“On August 2 we got out of stocks entirely and got into Treasurys and TIPS,” he recalled. “I hate to say this, but there’s nothing better than making money when the market is going down.”
His various trend aggregation strategies have been run as separately managed accounts and mutual funds, but now have migrated to ETF Land.
Tuttle’s active management style is assertive and, well, pretty active, and that’s reflected in the expense ratio of the four ETFs—they all carry a hefty fee of 1.87%.
During their brief run as ETFs, each of these products has outperformed their respective benchmarks over the past one month by roughly five hundred to six hundred basis points, according to Morningstar.
Another Tuttle fund, the Trend Aggregation Managed Futures Strategy ETF (TAMF), remains in registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Elsewhere, Tuttle Tactical Management has had past experience with ETFs. Two of its prior efforts—the Tuttle Tactical Management U.S. Core ETF (TUTT) and Tuttle Tactical Management Multi-Strategy Income ETF (TUTI)—closed in 2017.
The firm currently sub-advises on the Tactical Income ETF (TBND), which is sponsored by Belpointe Asset Management LLC. That roughly $31 million fund debuted in June 2019 and invests in fixed income, real estate investment trusts, master limited partnerships and dividend-paying equities. The bulk of its portfolio consists of ETFs and ETNs, some of which are inverse and/or levered. Its expense ratio is 1.59%.
“TBND is designed to take the place of where you would normally put bonds into a portfolio,” Tuttle said.
Regarding his four trend aggregation ETFs, Tuttle has his own take regarding their portfolio fit, though he recognizes that not all investors share his gung-ho enthusiasm for tactical investing.
“Everyone is different,” he said. “Me being tactical, I’m a big believer that people should be 100% tactical. Most people aren’t. [These ETFs] are designed to replace traditional equity exposure to give you the upside of the market without the downside.”