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Portfolio Service

Smart Portfolio
Solutions

Example Portfolios Geared to Growing Your Wealth in Any Market Environment

Not Your Standard Stock / Bond Portfolio

At Signals Matter, we recognize the value of hard-earned wealth and are here to grow and protect it. With interest rates rising, bonds no longer provide a “safe-haven” hedge against stock declines. Stocks too are over-valued, which means double-trouble for traditional investing. Keeping your money safe requires diversification outside of just stocks and bonds to less-correlated, alternative solutions. That's what we do; that's how we help.

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Tradional Portfolios
Stock & Bonds
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Signals Matter Portfolios
Stock & Bonds
Commodities & Energy
Metals & Currencies
Inverse Strategies

Why Our Portfolios are Different

Better performing portfolios are portfolios that are diversified beyond stocks and bonds. Meaningful diversification is not about growth vs. value, or high-cap vs. low-cap, or stocks vs. bonds. It's about allocating smartly across less-correlated asset classes that include real estate, currencies, commodities, precious metals, sector-focused funds, countries, and other alternative choices, including inverse investments that make money when stocks and bonds fall. Signals Matter portfolios are:

Truly Diversified

Our truly diversified portfolios incorporate all asset classes, not just multiple flavors of highly correlated stocks and bonds, with emphasis on containing interest rate risk.

Actively Managed

Actively-managed portfolios zig when the markets zag, providing important portfolio protection as stocks fall, interest rates rise, and business conditions deteriorate.

ETF Invested

We populate our portfolios with cheaper, easier-to-trade, and more tax-efficient ETFs that provide our investors options for diversifying away from stocks and bonds.

We Care About
Market Risk

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Our Lighthouse Operates 24/7
Warning of Dangerous Shallows
And Perilous Markets Ahead.

  • Measuring global market risk is a strategic concept, requiring disipline, planning, implementation, and constant monitoring of global macro and market risk factors.
  • Containing market risk provides an extra layer of protection when markets tumble, helping guide investors safely into and out of financial markets.
  • Every portfolio we manage is accordingly risk-adjusted.
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Market Risk

How We Measure

Measuring global market risk is a strategic concept, requiring discipline, planning, implementation, and constant monitoring of global macro and market risk factors. Containing market risk provides an extra layer of protection when markets tumble.

Risk Factors

How We Monitor

We monitor market risk by constantly parsing current and forecast GDP; yield curve variances; trends across global equities, bonds, currencies, and commodities; and an extensive array of leading and proprietary indicators that forecast stormy weather ahead.

Portfolios

How We Apply

Market Risk scores inform on the percentage allocations of short-term treasury and inflation-protected ETFs across our three portfolios, allocating more to the Conservative Portfolio, less to the Moderate Portfolio, and none to the Aggressive Portfolio.

Questions answered

How about a bit of background on Signals Matter?

Signals Matter, LLC was founded in April 2017 by Thomas Lott and Matthew Piepenburg as an online publishing company to provide subscribers with timely financial market analysis and specific portfolio investment ideas.

Is this a Trading Service?

No, although we do intend to launch a trading service that will automate investing for subscribers in 2022. SignalsMatter.com provides information and illustrations for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as investment advice or as a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Information provided reflects our views and research and should not be interpreted as investment advice, as an offer or solicitation, nor as a direction to purchase or sell any financial instrument. Our views concerning financial market trends and risk probabilities are based on market conditions that will fluctuate. There can be no assurance that an investor will achieve profits or avoid incurring substantial losses by investing in the Portfolio Suggestions presented by Signals Matter. Past performance of any posted Suggestion is not indicative of future results.

Why do Signals Matter?

Market signals are all that matter when it comes to investing, to building all-weather portfolios, and to managing risk. That's why we created Storm Tracker, our mathematically-derived algorithm that informs on market risk and determines appropriate cash exposure across our portfolios.

What is Storm Tracker?

Storm Tracker tracks the probability of stormy weather (market stress) ahead by monitoring over a hundred metrics that track GDP, Sector Trends, Leading Indicators, Yield Curves, and Déjà Vu, our in-house risk indicator that compares yield spreads with stock movements. Storm Tracker measures overall market risk on a scale of 0% (no market risk) to 100% (extreme market risk).

How is Storm Tracker Applied?

As broad market risk rises, near cash allocations within the Conservative to Moderately Aggressive Portfolios rise as well. Our Conservative Portfolio is constructed with a full Storm Tracker cash allocation (e.g., an allocation equal to current Storm Tracker risk probabilities). There are no Storm Tracker allocations for the Aggressive Portfolio.

Is investing an art or a science?

Constructing portfolios that hold up in all weather conditions is more than a science. It's an artful science that builds upon informed investing, market cycle discovery, meaningful diversification, risk reduction, technical analysis, and proper benchmarking – all geared to optimize return and minimize risk.

How do you solve for risk?

Risk tolerance is our starting point at Signals Matter. We construct portfolios around two notions of risk suitability: (a) suitable risk for the client, considering a client's financial condition and goals; and (b) suitable market risk, taking into account levels of market stability and instability.

What's investment instruments do you deploy?

Signals Matter draws heavily on Exchange Traded Products (ETPs) to populate its portfolios. ETPs are a category of exchange-traded investment vehicles that include two subsets, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs), with allocations to ETFs by far the greater of the two. The universe of ETPs provides traditional but also actively managed solutions that enable investment advisers to diversify clients away from traditional stocks and bonds during adverse market conditions for traditional investing. Signals Matter tracks over 1,000 US-domiciled, liquid ETPs. Our opportunity set includes ETPs across stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, actively-managed, and inverse ETPs (that track the inverse of long-only indexes). Inverse ETPs provide simple, cheap, and liquid solutions to hedge (i.e., short) certain market sectors within our portfolios, enabling clients to profit should stocks fall. Unlike mutual funds, which are priced at the end of the day, ETPs are priced continuously during each market session, affording frequent and continuous price discovery.

What does "alternative investing" mean?

Alternative investing is a core strength at Signals Matter and is deployed across all Signals Matter portfolio solutions, a prime differentiator from traditional Financial Advisors (FAs) and Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs). FAs and RIAs invest primarily in stocks and bonds. Alternative investing relates to investing in anything that's not a stock or a bond, as with private equity, venture capital, real estate, hedge funds, managed futures, art and antiques, commodities, derivatives contracts, and alternative-oriented Exchange Traded Products (ETPs). Alternative investing diversifies portfolios and can be performance-enhancing during periods of systemic market change or stress.

What's the difference between "active" and "passive" portfolio management?

Active portfolio management takes a hands-on approach to portfolio construction, going when and where the opportunities arise. Passive investing involves less buying and selling, often resulting in portfolios populated with traditional stocks and bonds, as with index funds or mutual funds. While active and passive investment approaches each have a role to play, both are highly dependent upon the macro environment.

At Signals Matter, we believe that active portfolio management beats passive portfolio management hands down during periods of extreme market stress, at market tops, and during changing interest rate regimes. For us, meaningful diversification is not about growth vs. value, or high-cap vs. low-cap, or stocks vs. bonds. It's about allocating smartly across less-correlated asset classes that include real estate, currencies, commodities, precious metals, sector-focused funds, countries, and other alternative choices, including inverse investments that make money when stocks and bonds fall.

Actively managed portfolio components generally zig when the markets zag, reducing portfolio volatility, thus providing a calmer ride with the potential to compound to a higher place over time.

What happens if interest rates rise?

At Signals Matter, we believe that the key to any performing portfolio is the investments it holds and the macro-environment surrounding it. Interest rates are a core variable that significantly impacts portfolio returns across traditional stock and bond investing. Having fallen for a decade, interest rates are now making the turn to contain inflation.

The risk of rising interest rates is a clear and present danger to traditional investing. Just as falling interest rates have favored both stocks and bonds for the last decade, as interest rates rise we believe stocks and bonds could together be adversely impacted, clearing the runway for actively-managed, alternative investing solutions like ours. As interest rates rise, bonds fall, no longer providing a reliable or suitable portfolio hedge; corporate earnings fall as well, as interest rates take a bigger bite out of profits, pressuring stocks.

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Our purpose is to educate

Important Disclosures

Signals Matter content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as investment advice or as a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Information contained on the Signals Matter website is based upon our views and our research and should not be interpreted as investment advice, as an offer or solicitation, nor as the purchase or sale of any financial instrument. Statements concerning financial market trends and recession probabilities are based on current market conditions, which will fluctuate. There can be no assurance that an investor will achieve profits or avoid incurring substantial losses by investing in the Portfolio Suggestions presented by Signals Matter. Past performance of any posted Suggestion is not indicative of future results.