I want to pull out and highlight the performance discussion embedded in the WOTE Asset Management Home Page update out today (see page below the following performance discussion), as it provides greater context to YTD performance specifically and The WOTE more broadly.
Performance: YTD March 21, 2024
Performance Discussion
Performance has been objectively terrible YTD. But there is critical context to it that I want to discuss here.
My style is very aggressive, so wide swings in performance are par for the course. Unfortunately this “swing” YTD came right out of the gate of me beginning to officially track The WOTE’s performance.
The WOTE was actually “born” during COVID - I just didn’t know it at the time. The background to The WOTE is too long for this discussion, but suffice it to say, everything I had learned career-to-date officially came together during COVID, and “The WOTE Way” was created, just in a different forum.
From 2020 to mid-2023 I managed my personal capital via a combination of the WOTE US Long/Short Equity and WOTE US Core Equity strategies. I handily outperformed SPX from 2020 to 2021 on the long side before going to cash in December 2021 and then going fully short in early 2022. I dramatically outperformed in 2022 before overstaying my welcome on the short side up until around June 2023 and thus underperforming handily in 1H23.
In 2H23 two things happened: 1) I began incubating an options strategy, and 2) in November I came up with the idea of segmenting my personal portfolio into what is now WOTE Asset Management.
All that to say, unfortunately I cannot go back and cleanly report on performance going back to 2020, thus I’m stuck with a 12/31/2023 starting point. I know full well the poor performance YTD does not reflect the quality of The WOTE cross-asset market research process, but I will need to prove that out over time, and I am highly confident I will over the coming quarters and years.
I am still in a bit of a “start-up”, rapid iteration mindset with The WOTE, as writing and reporting on my process and performance publicly forces me to think about and evolve my process in ways I did not think to prior to The WOTE. However, with the latest WOTE Report and associated About page enhancements, I believe I have reached a great spot from both an operational and investment process standpoint, and anticipate a steady-as-she goes approach to strategy, process, and site format for the foreseeable future.