbonnet founded the company in 1989.
The “simple truths” that Investors FastTrack presents and the strategy the company features are:
- “This year’s best fund is often next year’s worst fund.”
- “No fund is always the best fund.”
- “The best fund is, invariably, a sector fund.”
- “Momentum strategies work best when trading among sector funds. FastTrack’s Momentum Monthly FTAlpha Model the actual value of a portfolio once a month over many years of Momentum trading consistently beats the S&P 500 return, gaining over 20% annually”
Investors FastTrack does not provide the specifications of the FTAlpha Model or the other models they summarize. Though they use the term “actual value,” the specifications may be optimized via backtesting, thereby incorporating data snooping bias (luck) and overstating expected returns. The specifications may ignore the fees charged by Investors FastTrack for services and any fees charged by brokers for fund trading. It is arguable that the benchmark for the FTAlpha Model should be a basket of sector funds rather than an S&P 500 Index fund.
For relevant analyses of simple momentum strategies applied to sector exchange-traded funds (ETF) since the end of 1998, see:
“Simple Sector ETF Momentum Strategy Performance”
“Simple Sector ETF Momentum Strategy Robustness/Sensitivity Tests”
“Alternative Sector ETF Momentum Metrics”
“Comparison of 3:6:12-1 and 6-1 Sector ETF Momentum Strategies
“Sector ETF Momentum with Selective Shorting of Losers”
Monthly ranking of sector ETFs on six-month past returns generally produces the best results, but the second item offers some cautions.
Parts of “The NoLoad FundX Mutual Fund Momentum Approach” are also relevant.
