ORCA Q3 performance: +15.2%
Announcing the Q3 competition winners!
Quick summary:
New survey, for Q4 competition, is up & running - click here.
We have our Q3 winners! It was super tight, first and second place separated by 0.15 points. Impressive! Congratulations to the winners.
Q3 saw some of our best performances this year. August was out top performing month, and in September we got our top performing week YTD. This resulted in a 15.2% gain (gross of fees) for the quarter.
Over the weekend we narrowly avoided the US government shutdown, so we do end up getting a bunch of economic data this week. Paid subscribers will get a detailed analysis of things we are focused on and how to position.
The Q4 competition is officially open, so now is the chance for all of you who missed an opportunity last quarter to jump in right from the start. The more you participate, the better you get, and the higher your chances to win our cash prizes - especially the annual one which features a 3% cut of our 2023 profits (not investor profits, but from the fund performance). The survey is live on our new app, jump right in:
And now for the winners of Q3. Wow, that was some race!
The first and second place got separated by just 0.15 points! And the top 5 are all within just one point. It was a neck-and-neck race over the past few weeks. Big congratulations to Mr Toni Gligic for the win! That took some diligence. The bragging rights and the $1,000 are yours.
Here is the top 20 ranking.
For those unfamiliar, each of the top 20 get awarded a cash prize, with the total winnings summed up to $5,000. First place gets $1,000, second $700, third $500, and so on. Places 11 to 20 get $100 each.
Congrats everyone, you will be contacted soon and the money paid out to you within the next two to three weeks. We hope you’ve enjoyed it and that you will keep playing.
NOTE: For all those new to the whole thing, here is a video of Scott and myself guiding you through the survey, showing you all its features, and briefly explaining how the competition works.
ORCA BASON Fund Q3 performance
What about ORCA? How did we do in Q3? Really, really good. Especially during the August and September sell-offs, when we benefited heavily from being short most weeks (as was signaled by the BASON as well as our macro long term view).
Overall, the current performance marks a very successful transition from our lows back in Q1. We bounced over 20% from the end of March 2023 following our strategy adaptation (lowered risk exposure, cutting losers, and gradual increasing exposure to directional options). In Q3 it finally delivered the biggest benefit. We only had five losing weeks, never losing more than 2%, and eight winning weeks in which four delivered 3 to 4% returns. It’s starting to look very much like our best from 2022 and 2021.
Eventually, it all comes down to benchmarks. And boy, did we excel there.
As you already know, August and September saw particularly bad performance for almost all asset classes. Equities worldwide (US, Europe, China, emerging markets) were down, bonds (especially US bonds) were pummeled, and even the great hedge gold ended up negative for the quarter. Only commodities saw positive returns.
And BASON, obviously. We are particularly good in making money when markets go down, or at least we have been in 2022 and 2023.
The picture says it all:
In Q1 we had difficulties navigating a kangaroo market and had to suffer a 14% decline in performance.
In Q2 we grew with the market, but made relatively modest returns (5%) given that we had to lower risk exposure as a consequence of the previous quarter performance. So even though we were getting our predictions right, we weren’t making what we could have.
Then in Q3 it all came to fruition. Two strong sell-offs, early to mid August, and mid to late September, pushed us back to a positive 5.3% year-to-date.
Thank you all for your contributions to the BASON signals. Please continue and we will all reap the rewards.
…join the $20,000 competition!
Join our survey competition to get an opportunity to participate in our quarterly ($5000) and annual (3% of our profits) prize distributions:
DISCLAIMER: Neither the survey nor any of the contents of this website can act as investment advice of any kind. The results of the survey need not correspond to actual market preferences or trends, so they should be interpreted with caution. Oraclum Capital, LLC (Henceforth ORCA) is a management company responsible for running the ORCA BASON Fund, LP, and for organizing a survey competition each week, where it invites the subscribers to its newsletter (this website) to participate in an ongoing prediction competition. The information presented on this website and through the survey competition should under no circumstances be used to solicit any investment advice, nor is it allowed to be of commercial use to any of its readers. The survey and this website contain no information that a user may use as financial or investment advice. All rights reserved. Oraclum Capital LLC.
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Congrats!